BMW i4 M50 EV | Impressively Normal

[Music] the bmw i4 what does that mean i'm not quite sure but i can tell you it's a part of their electrified vehicle lineup in this car's case exterior and interior it follows that of the 4 series grand coupe which is a hatchback style vehicle the exterior changes up some design elements for better or for worse because this is electric you lose some of the grill for a flat piece of plastic that allows a little bit more design flexibility in terms of style but because this is built on a traditional bmw clar architecture that means a lot of the the things that are carry over here from the internal combustion car including the whole body so at least on the exterior it looks like a normal car and on the interior space it feels like a traditional mix of older bmw interiors with a new one the design of the dash architecture looks more traditional the door panels of course are very solid and very easy to use they've remained a lot of the physical buttons and controls that you're used to and there's just everything kind of looks and feels like where you would expect everything to be at now one of the things that doesn't make sense here and this is bmw stuff why you would have the bottle holder here in the door and then have an electrical switch for the hatch right underneath it where water is going to leak same thing in the cup holder area where you have cup holders and then a usb port right there there's some of like this weird electronic stuff that you would think you would figure out but i don't know you know it is what it is in terms of design of everything this is pretty much maxed out this is over 70 000 for this car and i'm gonna let you decide if that's ridiculous or not but there's certain things that bother me for that price manually adjusted steering wheel uh you don't get a premium audio system you're kind of saddled with the harman kardon unit which we've typically reviewed to be very very average in this car i don't know what it is if it's speaker placement or they've changed some electronic tuning with idrive 8 but it sounds vastly more tolerable and in most music namely electronic stuff it it has a really good level of clarity and imaging despite the screen here i was worried about this high level screen if it would interfere with that center speaker and it sounds good and it tests pretty decent as well so don't be afraid of that back seat space is what you expect there's pretty decent leg room there even with the front seat back i can pull some shenanigans back there and of course because this is a hatchback following that grand coupe you could put down the rear seats and there's plenty of storage space back there and you take off that little kind of hide tray that kind of hides your cargo stuff once that hatch is up there's a lot of room back there i fit all my gear i mean it's just it's a very usable platform a very usable car without having to go to like or x3 so in that element it's good all the ergonomics and all the knobs buttons and switches in here are mostly solid now the big change here really is they've gone to idrive 8 and what does that mean well the new design of idrive connects these threaded screens and you're going to see this on the icars the like ix you're going to see it retrofitted in things like the x7 and some other products you get rid of the screens that really are integrated into the dash either gauge cluster and infotainment now they just have this stuck on threaded screen which you're seeing from hyundai you're seeing from mercedes and probably a lot of other brands because let's face it it's just cheaper to stick the screen on than trying to integrate this in the dash and if they need to change design well they can just change the screen without having to relay out the dash architecture now on one part it looks way cheaper it looks hyper generic and this and i'm going to go back to something i said before and i was really critical on bmw's last generation design i'm like all the cars look the same the interior has like no wow factor but now as a bmw owner of that last generation design i really appreciate how everything was physical and that's something that i drive eight attempts to reverse they've moved all your hvac to the touchscreen which means you're constantly having to do this there's no more muscle memory for hvac control you have to go into a sub menu have to tap there's no like sliding or swiping here so that's really a it's it's a frustrating thing you're going to get used to but it's far less usable the lower area of the center stack where the physical controls used to be for hvac and the like memory functions are gone to this solid piece of like kind of capacitive slash like physical touch button controls that mimic almost that of the volvo sensor setup where you have a volume knob you have like buttons for forward and back track and then like defroster and that's all it is now and i think it really is a step backward overall in terms of usability in terms of idrive 8 which is again their next generation stuff it is far more graphically heavy something that you know is you've seen ui designers go back and forth between minimalistic design kind of like accessibility levels of just high contrast black and white and now you have graphics gradients again a lot of color a lot of graphical design but the good thing here is at least it's got good gpu and cpu power to power the multiple screens everything is really quick i just find that you're constantly over acting or over interacting with all of these menus and it's not as good like losing the shortcut buttons i can't just one touch press a bottom function that i'm in like android auto i could hit one or two or three or four or turning off screen or common functions no longer go there so you have to deal with these like panels or panes or widgets whatever you want to call it um so there's far more interaction required to utilize this thank god the idrive rotary knob is still here because with this system really to minimize distraction it's way better to use the controller to get in