BMW i4 M50 is M-Power's first all electric car but is it worthy of the iconic M-badge?

well welcome to a new harry's garage video and today's car is this the i4 m50 i4 means it's all electric and why i got this car in this is the first electric car from the m division if i quote from the brochure the first fully electric m car that's quite a statement and quite a moment i think for all car enthusiasts when an m electric car comes along and you're probably just looking at it and thinking hang on i mean it just looks like an m4 well you're correct because this i4 actually is the same body shell etcetera but instead of having a internal combustion engine it's got an electric motor list price is 63 000 this one as it stands here 76 600 pounds i find that quite an interesting number because you could actually buy an m4 for the same money anyway let's go have a closer look see what this all electric m car is all about front so what marks this car out as an m car well obviously the m badge there this design well we're just gonna have to get used to it this is the new bmw look with these enormous great cartoon-like kidneys on the front all sorts of tech apparently under here you can see the radar there with the m car connection where you get carbon fiber there for some vent that seems to come out in the wheel arch there this is all blank there's not a lot going on at the front because obviously obviously there's not an engine at the front come round this car has the optional 20-inch wheels on it they all come with bigger brakes on these this m version of the i-4 carbon here mirrors come keep coming around what do we got oh you can see this is the m50 version because it's got a carbon rear spoiler as well and underneath was a sort of rear diffuser-esque thing it's not really but it's got these that sort of mark out where exhaust pipes might have lived had this been a proper m4 but one thing i just yeah quite impressive is actually this is a hatch the m4 is not a booted car you do get a hatchback like that seats flip down so reasonable practicality now what i haven't actually mentioned in all of this is the weight of this car and when i spotted it on the spec i couldn't believe quite how heavy this car was m4 is 1800 kilos and we're all grumbling about that because that seemed quite a heavy car in its own right it had 510 horsepower to shift it along 3.9 seconds to 62. this car is 2290 kilos as it stands here before i get in it 2290 kilos that is 475 kilos heavier than an m4 it's also heavier than a kn turbo lamborghini urus he's up there with a sort of range rover svr or something like that how can you make an m car that heavy 290 kilos fortunately it's got some grunts in it with a big battery's 80.7 kilowatt hour battery it's got four wheel drives it's got an extra motor at the front here as well as one in the rear and a performance is about the same so the note 62 times the same 3.9 seconds but my goodness that's a lot of weight to shift i should actually just show you where the motor looks because you can actually pop the bonnet on this car unlike that ix and there you go there's there's the engine for your new m car yes it's awful lot of plastic but it is removable we've discovered this morning if i take that out there you go what do we got under here well look at things we've got some inverter going on here you can see the motor sitting down there i don't know if this is an air conditioning unit or something i suspect i don't know and steering column down there not a pretty sight at all lots of tech going on in there but yes at least you can open the bonnet why you ever would once you've seen that i'm not so sure anyway i'm going to do put that cover back on take it outside take it for a drive yeah you get in all very familiar if you've driven the new three or four series so we sailed in for um typical layout here but then this wrap around this one sort of stretched ipad right across the dash that has your display here and then all the other functions you can do with bmw these days with their infotainment system yeah i'm staying at a range of 206 miles of 97 percent battery we'll come on to that in a moment i press a blue start button all comes into life and uh yeah it starts off if i just move the lever backwards it's all very quiet and we start off in this sort of comfort mode you also get the m seats here as well just the same as m4 really nice little flash of blue everywhere in here on the lever carbon across the dash between the from m division so what i'm going to do now head out onto some better road and you'll join me in a moment quite like when you pull out of it you actually see the indicator work on the screen if i you probably see it better if i indicate left there we are flashes away and it's in the color of the car yeah little things that keep us happy just in here there's cup holders here there's there's wireless charging for your phone as well so yeah well pretty civilized but this is my little squirt up the heel that's perfect so i'm gonna select sport and you'll see sport boost is ticked there that actually gives it's the full 540 horsepower normally it's um 60 horsepower light and i'm expecting it to absolutely thump up here so here we go oh god mighty yeah a little that i mean that is what electric cars do it's their star turn it's just the way they just pick up speed and instantaneous no changing down there's no nothing just a wallop of power to talk as well as horsepower because it's that instantaneous dump of electric torque and especially if you've got the sport boost button ticked there is also a different sound they work quite hard that just you know part of m division have been working out what it should sound like a performance electric car apparently this is it i can't load it up very often because otherwise