This rear-wheel drive EV is efficient, practical, and has class-leading technology.
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The BMW i4 eDrive40 might be the best electric sedan on sale today
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That was my issue with the i4 as well as it shares its platform with the ICE version. It just cost too much once you add the options.
To be fair it probably doesn't belong in the category against the model 3, Ioniq 6 and Polestar 2. i think that is reserved for the upcoming electric 3 series. I have owned the other 3 and while the i4 is a step up in quality you are paying for it and for me I rather enjoy my savings and the other offerings that are more original designs.
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Odd that a metro as large as Chicago doeesn't have a dealer. My dealer is only 96 miles away, but being on a lease and being covered under warranty (which I checked and does include towing to the dealer if required) pretty much negates my worries about that.
I dunno about the whole direct to consumer deal. While Polestar does allow you to do a lot through the website, ultimately everything is going through a dealer. I don't see what dealers would have to sue about, unless they've changed the way things work due to the lawsuit. Not that I really give a hoot about the dealers and the laws that protect them.
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Yeah, for the Tesla Model Y, the direct competitor is supposed to be the VW ID.4
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It's more expensive because it's a "premium" brand and you get a nicer interior maybe sound insulation and stuff like that. Just like the ICE versions are moe expensive than Hyundais.
In Bjorn's test it matched the M3 Performance in the 1000km and even costs the same.
Honestly pretty impressive package if it weren't for the unfortunate front-end design. And the charging speed seems a bit slow, 30 minutes to 80% isn't great when Hyundai does it in 18.
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I'm 185cm and do not fit in the back of the i4. My head is against the ceiling.
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I mentioned it was a step up in quality. The Ioniq 6 competes with the model 3 and polestar 2, and according to many publications beats them out. While you can debate the build quality all of those vehicles are a step up from a standard mid-size sedans based on performance and tech offerings.
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A dual engine version appeals to me because of the AWD, not for more acceleration.
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Then make it „miles per 20 minutes“.
The non-linearity applies to the 20-80%-range as well. The key idea (which I like) is to provide information that is closer to what people need.
Say you have one car with a really small battery and another with a very large battery.
The small battery might be charging faster from 20 to 80% of its capacity.
But the larger battery might offer more additional range after the same charging time, even though it has only charged to 60% of its capacity.
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Hmm
- If you have opted out of all data use, but BMW still knows your (car’s) location at all times, that would mean that users cannot opt out of location sharing with BMW. Ouch.
- I say „would“, because I disagree with the conclusion: „Location is visible in app, hence BMW knows the location.“ It is perfectly doable and in fact likely (think EU GDPR) that the location data reaches your app in E2E ways with a private key, so that BMW cannot see the location.
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It's not the less powerful EV that's usually better. It's the smaller wheeled EV that's usually better.
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The Hyundai interior is a serious downgrade in quality compared to an i4. BMW engineers made a great achievement maintaining interior quality and isolation and keeping efficiency high. They don't get enough credit.
I was just in an Ioniq 5 and the interior is on par on with a pre-refresh Model 3. The door panels feels made out of cardboard. I think they did it to reduce weight not cost cutting as ICE Kia and Hyundai interiors are great.
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And that's still going to vary based on how much current the charger is pushing, which is itself a factor that can vary based on day and time and other vehicles at the charging point. You're asking for a number that's going to be idiosyncratic, dude, I don't know how else to tell you this. In the moment, you can get the information you need, because any modern EV is going to tell you how long it's going to take to charge to 80%, and as you live with the thing for a while you get a sense of how fast it charges on the chargers you frequent, in the area you live in, in the conditions that you drive in.
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Get Blizzak's for winter, they work at city speed on ice/snow just fine. Just make sure to change them out when it warms.
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Tires are enough for most places in the snow belt, but if you’re dealing with steep grades and long distances, AWD is great.
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Thebhug
The huge splurge in power is great for the first few times then the novelty wears off. so you have all the extra cost and reduced efficiency for those few times you want to be able to say to a mate “hey, watch this”
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In general I agree with your post, and don’t think it deserves the downvotes, but I’ll nitpick this a little. Rear wheel drive cars aren‘t easier to control in the snow, but they do have more control in the snow. The problem is you have to be experienced enough in the snow to make use of that control, otherwise (like all control) if it’s misused you’ll control yourself into a wreck
fwd cars are more idiot proof and safer because the driver is going to understand and thus hit an object head on, the safest way to wreck. Screwing up a rear wheel drive car might make you hit sideways, which is less safe.
Absolutely! I grew up driving an E30 in the snowy mountains of the north Cascades. The rear wheel drive actually made climbing hills easier, because the weight was in the back. I’ll never forget driving up the mountain late one night as a teen and catching up to my buddy in his Honda accord…driving backwards. It was the only way his fwd car could get grip to get home! (This was before cell phones were handed to teenagers, it was kinda his only option).