and out of menus especially when you're driving when you're static you know it's easy you can look at it interact with it you're not distracted but it's just really weird and graphically heavy and i guess in terms of an electric car you don't need a lot of information on the screen to be honest you just really need your speed because you don't need a tachometer or all the other information i need to know my speed my song and how much range i have and that's essentially what it does so really it does work well and like most things new things people just get used to it but let's head into the shop and talk about the mechanical changes to this car mark we're underneath the new bmw i4 m50i this is the dual motor i-4 which is the electrified variance of the 4 series or 3 series grand coupe and let's just briefly hit over the price points because i didn't talk about it in the interior what's the base it's rear-wheel drive only it starts at about 55 000. this car starts in the mid 60s however this being a bmw you have to add options like a harman kardon audio system or the parking sensors or the driving aids so realistically if you're going to get into either of these vehicles you're looking at a five to seven thousand dollar delta over the base price which puts this in an interesting position from a price comparison you know the price you can assume whatever value or not value there is let's talk about what this car is trying to do first off it's built on an internal combustion platform so this was designed to have a gasoline-powered engine first and now the car architecture has been heavily updated to accept electric motors in the front and rear part of this which means in the back they've had to shrink down the multi-link five-link multi-link suspension it's far more compact the subframes have been changed front and rear and in the back they've had to add reinforcement and bracing on the m-sport version or the this 50 version under the hood basically it's a huge chasm of wasted space for the electric motor where that engine would go so when we say it's been modified if this was a clean sheet design this front half of the car they'd think about okay we can integrate storage we can integrate all that stuff which is not here it's just a giant plastic cover and they've added uh support bars or strut tower bars to reinforce the front end so that's some of the things that have been different here but a lot of the the bmw things that they've traditionally done on all the 4 series 3 series cars are all the same strut front all aluminum pieces you have dual ball joints in the front which improves dynamic handling it decreases that toe angle change under compression and load and then the back again changes in suspension there but what else are we talking about so to be fair to this car mark yes it's built on car but much like the tycon video we just did most if not basically none of these suspension commands on this car will probably translate directly to the equivalent four series they've had to make pretty radical changes the thing to talk about does specifically to the i4 is you have two different suspension setups you have the base i-4 which is a non-active damper or on the m sport variant you get more aggressive spring rates and more aggressive dampening loads and they are also now active dampers but you do have rear air shocks in this car to deal with the added weight and cargo carrying capacity of the specific vehicle and it does auto level itself as well and lower itself when you get out to get into the load floor easier the other thing to talk about in this car is yes this is a dual motor vehicle and unlike the ticon it is more traditional in its setup where there's a single speed gearbox you have a smaller less powerful motor in the front with a more powerful motor in the rear i i think the total output is about 460 or 470 horsepower and there is a slight over boost function when you put this thing in launch control and there is a pseudo rear differential in this car so there is a slip actuator in the rear motor that is supposed to help put down the power and simulate a rear differential but unlike again like the tigon which is a traditional e-diff this car does not have that which in my opinion leads to some interesting driving dynamics at the limit and the sport boost function it's it's like sport plus essentially with sport boost that's where that mode will add the 60 plus horsepower of extra juice when you push down the pedal in certain conditions like launch control or various conditions where the system deems hey i can give you more voltage or power to the electric motors so combined when it's doing that again we talked about this on other electric cars it's all electronically controlled you probably won't get the same performance twice in two different conditions but it can go over like 520 horsepower total which you know is it necessary is it needed it's really a number and it's not something you can quantify driving it compared oh is this feel the same as this car it's just different every time you get on the throttle so the other thing i'm going to talk about mark is the battery packs so both the rear drive and the dual motor have the same battery capacity you're looking at about 81.5 kilowatt hours and they share the same cooling systems again much like the ticon they have a three stage or three circuit three circuit cooling system you have a low mid and a high grade and depending on whether it's the the batteries that need to be warmed or cooled the electric motors et cetera et cetera it will manage the thermal loads accordingly and it does have an integrated heat pump so really it's using the the heat from the electric motor and the drive train to heat the battery without having to use a high voltage heater to get all that so they've integrated and they've done this as best as possible to make the the this car is efficient to not degrade the pack or drain the battery pack to give you the most range possible so fully charged at 100 it's about 250 to 260 again condition wise that's all different but it also