The upcoming BMW i4 is closing in on its official reveal date of the first week of March, but BMW has decided to give a little sneak at the final lines of the upcoming electric BMW.
The i4 has been a long time in the making following the release of the BMW i3 and i8 some seven odd years ago. We had imagined that the company would spearhead an electric effort and start releasing “i” variants of all their models, an i4, i5, i6, etc. But that time did not come and we had to wait over half a decade from BMW to announce intentions of releasing a new electric model.
While BMW iX3 is closest to releasing with 2020 being its release date, the i4 seems to be a more exciting car to look forward to due to BMW’s reputation of making “driver’s cars”.
The German automaker gave us a quick view of the general roofline and character lines of the upcoming i4 via an Instagram post.
The company wrote:
The BMW Concept i4 heralds a new era in Sheer Driving Pleasure; it provides a whole new take on the dynamic excellence for which BMW is renowned and blends a modern, elegantly sporty design with the spaciousness and practicality of a four-door Gran Coupe – all while generating zero local emissions.
Adrian van Hooydonk, Senior Vice President BMW Group Design also commented on the teaser, saying:
“The BMW Concept i4 brings electrification to the core of the BMW brand. The design is dynamic, clean and elegant. In short: a perfect BMW that happens to be zero emission.”
Of course with BMW looking for the i4 to still representing the core of the BMW brand, the electric car could not have too radical of a design, you still want to be able to tell its a BMW from a glance. Given the limited view we have from the teaser, I would say that the i4 will go with the route of looking more like a gas car than an EV, which at the end of day will probably work as BMW has very wide appeal and their designs are liked by many.
The teaser does not have any specification, hopefully, we’ll see those along with the unveiling. We do know that BMW has been targeting a range of 373 miles (600 km). If this is using the WLTP standard then be prepared for the EPA range in the low 300s, a very respectable number that would put BMW in second place to Tesla in terms of range.
Performance will also be no slouch as BMW is looking for a max output of about 530 hp, almost 100 more hp than the current M3 and M4 can produce.
Note: With the upcoming Geneva Autoshow being cancelled due to the Corona Virus, we do not know how this will impact the reveal of the i4 and if BMW will just go ahead and do an online reveal on the 3rd instead.
