BMW i4 M50 2022 Review

As different as they may appear, the 2022 BMW i4 M50 has to be viewed as a mirror image of the BMW iX SUV, but only if that image is one of those carnival ones with massive warps in it, totally convex and full of bubbles.

While they look nothing alike, inside or out, they do share a lot of stuff beneath their skins.

There is a little brother in the rear-drive BMW i4 eDrive40, and that’s actually the one we’re pinning our hopes on for handling finesse.

What’s more, the eDrive40 is priced at $99,900 plus on-road costs in Australia, where first deliveries are expected early in 2022, while the all-wheel drive M50 is a far more expensive proposition at $124,900 plus ORCs.

In comparison, the rival Tesla Model 3 starts at $59,900 plus ORCs, while the dual-motor Model 3 Performance, which can’t match the M50 in output – 335kW/640Nm versus 400kW/795Nm – is nonetheless claimed to be quicker and faster, driving for longer between recharging and costing $84,900 plus ORCs, a cool $40K less than BMW’s first electric ‘M Performance’ model.

The forthcoming Polestar 2 also starts at Tesla’s marker for the base model and just $69,900 plus ORCs for the 300kW/660Nm long-range dual-motor version that won’t quite give the M50 a run for its money in sheer performance terms, but is $55,000 cheaper.

There’s not much lacking from the 4 Series Gran Coupe in the i4, and the EV adds more stuff like pre-heating and pre-conditioning as standard. That means the car can be warmed or cooled while it’s still plugged in and charging, so that energy isn’t deducted from its range.

At 4783mm long, the medium-sized i4 M50 still squashes bitumen with 2215kg of mass (its one-motor brother is 2050kg).

It rides on a 2856mm wheelbase, so the interior space is conventional for the size.

It’s surprisingly uncompromised to live with, too, with 470 litres of luggage space, or 1290 litres with the rear seats folded, and the tailgate opening system is electric.

The stock version of this model lands with 245/45 R18 tyres (the eDrive40 uses 17-inch wheels), though it can be ramped up to 20-inch alloys.

That’s not all, because the M50’s tyres can be pushed up to 255/35 R20s at the front and 285/30 R20s at the rear, though that feels like it somehow defeats the purpose of having an EV.

There’s a new curved 12.9-inch multimedia screen that angles in to the driver, which teams up with a coloured head-up display and a 14.3-inch instrument cluster to reduce the button count to, well, not many.

It retains the iDrive controller, which gives drivers a choice of the controller, touch-screen, voice control or gesture control systems to navigate around the screen. But while voice control continues to improve, the iDrive remains the most intuitive.

The BMW Live Cockpit Professional fitted to our test car delivers 100W of power and has six speakers, but the optional hi-fi system uprates that to 10 speakers and 205W. There’s also a Harman Kardon unit with 16 speakers, a seven-channel amplifier and 464W of power.

Unusually in the modern era, the 2022 BMW i4 M50 is not built off a dedicated EV platform, but a hybrid platform designed for combustion engines, hybrid powertrains and EV tech.

BMW says it gives them the flexibility to meet whatever demand there is, from whatever factory they’re using, which hedges their bets on the pace of EV take-up around the world.

Cynics say it’s a cheaper way to deliver an EV, which will weigh the i4 down with inevitable compromises.

It’s possible both explanations are at least partly true.

Still, the platform was designed from scratch to accommodate the battery and synchronous electric motors. BMW sources the little cobalt it needs (it’s at 10 per cent of the industry norm) itself and supplies the cell suppliers, cutting out any temptations for unethical supply.

It also pulls the lithium in its cells from Australian hard-rock deposits and, similarly, passes it on to its prismatic cell suppliers.

Just 110mm high, the battery cell pack lowers the i4’s centre of gravity by 34mm compared to the 3 Series, and it’s held in place by 22 bolts.

BMW packages the electric motors, the power electronics and the transmission together in one housing, saving space and complexity and weight, though the single-motor eDrive40 pulls the centre of gravity down another 19mm on the M50.

