BMW’s sporty base-spec i4 shows that a good car is never just about straight line speed

2023 BMW i4 eDrive35

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Launch Date: May 2023, S$333,888 with COE and VES (Aug 2023)
Four-door coupe, five seats
286hp, single-motor electric drive, 19.3kWh/100km, 483km range

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PROS
Dynamically fun to drive
Luxurious, comfortable cabin
Efficient drivetrain

CONS
Boot is shallow but wide
Rear windows do not open very far

SINGAPORE

The BMW i4 first arrived in Singapore with the launch of the i4 eDrive40 in 2022. Kind of an electric 4 Series Gran Coupe, it’s a car that’s one size up from the long-serving 3 Series sedan and just that little bit more loud, with the big kidney grille nose that the whole 4 Series range including the i4 now wear. 

It’s not the same car as the petrol-powered 4 Series Gran Coupe however, as the i4’s chassis is entirely EV-centric and not simply a reconfigured one. While the powerful i4 M50 will go down in history as BMW M’s first series production electric sports car, the i4 eDrive35 here carries another temporary accolade: it’s the cheapest BMW EV you can buy in Singapore in 2023. 

It’s hard to put it into words what the i4 eDrive35 is. It’s technically a sports car on account of its reasonably brisk speed and lively chassis tune, but it’s not a sports sedan, because BMW says it’s a ‘Gran Coupe’, or BMW-speak for four-door coupe. You could call it a sports liftback too, because despite its four-door, sedan-like silhouette the car has a huge liftback rear door like the Skoda Octavia RS.

So, the BMW i4 is a mid-sized electric sports coupe that has four doors and a liftback tail that could be classified as a fifth door the way people classify hatchbacks as five-door cars.

Except it doesn’t really look like a coupe in the same way a BMW M4 does.  

Once you’ve made your peace with that, it’s time to delve into the fact that the car is powered by a single electric motor with a power output of 286 horsepower. It’s not a headline grabbing number, especially when compared to the twin-motored, all-wheel drive i4 M50’s total power output of 544 horsepower.

The less powerful i4 eDrive35 is rear-wheel drive only, and like almost all electric vehicles it does not have a multi-speed gearbox. The 0 to 100km/h sprint is dashed off in 6.0 seconds, which is pretty modest by fast EV standards. 

The cabin is all current-generation BMW, with the wide panoramic screen and little twiddle tab for the drive selector on the centre console. You get onboard GPS navigation, and a decently-specified Harman/Kardon audio system. The very effective BMW Personal Intelligent Assistant is here too as standard equipment. It understands spoken commands so well that we’ve just about stopped using the buttons to operate some commonly used features. Mercedes-EQ is doing its best to get ahead but from our user experience, the BMW system is more intuitive by far.

What you don’t get as standard, but is specced in the more pricey BMWs, is the adaptive cruise control. It’s not a big deal if you’re not a fan of self-driving cars, but it’s a fact that radar-assisted adaptive cruise control is much more usable than the standard, ‘dumb’ system. 

The i4’s sloping roofline may be good for aerodynamic efficiency and looking swoopily cool, but it does have a drawback in that the rear seat passengers are seated quite low in the car with a smaller than usual window to look out of. The shape of the rear doors also don’t allow the rear windows to open very far, they come down about halfway and that’s it. Small children that like looking out of the window may whinge about not being able to see anything as even with a booster seat a kindergartener’s eyeline is just about level with the bottom of the window opening. 

Round the back you get an expansive boot, it’s wide but not very deep however as the electronics and battery packs occupy the space under the floor. Yet the liftback tail makes loading large items easy. 

Unlike in some other electric vehicles, there’s no storage space under the bonnet of the car at the front. You simply find a big black plastic cover that hides all the high voltage electricals away from sight.

So that car doesn’t seem very quick when you look at the data sheet alone, but the drive experience tells a better story. In the Comfort drive setting the step off is actually very laid-back and power delivery is quite muted. It’s all there, but the car keeps acceleration at a moderate pace, doesn’t play the BMW Iconic Sounds through the speakers, and you could drive a bunch of senior citizens around in it comfortably all day. 

The Sport mode triggers a real change of character to the car. The Hans Zimmer-composed synthetic whooshing sound, a.k.a. BMW Iconic Sounds is activated whenever you accelerate more than moderately, and the car’s wave of electric torque makes it feel pretty quick as it punches forwards. Driving into corners and out the other side is a smooth, exhilarating experience, and it’s fast enough to be fun but not so powerful to feel like you’re never stretching the car enough. The traction control systems are unobtrusive and make you feel like a driving hero, but the fact is the chassis is well-balanced, despite the additional weight of the batteries onboard. 

As with most electric BMWs the actual efficiency is better than the official specifications. Expect around 17kWh/100km with some spirited driving thrown in, and if you really stretch it with careful use of the accelerator, a range of just under 500km per battery charge is achievable.

Who will this car appeal to? Well it’s got almost all the looks of the much pricier BMW i4 M50, enough power for a fun drive, space for four adults comfortably, and is all electric. The point is, it looks muscular and sporty but without attracting the monstrous road tax that the i4 M50 does, so that’s a win especially if the car is never given the room to stretch its legs beyond Singapore. Its most obvious competitor is actually the BMW iX3, if you prefer an SUV over a low-slung four-door coupe. Until the BMW i5 arrives at the tail end of this year, this is a worthy look-in for a car that appeals to the driving enthusiast, upper tier executive, and family driver.    

BMW i4 eDrive35

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