involves preconditioning that battery before you get to a fast voltage charging point so if you put in the infotainment in the navigation i want to go to a dc fast charger it will get that battery pack up to temperature before you get there so you can get the fastest charging possible if you're outside of those windows either high or too low a temperature it's not going to charge as fast so again it's the electronic control of this car that makes it way more complicated in some ways than internal combustion before we take the i4 for a drive mark i want to talk about one other thing and that's sound because yes bmw got han zimmer to finally design some very premium fake engine noise yeah so renzo vitale who's in charge of this division for well the sound and electric motor the experience and then han zimmer they contracted him out who is a composer he's done movies like gladiator and dune and when you listen to him he's also done a master class if you've ever watched that he's an interesting guy because he approaches things on a very practical level like he doesn't like to over complicate things and and he's even admits like sometimes working with the right brand okay well that's okay good good point but traditionally in his his scores he even self admits he likes to just boil it down to some of the bare essentials like the the sound the way that we hear things you can make it very impactful without making you know making it hugely complicated in terms of sound so he took that approach with this but it's very different than any other brand has ever done this so one one way traditional cars have done this with fake engine noise with gasoline powered is they license like blackberry licenses them a piece of software they can bake into the infotainment that they can synthesize tone so you program your sound a couple people can do it it's really easy and it just changes the pitch based on throttle input they did not want to do that for these cars they know sound is important so really to compose all these special elements it's not just one tone it's all these multi-layered frequencies from low to medium to high the pleasing sounds the ear which is that mid-range and having it really change based on load not just like half throttle but full throttle the way you lift off throttle like a regular gasoline car it changes that tone under load it's doing all this to create this sonic like warm feel it's not just a casio keyboard yes honestly if it sounds better than what they did in the m3 i'll be happy well when you compare those back to back and to be 100 fair this is this is something you could keep on and and feel like it's pretty neat it's yes it's a gimmicky but it does it's it is very pleasing it's not horrible right exactly jack bmw i4 sport boost on traction off in b mode for max regen regen's on we're going to do launch control give me the full imax experience mark so since we stopped at the shop segment talking about the sound what do you think i think compared to what porsche just did on their tycon and what hyundai has done this does not annoy me at all and in fact in some ways it adds to the experience you're right there's a sense of like i i know it's cliche theater to it like it really does add something to the experience well it doesn't perfectly mimic i think what you're doing or what you're expecting as we talked about it feels like there should be a like a second peak or something louder than it's currently doing right it tapers off at the top yeah like warp speed yeah you know like after a certain a certain mile per hour it should like go to the next level like but i i think honestly one of the addictive parts of naturally aspirated engines or cars that rev out was you chase that high of like constantly revving it and i think responsibly they looked at like okay we don't need to be building up the sound anymore because you just want to push it faster and you know i'm talking about the sound because in terms of a fun car this is an m uh type car that experience is lost in evs so you have to augment it somehow and when we talked to porsha i had a pretty deep conversation with calvin about like the mentality of like what do you lose having sound gone and this is one of the most interesting things i've seen done in a modern like eve and they put a lot of effort into this and it's very clear so let's talk about the other stuff obviously sound is just one part of it i'm going to put this in comfort for right now and it kind of just diminishes the sound or you can completely turn it off if you don't like it so how does this function as a car just as a vehicle that you're going to spend in this car's case 76 thousand dollars and some change what do you think of this vehicle to me it feels like a stiffer 4 series like a 3 series right i mean it's still all the good things about bmw the damping's really good here as you move up to the higher end when you go in comfort it soaks everything up if the interior cabin feels like a normal car aside from the infotainment the steering is basically as dead as an internal combustion engine but it's not any worse or any better and when you're driving it you forget you're driving an ev it's super refined it's super quiet the suspension tuning is great and what i really like about this and i've seen some complaints about linearity of throttle because now it's all everything's digital brake by wire throttle by wire and you're gonna get the steer by wire but for me when you're in v mode when it's in max regen when you lift off it's basically you get used to almost that one pedal braking effect but when you go back and you put it in a sporty mode the throttle gets a lot more sensitive obviously but when you jam on it even with traction and stability control off uh there is like smoothing that it does on the throttle so when you jam on it foot to the floor it doesn't like snap your head it it has that like millisecond delay of smoothing before the throttle goes full so what it does is it does not upset the car as much it doesn't upset you or me it's a far less nauseating experience and it's