2025 BMW i4 xDrive40 review: This is the one most people will buy
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Now that we don't need the grills to be so large for airflow...can we stop with this?
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I've driven tens of thousands of miles with a RWD drive BMW and good winter tires. Never had issue.
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Nice thing is that all seasons have gotten really good. I've been watching the Tyre Reviews channel and they do subjective and objective tests. The best all seasons like Michelins Crossclimate 2 are now almost as good as their reference winter tire. This includes stuff like traction, braking, and handling on both snow and ice.
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If they are stock, they are either all season or grand touring all season with compounds for better mileage and they are very skinny relative to most tires so you are dealing with all seasons.
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I’m a year in to life with an i4 M50, it’s an excellent car. The fact it’s an EV honestly just fades into the background day to day, other than the refinement and instant throttle response.
It’s so heavy that when you’re really driving it, it feels more like a freakishly responsive and flat cornering X5 than a car. Not so great.
I suspect the RWD 40 would still be the better choice overall as it’s significantly lighter and more efficient too. In my case the lease rates actually made the M50 cheaper and I don’t regret my choice. xDrive 40 sounds like a nice halfway house for those who really want 4WD.
It’s so heavy that when you’re really driving it, it feels more like a freakishly responsive and flat cornering X5 than a car. Not so great.
I suspect the RWD 40 would still be the better choice overall as it’s significantly lighter and more efficient too. In my case the lease rates actually made the M50 cheaper and I don’t regret my choice. xDrive 40 sounds like a nice halfway house for those who really want 4WD.
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Yes, I was specifically calling out summer tires, not all seasons as the poster was commenting people don't want to deal with winter tires or all season tires.
Our van has Blizzaks but my commuter car has 3 season Comp 2 T/A with work fine up to 4 inches of snow. Most of the time the roads are clear so the all seasons work fine. If it is bad, I stay home or take the van if I need to be somewhere.
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It should be notes that all season tires are not the same thing as all weather tires (which carry the 3 mountain peak symbol). The Michelin Crossclimate 2 tires (which I have on my Subaru, and which are awesome!) are all weather tires. If you want good snow performance and don't want to have to put on/take off winter tires every year, skip the all season tires and go with a good set of all weather tires.
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J.C. Helios
Ars Scholae Palatinae
This probably needs more words to be unimpeachable. "The winter has been relatively mild due to some combination of climate change and good luck," for example.
Like, you might have had that mild winter if industrial civilization had never happened, it just would have been less likely.
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Just caught this -
Summer tires, in the winter, are outright dangerous at low temps and you'll absolutely destroy the tread compound if you do it.
I had a set of Nitto NT555s on my old Corvette and drove them in below freezing temps once (which was a handful to say the least, even in the dry). They went from being awesome grippy tires to being greasy messes even in hot weather and were unpredictable as all hell.
IIRC manufacturers will void any treadwear warranty if you drive summer tires under 40* F too.
Don't do it.
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Man, that rear view is terrible in that display. I think even a fish would have a problem with that fisheye view! The 360 "overhead" view makes it look like you are trying to park next to a long white RV, and everything around it is distorted in a funhouse-mirror way. What looks like a Toyota Solara behind you looks like it got miniaturized and stuck between two gargantuan SUVs. Surely something is wrong there.
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Unfortunately it's a car designed to take either an ICE or a battery drivetrain. So it keeps many features from the ICE like the lack of a frunk.
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Sigh. Would like to see an understanding for why it is more than 1100 pounds more than the comparable 440i. Is the battery really 1200+ pounds? I would think the removal of the B58 (300 pounds on its own) and other ICE-specific components would save something meaningful but perhaps not?
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HuntingManatees
Ars Centurion
At least it's not "induction cooktop chic."
I find it amusing that both big German luxury manufacturers lost the plot on the front end, but in opposite directions. A Mercedes-Benz still does not look right without the giant signature dictator's state car grille and hood ornament that they ditched around the turn of the millennium.
You'd think that going electric might give both companies' designers the opportunity to wipe the slate clean and produce something less hideous. It's not like either would lose any brand recognition in the process.
At least with a combustion engine there's a certain perverse "I slaved over a hot drafting table for nine months to make a car this ugly while still accommodating the cooling system's engineering demands," but without those constraints it just feels like the work of an excitable third grader with a sticker book.