It carries a comprehensive driver assistance package, with more than 40 systems including a frontal collision warning that now detects oncoming traffic whenever the car is turning left or right, including pedestrians and cyclists.

The core technology of the 2022 BMW i4 M50’s powertrain is the same as it is in the convincing iX, which means two electrically excited synchronous motors to drain (and recharge) the battery pack.

BMW insists it has retained a rear-drive feel for the M50 by placing a 230kW/365Nm electric motor at the rear and a 190kW/430Nm version at the front, hurling it to 100km/h in 3.9 seconds and up to 225km/h, where a governor kicks in.

Light on rare-earth minerals, the motors can also regenerate braking energy at 195kW (about 90 per cent of all braking, according to BMW), and the battery itself can cope with 205kW charging at high-speed stations.

BMW claims the motors run at 93 per cent efficiency, delivering as little as 19kWh of energy on the WLTP city cycle.

It has a combined system power of 400kW and a combined torque figure of 795Nm, and if that sounds familiar it’s because it’s almost the same as the fastest iX, which has 395kW/765Nm.

It’s also an astonishing 295kg lighter than its big brother, too, which is how it ekes out around 420km of range out of a battery pack that is so very much smaller (84kWh versus 111.5kWh).

It charges at 11kW at a wallbox on mains power, bringing it to a full charge from empty in 8.5 hours. It’s much quicker out and about, with 140km of range pouring in in 10 minutes from a high-speed charger.

Let’s get this out of the way first, so we can move on to the details: the 2022 BMW i4 M50 is an incredibly stable, secure, predictable and reliable handling car that is very fast, very comfortable and very quiet. When it wants to be.

There are downsides, though.

For starters, BMW had led us to believe we were about to drive a scalpel of divine handling proportions, but it’s not like that.

It’s just too heavy and the interplay between its two electric motors is too precise to allow it to be Peak BMW Handling, like an E36 M3 Evo.

It is more or less impossible to unsettle to a point where it can’t recover itself, and that’s impressive enough.

But it’s not big on mid-corner entertainment, and that’s somehow less than we were expecting.

It relates to the weight, of course, but it also relates to the way the electronics are determined to show off the brilliance of the whole thing, at the expense of entertainment.

It even uses a Hans Zimmer-scored artificial motor sound in the cabin, as if to demonstrate again that the electronics are running the show, and it’s actually pretty good and meaty most of the time (part throttle is the exception).

Once you’ve parked the stratospheric expectations, there is a remarkable car here.

It’s massively quick and reliable in its behaviour and it charges fast enough that city dwellers could live with one as a single-car family.

The brakes are strong, too, if you ever get through the regeneration to use them.

There’s simply nothing about the i4 that ever feels like a misstep, except the inability to make a misstep.

The handling delicacy we wanted from the 2022 BMW i4 M50 might not be there, but a very impressive machine is.

If you’d never driven one of the best-handling six-cylinder BMW sedans, you’d probably think this was a paragon of EV exquisiteness in corners, and it very well may be.

But context is a funny thing, especially when BMW intentionally made the i4 look exactly like a normal six-cylinder BMW sedan.

In the end, though I wanted to like the i4 more, I ended up respecting the appalling-looking iX more, given the leap forward it made and the achievement it represents.

It could be that the i4 eDrive40 is the pick of the litter, though, with less weight and just one motor running the show.

But if you want a premium electric sedan and don’t care about virtue signalling, there’s plenty to like here.

How much does the 2022 BMW i4 M50 cost?
Price: $124,900 (plus on-road costs)
Available: Early 2022
Powertrain: Two electrically excited synchronous motors
Output: 400kW/795Nm (front: 190kW/430Nm; rear: 230kW/365Nm)
Transmission: Single-speed reduction gear
Battery: 84kWh lithium-ion
Range: 416-421km (WLTP)
Energy consumption: 18.0-22.5kWh/100km (WLTP)
Safety rating: Not tested