still super fast now in sport boost which is like sport plus that's where you get the extra power from launch control and i you know again i'll do it one more time for the hell of it but a lot of people say that there's a lot of hop in the back from this drivetrain in the back the wheels hop up quite a bit and to me it feels more like traction stability control cutting in i think where you notice the strangeness is when i drove this earlier and i was driving this thing like an absolute monkey because it's not a traditional weird differential yeah it doesn't quite feel like a bmw product when you're trying to get the slide around like when you think of an m product i know this is an m sport but you think of a clutch based rear diff yes it allows you to pull power slides like hell in the m240i we just drove yeah this car doesn't have that so i want to i want to ask you two questions first off is how does this feel as an eevee people who are going to be buying this thing may not looking may not be looking for a traditional internal combustion vehicle anymore how does it stack up against the model 3 i i love the way that it feels i love the balance of it the solidness of it it's not an echo chamber like the model 3 with the glass roof uh it still has great balance and suspension and body control like if you're not pushing it 100 you still get the balance of a regular bmw car car which you know three or four series the difference here is their electronic programming of the front and the rear motors is definitely not as figured out so when i say figured out you'll come out of a corner and with everything off you'll feel that it is limiting the power out of a corner it's not giving you full power so again it's that smoothing effect that they're giving so you don't get all the power to upset this car so it's that transition the power to when you get out of a corner then you feel it and then also there's a lot of front end like wash out so it's hard to get this you know like it grips and it it puts you in the intended direction but there is a disconnect between the front and the rear axle far more than you would get in a normal 3 series or even like a model 3. that disconnect is far more here so my next question then and this is because it is a bmw we both agree that what's good about this car versus a tesla it's the same thing that i said in the tycoon video is bmw builds cars yes and this is a four series that happens to be electric a tesla product is a ev vehicle that unfortunately is driven by people right that's their philosophy as a corporation they want to eliminate the driver yeah so this still feels like a normal car which is what you and i both like about it but if you're coming from a bmw you know the equivalent vehicle in a three or four series has the b58 at this price point it is one of the best inline sixes or best internal combustion engines currently sold that are you know relatively mass market in a luxury product and a luxury product this is now this ev powertrain is no longer substituting a box you know rattling four four-cylinder like you do in the kias and some of the other cars i don't see the advantage in america where gas is still relatively inexpensive uh of this drivetrain versus the b-58 that drive train is so good so smooth relatively fuel efficient that the price delta you are paying for this which is about 10 grand i don't necessarily see the benefit i don't know i think there's better driving dynamics at the limit with the b58 and the the zf gearbox they this is not completely sorted out so who this is for is like what we're doing right now you want the ev drivetrain where it's buttery smooth all-wheel drive you get the thrust of the straight line acceleration some of the sound and the gimmicks of the car and you want to lease one of these i would have zero problem doing that if you wanted more fun and you wanted a better driving experience you just go to the regular three or four series with the b58 i think it's better at this point but this is not far behind and it this will exceed it yes in the next generation car it will exceed it so if you want this definitely lease or you live in a country where you need to be driving an ev now yeah no i mean in most regards in most situations this is better it's just doing this but you know again when you start to hustle it it depends on who you are yeah it depends on the type of driver you are you want to be at the limit all the time or you just want to cruise around and if you're just cruising around this is better if you can live with like the 250 mile like range cap which depending on where you are you may or may not have the necessary infrastructure to support it but with that mark i think it's time for us to head into the final thoughts sir sounds good jack [Music] final thoughts on the bmw i4 m50i bmw took engineering lessons they learned from some of their early ev attempts like the bmw i3 and translated those lessons into a far more usable and enjoyable vehicle to drive weather updates to thermal management strategy of the batteries the battery technology itself and the electric motors this i-4 is a fairly good substitute to a more traditional luxury vehicle and for the most part it has a fairly organic feeling drivetrain while yes there is some weirdness in its dynamics specifically between the front and the rear and how they communicate that is not found in its internal combustion counterparts it's still a very capable and quick automobile so what do i think about the car as a whole well i think the fact that bmw added back sound something that's missing in so many eb vehicles and not just noise for the sake of noise by consulting with real music industry experts and using the shepherd's tone the noise that's being generated in this vehicle actually adds to the experience versus the tracks from it and i'm sure in the future with otas and everything else you'll get some nice sound dlcs so with that thanks for watching and i really do think this bmw i4 is a worthy substitute to something like a tesla model 3 as worth checking out [Music] you