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I would say the agnostic platform that the i4, i5, i7 share with their ICE counterparts with 100% why they are heavier than other BEVS, [and German luxury have always been on heavy side]
They already have all normal crash structure and bracing under the hood, plus extra skid plats and bracing for front and rear motors. and battery. then more bracing for the extra weight.
Its was a price BMW was willing to pay to save money on a ground up development of a BEV. (ie VW)
With the benefit of not dividing customers with a separate design language for ICE and BEV ( ie Mercedes)
and Its seems to be working for BMW. Despite some less than specs they are largely viewed as normal BMW's but just electric.
and BMW is leading in number of different BEV models and percentage of Plug in sales vs total sales.
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All of these comments are insanity. Number of driven wheels, tire selection, car weight, driving care etc all play a factor. None of them are more important than others. AWD is pointless until you're in a ditch. All cars have All Wheel Brakes. All tires are equally terrible if you drive like a moron. If you think any of those factors will make you invincible, please visit your nearest ski resort on a snowstorm day, you'll find all the ditched subarus with their winter tires because they think they can drive like morons because they have AWD and good winter tires.
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No particular issues in a couple of MI winters with my i4 eDrive40 and all seasons, though for the worst days I'd probably prefer a good set of winter tires.
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The "and" in your sentence is misplaced. Should read Texas, Georgia, Florida, hell, and pretty much everywhere else...
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I have said it many times. I LOVE my '23 i4 M50. It puts a huge grin on my face just going to the grocery store. I drove this version two weekends ago as a loaner. Very nice. I probably would have grabbed this over the M50 if it was available the first year.
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Funny how tastes differ. I hate portrait screens in cars with a passion. Especially ones that look like someone just glued a tablet to the console. The i4 screen is beautiful in comparison, plenty bright even in direct sunlight, and the software is top notch. You can set up the HUD, "instrument panel" and main screen to display all sorts of combinations of information, and control most things on the main screen via either touch or the dial.
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Btw you can also set climate controls via voice commands. I rarely do as I usually just set the AC to auto on the lowest setting to keep the fan noise to a minimum, but it's one of the few things besides making phone calls that I think make sense having voice recognition for.
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Just bought 540i xdrive. The i series is shaping up to be really nice. I wasn’t quite ready to take the leap yet but the next platform will likely be the one that I transition to. Some of the off lease i series cars are a real bargain!
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Like any car, if you have a good mechanic you trust, BMWs are fine to own. Reliability for them has come a long way, and as long as you weren’t taking them to the dealer for service, the older ones weren’t that expensive to maintain, either.
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Define "better".
In quality, livespan, service costs, fuel costs, insurance costs, etc., or just "for the environment"?
"Better" applies to nothing unless properly defined.
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For me, just bought another car due to a set of issues that pushed it as the right decision now, and it was gas. A couple of years from now with standardized NACS, it would have been a BEV.
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According to Electric on the i4talk forums it actually is. "Battery: The whole unit weights 550 kg. 1212,5 lbs".
I didn't go as far as to verify what he said, after all fact checking is now banned so we just have to trust this internet bro.
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lol, no, I’m not overreacting, and yes, you sure were saying exactly that. You popped off with an opinion with zero nuance and a shitload of generalizing, you were expecting a bunch of pats on the back and yeah buddy, glad to disappoint, stop being a fuckin’ know it all.
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Bro, just about all infotainment screens, regardless of orientation, look like they were hot glued to the dash. There's two reasons I prefer portrait over landscape. 1) It's better for maps, because I want to see further in front of me on the map. Landscape is better at showing more of what's to the left and right, which I don't give a shit about. I've tried both orientations, portrait is better. 2) It's easier to package the screen lower in the dash without blocking air vents. This also helps to make the screen look more integrated into the system instead of looking like some hot-glue action.
All that said, I would happily chuck this and every single other infotainment system I've ever used, observed, or read about in the fuck-it bucket if I could just have a good spot to dock my phone in it's place for maps and tunes in either orientation I want. My phone is better at both things, and those are the only two reasons I have for having a screen in the first place.
