BMW removed the wraps from the exterior of its first electric sedan, the i4, after years sparking a true continuation of the i3 EV. The i4 is scheduled to hit the road at the end of the year – ahead of schedule, the company says – and BMW said on Wednesday that it will also offer an M Performance model.
The German automaker exhibited the i4 at an annual company conference, before a full review of what the electric car can do, scheduled to happen in the coming weeks. For now, BMW has shared only a few specifications. The company said the i4 will be available in different configurations, with a maximum range of about 300 miles and power of around 390kW (about 530 horsepower) supplied from a single engine.
All of this is in line with what BMW detailed in the concept version of the i4, which was released last year during the 2020 Geneva Motor Show, exclusively digital. If the production i4 really comes close to the concept version, expect it to be powered by an 80 kWh battery as well. As for the interior, we already know that it will use the new version of BMW’s iDrive software and infotainment platform revealed earlier this week. It is a far cry from the company’s first pseudo-attempt on an electric car a decade ago, with the small Active-E pilot program.
At Wednesday’s conference, BMW also detailed more about its plan to move its vehicles to electric power trains. The company said it expects to sell at least one fully electric vehicle in 90 percent of the markets it is in by 2023 and deliver 2 million EVs by the end of 2025. It expects the number of EVs it sells to grow by about 20 percent per year between 2025 and 2030. At this point, BMW says it expects half of all new vehicles it sells to be fully electric.
This is a much more optimistic view of the popularity of EVs than BMW had previously offered, especially since it has spent years with the i3 as its only all-electric car on the market. The i4 will be a flagship of the company’s renewed onslaught on electric vehicles, although BMW has already launched the iX3 SUV in Europe and China. That said, it is still a less aggressive strategy than other automakers are adopting, especially in the face of an increasing number of proposed bans for new gas cars.