Channel: savagegeese

Views: 140,819

Keywords: cars, trucks, suvs, 2022, 2023, best electric cars, bmw i4, hyundai ioniq5, ev6, model 2, ford mach e, Tesla, Model 3, model y, ev, hybrid, taycan, electric, porsche, macan, bmw ix, i4, audi ev, mercedes eqs, honda accord, tesla problems, best new car, best suv, best used, cargurus, carfax, reviews, toyota rav4 prime, mazda, carvana, autonation, lexus, suv, worst, fpace, problems, comedy, android auto, pixel 6

Id: rVN3jm6AXQ4

Length: 24min 7sec (1447 seconds)

Published: Mon May 02 2022

Reddit Comments

[u/VegaGT-VZ]

I'm pissed nobody has tested the base car... That seems way more interesting to me.

Also weird that they made no mention of the weight. Maybe it's not a big deal

[u/007noon700]

I wasn’t expecting to like this car so much on my test drive but I liked it a lot. Just can’t get over the range/price tag, I didn’t like it $10-20k more than a Mach E with more range and good enough performance

[u/KingKontinuum]

It’s a very impressive car, no doubt, but I just can’t believe that this one in the video is over $70,000. I understand that it’s an M50 model, but geez.

[u/dfBishop]

lol love the blurred speedo

EDIT: which they then forget to blur in the Final Thoughts section

[u/butteryspoink]

I will never not hate full touch screen over a panel of buttons. I don’t want to ever have to take my eyes off the road.

[u/matmanx1]

I like it but I would go with the eDrive40 variant and save the extra cash. Even with the adaptive suspension, shadowline trim, Sport trim and some options I was at about $62k which, while still expensive, is a more tolerable price while also having additional range.

[u/Neumean]

More EVs like this, please; (fairly) normal looking cars and wagons.

[u/Uptons_BJs]

If you really think about it, it is only normal because we've normalized the 4 door coupe and that horrific grille.

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If you had a time machine to go back to 2002 with this car - even if it had a conventional gas engine, people would think it is so weird.

[u/RenZ245]

Rather Normal looking compared to almost every EV, looks weird compared to other BMWs