i'm doing silly speeds and will get arrested but you get that yeah you get the gist of the sound there or i can go and press eco pro and eco pro means it's silent utterly so no generated sounds whatsoever this is just a roadside it is quiet this car it's very odd when you get into electric cars you can hear sounds you hear a bit of wind rustle here tires these are awesome surprising how noise it is until you get the noise meter out and then measure it at 67 or 68 decibels which is really quiet it's just your ear has no other mechanical sounds to pick up on i don't think there's a launch control it doesn't really need it with four-wheel drive and it will all sort it out itself out i am sure oh odd disputed silence here we go just it did manage the tour very well there there was a little bit of scrabble just as we went on down here i mean it's the electric power steering it's reusable right quality it's quite bumpy this road is why i use it it is a rubbish bit of road i just put it back to comfort just i want to see what it feels like steering weighting goes a bit lighter it's it is really pointy on the front of the i'm going to expect it's got p0 tires i think they're two three five two eight five with the rear 20 inch wheels on this car yeah it doesn't swallow the bumps completely as i say this is a testing bit of road it is reasonably comfortable though for the performance on offer you know once you're in the threes to 16. you're in a pretty special sort of car but yeah a tesla would ride down here better but for m car it's perfectly livable now i'm just gonna mention range again because i've had this car a few days i'm looking at the range now 203 miles and i've done 10 miles but i had to go into london you might have watched i did a silverstone auction video and i took this in 64 miles to the raf museum from my house and set off i think it was 217 miles when i set off and it was just motorway and it was not using any performance as such low 70 crews on the motorway radar crews probably slower on the m25 things and into london and i'm a bit shocked when i got back to the car after doing the recording how many miles i had left it was about 112 miles left and it used a hundred miles to do predicted range to do 64 miles that's not good the time we got home and had 48 miles left so a total usable range of 180 miles even less than the 217 it predicted and way below the figure bmw will quote [Applause] you can feel it trying to control the mass as well good it has performance obviously because of the amount of grunts it's got the brake it's just a different brake pedal because it's yeah you can change that i can move that across there and have more regenerative braking so yes it's almost one pedal drive and it's much more aggressive braking is so odd when you've got so much regen you hardly there's no changing down there's no picking a gear around here and let's see what doesn't it understeers battery and then i can feel the power going to the backs come out of there he's quick i mean there's no getting away it can deploy that 540 horsepower and you end up going quite quickly yeah i'm moving on to the lights of this car well it is addictive this easy accessible performance it's just there just a port it cannot help but tap into it because there's nothing like a performance electric car just to boggle your mind of how easy it is to charge down the road forget the weight of the car doesn't seem to matter this thing just the other thing i like about this car i do like the layout of bmw and the late how they use their infotainment and the voice over the way i can use this a little pad up here putting destinations in all works superbly well they've absolutely cracked it but see that's about it for the likes go to the dislikes i really don't know where to start with this car it's an m car so i was expecting the very best from bmw but those dynamics there's only so much they can do and 2290 kilos compromises dynamics so that's what m is all about i'm staggered at how heavy this car has turned out and they've tried to manage it with a four wheel drive so there's only four wheel drive available you can't have a two-wheel drive m which might have been quite fun this car is not an m car they state it's the first of all electric m car well come on empower you can do better than this look at your back catalog and you're trying to tell me this is an m car with these dynamics at that weight m is way more than just super high straight line performance and bits of carbon on the outside you are about dynamics driver involvement you are the ultimate drivers machine this is not the ultimate drives machine yes it's got straight line performance but you can't make 2290 kilos in a 3 series handle like an m car you need a technology change i mean it's scary to me that if bmw can't make an electric sports car after all the practice and you know since i3 and i8 where are we heading for the performance car sector the m4 is such a better car than this it's enjoyable it has the dynamics two-wheel drive great straight six easy to live with don't feel pressurized that you have to buy an electric car today the outside charge network is unfortunately is still compromised and the car as how we enjoy our cars is compromised too a range of under 200 miles is simply not good enough and especially 80 000 pounds i would just buy the tesla instead of this so first real disappointment of 2022 the ie4 from empower i hope you enjoyed this video hope it's given you some guidance of what this car is like to drive keep watching the videos keep subscribing more videos coming on very soon thanks for watching you

Channel: Harry's garage

Views: 154,340

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Id: ezmeX8c672U

Length: 14min 52sec (892 seconds)

Published: Sun Apr 17 2022