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Depends on what goes bad. Pulling a cylinder head is going to cost a small fortune, and apparently machine shops for valve jobs are few and far between. $8k for a new one. The quote for repairing my 535 was 12-18k, with a used engine, no warranty. Engine cost alone was about 6-7k for a like mileage one. New engine was worth more than the car. I managed to address the immediate problem and traded it in, rather than address the core issue causing the misdiagnosed failure I experienced: compression failure in a cylinder, debris in a couple of cylinders - thought initially a piston had disintegrated - this actually is a potential failure mode in the N55 engine as the stock pistons are cast. Instead massive carbon buildup on a single valve that broke free and was burnt onto the valve during multiple misfires. Note - good bore scope is worth its weight in gold.
That doesn't include all the other little parts that need replacing on a 100k mile car at that point, if you're going that far anyways.
So - if nothing major goes wrong (see about serpentine belts getting sucked into the engine for nightmares) it's not too bad. But "cheap" and "BMW" after 100k don't fit on the same page. They're not like Toyotas that make 150-200k before needing that type of attention normally. (v8 4Runners being an exception with the emissions exhaust valve failures at 100-120k, with a repair cost north of $3k, or a twisty wire IIRC)
I've had a number of vehicles between 100k and 200k, and at some point they all need a repair that's more than the car's worth, even if you're doing it yourself. That's trade in time, provided you catch it before catastrophic failures.
For what it's worth - I've had 2 BMWs go past 130k, and this one at almost 100k. The previous two were sold because reliability was a concern when both owned cars far exceed 100k.
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So how well would the low ground clearance i4 function in your locations with 4wd? Yeah, thought so.
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jesus christ but you're dumb. and generalizing? ffs all you've DONE is generalize about what i wrote. whatever.
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I would absolutely buy the i4 if they fix that hideous front end. Been staring at it since 2022 trying to convince myself that it looks ok but still really ugly.
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BMW has been so ugly for so long it makes one wonder what Chris Bangle is doing these days.
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BananaWarrior
Ars Praetorian
As someone who has driven a lot of EVs I can honestly say BMW makes the best ones, imo.
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BananaWarrior
Ars Praetorian
Wrong.
3pmsf is a pretty weak acceleration test on snow that most modern all seasons can clear.
Using the 3pmsf as a benchmark and saying it's more capable than dedicated winter tire on 2wd will be false in most situations.
If you have an excellent all-weather tire like the Michelin CC2s it might be true, however handling and breaking gets little help from 4wd in most daily driving.
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People would usually just say "i4". The rest denotes the type of drivetrain, where the "xDrive" denotes BMW all wheel drive (it is a smart , computer-controlled wheel distributor of the torque across all wheels), and the remaining numbers are the engine/power of the vehicle. It is there to describe the full model, but in the end no one uses it. So it is barely a problem when you own one of this vehicles. Many people would also just say "white BMW" or so.
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Unlike many posters here, I absolutely love the look of this car in person. It's honestly probably my favorite looking car right now, although I also continue to have a soft spot for the Model S (purely in terms of looks).
It's a shame with the transmission tunnel. It really makes the rear seats feel more cramped, even when you don't stuff a third person back there (which I would need to, but I realize I'm very much in the minority there). The Polestar suffers from the same thing.
I'm not sure how final the Neue Klasse designs are, but I have to admit I much prefer the i4 design over the new renders from BMW.
It's a shame with the transmission tunnel. It really makes the rear seats feel more cramped, even when you don't stuff a third person back there (which I would need to, but I realize I'm very much in the minority there). The Polestar suffers from the same thing.
I'm not sure how final the Neue Klasse designs are, but I have to admit I much prefer the i4 design over the new renders from BMW.
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No snark, I would appreciate if you could expand upon this assertion.
I'm actually going to be in the market for a new car within the year and, until now, I've never been in a position to even consider a BMW. What makes them the best EVs in your opinion?
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I'd never heard about a failure like a serpentine belt getting, literally, sucked into an engine before. I can't imagine the work that goes into fixing that, if it's even possible. It would seem like just a whole new engine would be needed...
Returning to the point though, no ICE means no need for belts, oil, which means much less in terms of normal maintenance that needs done. Do we have enough data on BMW EVs to get a sense of maintenance costs for them? Or at this point do we have a sense of common points of failure at high mileage?
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They've had all this time to fix the bucktooth grill that most people dislike, yet they remain blissfully ignorant that it prevents more sales.
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