Actually, good winter tires handle ice a heck of a lot better than all seasons. Studs are better, but if everything is flat, good snow tires can get you going and stopping on ice, it just takes a lot longer. Back to drive trains, you’re right that ice is ice when it comes to fwd, rwd, and awd. Awd really only allows you to accelerate faster. In the context of ice, all cars have 4-wheel braking, and 2 wheel steering (with the exception of a rwd car driven by an expert, in which case you kinda have 4 wheel steering).
I’m no expert, but I do take rwd cars to the track (E30 and E46M), and have driven all kinds of vehicles with all kinds of drivetrain configurations in the snow and ice.
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We have one. It's the perfect family car for us. The hatch is very practical. We've taken this car on camping trips.
It's fast enough, is one of the better handling EVs. It mostly manages to hide its weight. You don't feel it in the corners. However you do feel it under braking. The single motor is the best version. This car is already too heavy as it is.
I exchange for the weight, you get a well appointed cabin that is super quiet. I sometimes crack the sunroof open just so I can get better situational awareness of other cars around me. Not a huge fan of the big display slab, but the rest of the cabin is great. HUD is useful. iDrive 8.5 is... fine. I mostly stick it in CarPlay and that's that. The BMW mobile app is... fine, too.
Not a huge fan of that grill, so got the car in black, with blacked out grill. I like that the i4 looks like a normal car. I find it tiresome that people want to talk about the pros and cons of EV and ICE when they find out that we have an EV. I still daily an ICE because manual sports car.
It's fast enough, is one of the better handling EVs. It mostly manages to hide its weight. You don't feel it in the corners. However you do feel it under braking. The single motor is the best version. This car is already too heavy as it is.
I exchange for the weight, you get a well appointed cabin that is super quiet. I sometimes crack the sunroof open just so I can get better situational awareness of other cars around me. Not a huge fan of the big display slab, but the rest of the cabin is great. HUD is useful. iDrive 8.5 is... fine. I mostly stick it in CarPlay and that's that. The BMW mobile app is... fine, too.
Not a huge fan of that grill, so got the car in black, with blacked out grill. I like that the i4 looks like a normal car. I find it tiresome that people want to talk about the pros and cons of EV and ICE when they find out that we have an EV. I still daily an ICE because manual sports car.
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I beg to disagree. Traction control goes a long way, but it can't pull the front of the car in the direction you want to turn. Front wheel drive can.
As for why electric vehicles tend to have rear wheel drive much more often, there are multiple factors and safety is not one of them:
1. Range. CV joints typically used in cars are quite inefficient when not dead straight. There are more efficient CV-joints but they usually suffer from at least one of: high price, lower torque rating, shorter life, limited angle, large size or inability to handle axial loads.
2. Performance numbers (acceleration).
3. Complexity and price. An ICEV with transverse front engine is simpler and cheaper with front wheel drive (the extra complexity of CV joints is less than that adding a longitudal driveshaft and two bevel gears). Placing an electric motor in the rear axle is much simpler. Also, a driveshaft from front engine to rear wheels takes a lot of space, hurting the comfort in the middle rear seat, so ICEVs avoided it for that reason, too.
4. Turning radius. Non-driven wheels can turn much more. This is important, also because purpose-built EVs tend to have longer wheelbase to accommodate a large battery in the floor.
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I had a BMW once, an X3. Beautiful (really) inline-6 engine. Nice looking car. Comfy interior. I had a lot of enthusiasm for this thing.
SO MUCH flimsy plastic where it did not belong. Nylon gears in the AWD system that repeatedly failed... and are not accessible without removing the entire transfer case and everything attached to it. Corrugated plastic tubing with proprietary (also plastic, and fragile) molded-on connectors under the hood where any other manufacturer would have used rubber hoses cut to length with a metal clamp. Seals in the engine that, well, didn't... turns out multilayer metal gaskets have advantages over a simple rubber bead where extended high temperatures are involved. Overall, an overengineered chunk of crap, just like everyone warned me it would be beforehand...
Got rid of that lemon after a year, will never again own a BMW product of any kind. How they justify charging SO MUCH for their vehicles, I will never know. It makes me sad that they even make EVs, they surely are stealing oxygen from other manufacturers that can make a car that doesn't fall to pieces immediately. What's the point of an environmentally friendly car, if the car itself needs to be replaced much more often?
BMW needs to get WAY better. The only pattern I've ever seen from them is, "It's expensive, so it's good, right?", and "Well, that's what you get for having a BMW OUT OF WARRANTY, you poor."
I replaced it with a 20-year-old Subaru, had that car for several years. Since then I've had a much more reasonable range of problems (basic maintenance, a stuck EGR valve, and a failed turbo), all of which were amenable to an afternoon with basic hand tools and NO SPECIAL DEALER SOFTWARE. Looking at you, ISTA-P.
SO MUCH flimsy plastic where it did not belong. Nylon gears in the AWD system that repeatedly failed... and are not accessible without removing the entire transfer case and everything attached to it. Corrugated plastic tubing with proprietary (also plastic, and fragile) molded-on connectors under the hood where any other manufacturer would have used rubber hoses cut to length with a metal clamp. Seals in the engine that, well, didn't... turns out multilayer metal gaskets have advantages over a simple rubber bead where extended high temperatures are involved. Overall, an overengineered chunk of crap, just like everyone warned me it would be beforehand...
Got rid of that lemon after a year, will never again own a BMW product of any kind. How they justify charging SO MUCH for their vehicles, I will never know. It makes me sad that they even make EVs, they surely are stealing oxygen from other manufacturers that can make a car that doesn't fall to pieces immediately. What's the point of an environmentally friendly car, if the car itself needs to be replaced much more often?
BMW needs to get WAY better. The only pattern I've ever seen from them is, "It's expensive, so it's good, right?", and "Well, that's what you get for having a BMW OUT OF WARRANTY, you poor."
I replaced it with a 20-year-old Subaru, had that car for several years. Since then I've had a much more reasonable range of problems (basic maintenance, a stuck EGR valve, and a failed turbo), all of which were amenable to an afternoon with basic hand tools and NO SPECIAL DEALER SOFTWARE. Looking at you, ISTA-P.
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There is no reason other than (questionable) aesthetics for anyone to get this over the equivalent Model 3. When it comes to bang for buck, this seems worse in every way.
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To be fair though, no one has ever bought a BMW because "bang for buck".
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I've no idea. Didn't spec ours with the driving assistance pro package. I daily a manual transmission car. I skew more towards driver involvement than self driving cars.
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Drop table users;
Ars Praetorian
Except ...
1. Build Quality
2. Dealer Support
3. Not supporting a fascist.
4. Driving dynamics.
5. Apple CarPlay
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I really like the single-motor Polestar 2 as well, and probably should have given it a shout out in the conclusion alongside the Ioniq 6. I think I prefer the BMW to the Polestar though as it's a bit more efficient and the infotainment is better (I find Google Automotive Services not that great these days).
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Miles per minute for 10-80% or to add some reference number of miles starting at 10%. This is a solvable problem except car companies don’t want it solved. They want good marketing numbers.
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At least in the Nisan Leaf, the rear hump is an access hatch for a kill-switch for the battery pack.
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LCI may add NACS, but you're probably waiting (along with a lot of other people including me) for the Neue Klasse in 2025.
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The difficulty of estimating precisely is no reason to not estimate at all.
- The „how long to charge to 80%“ figure also depends on the very variable factors you mention, yet it is provided.
- Range predictions indeed vary based on a lot of factors. And yet they are provided both as a fixed property of the car and as a dynamic real time estimate while driving. In fact, EVs are routinely described with range figures despite the known caveats.
This becomes apparent with a thought experiment:
- Say you have the same EV in two versions: One with a smartphone battery, another is loaded to the roof with crazy-great batteries.
- Both are at 20% when you start filling up.
- The smartphone battery charges to 80% in 15 minutes.
- The big battery pile charges to 50% in 15 minutes.
- The smartphone battery at 80% will not get you very far.
- The big battery pile will give you three digit miles of range.
Providing „range per loading minute“ is more useful than „percentage per loading minute“.
And I like it.
And it is doable: Range info is just more factors (literally) to the percentage info:
- range per loading minute = percentage per loading minute * battery capacity * range per capacity
It is common for ICEs: When I fill up gas, …
- the gas station shows me the amount of gasoline
- the car shows me the filling level of my tank
- and the car shows me a new updated range estimate, which takes average gas consumption and tank size into account.
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The price is still a little hard to swallow, but it’s otherwise a really appealing car. I’d like to see more sedans keeping things this simple.
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Huh? Fueleconomy.gov says the new 2024 less powerful RZ model, the FWD Lexus RZ 300e (18 inch wheels), gets a commendable 125 combined MPG equivalent (6 more than the Toyota BZ4x), but it's less efficient than several other cars. The Hyundai Ioniq 6 Long range RWD (18 inch Wheels) is the most efficient midsize car at 140MPGe (4.16 miles per kWh), matched by the Lucid Air Pure AWD (19 inch wheels) large car. This BMW i4 eDrive 35 Gran Coupe is the most efficient subcompact (huh?) at 120 MPGe.
I think the RZ 300e is the most efficient crossover sold in the USA, but it has less range, slower charging, and no AWD compared with the Model Y AWD at 123 MPGe, for more money.
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I have my own idiosyncratic storage sizing metric - can it fit a cello in a hard case? Surprisingly few sedans meet that standard.
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