2022 BMW i4 M50 Review _ Does this ELECTRIC 4 Series deserve its M badge_

This is the first ever BMW i4. Now it's not BMW's first electric vehicle because the i3 and the i8 both preceded it, but they looked like EVs and this looks like a BMW. This also happens to be the first fully electric car to wear the M badge. Now it's not a full-on M car, it just has the M sports package, but it's still pretty cool. This is the 2022 BMW i4 M50. We're going to take a look at how it drives, what it has to offer, and whether or not it can fairly lay claim to that famous letter M. But first, if you're new to CarGurus, welcome, and if you're returning, welcome back. Either way, please make sure you're subscribed. And if you have a car to sell, we can help you out. You can now sell your car 100% online with CarGurus. Just plug in your info and we'll source a top dollar offer from the thousands of dealers in our network. We'll pick up your car and you'll get paid. Couldn't be easier. Now the reason that this looks like a true BMW is that the i4, like the entire 4 Series, is based on the quintessential Bimmer, the iconic 3 Series. This M50 is the Grand Coupe version. That means that even though it's got a couple extra doors on top of the traditional two of a coupe, it also has this sloping roofline and a hatchback. I love this color. It's called Brooklyn Gray Metallic, although it's really more of a gloss than a pearl, but either way, it's very of the moment. Now because this is the M50, we also have the M Sport look and the shadowline exterior trim, which would be an extra charge on the base i4. We'd have to pony up for the extended shadowline if we wanted these funky, partially floating mirrors, which are aerodynamic, to be black too instead of cerium gray. 18-inch wheels are standard on the base i4, and 19-inch wheels are standard on the M50, but ours has the 20-inch wheels as part of the high-performance package. They're not great for range, but they do look awesome, especially with these red M Sport brakes. Now I'm not a huge fan of the door handles. I keep wanting to put my hand into them or else expecting them to pop out like a Tesla's, but they do look great the way that they're flush with the door. Now speaking of looks, we have to talk about the BMW grille. Now I know the new grille has been a divisive topic lately, but I happen to actually really like these new kidneys. If you've seen those old 328s from the 30s, they have super tall skinny nostrils. So for BMW to sort of stretch the kidneys vertically after having them horizontally oriented for decades is really kind of a throwback if you think about it. Now I'm happy with the interior looks too. I love this curved display. It just looks so much better and so much more intentionally designed than sticking an iPad in the middle, and it really makes this dash area feel like a cockpit. Now I have to say I'm not so sure how I feel about all this silver color. I do like that you can put this little cover down and you can hide the cupholders when you're not using them, and that's so BMW to just hide the cupholders away. But I wish it was a darker color, and I also want to mention all these little controls. They don't feel as substantial as I would really like them to. The ones in the Mazda 3 feel more premium than these do. Now in the rest of the 4 Series lineup, this area has your climate controls and this has the radio presets, and then your hazards and defrosters live right about here. So effectively the i4 is just making less use of the dash real estate. Now personally I think that they could have stood to keep the physical buttons, but I'm not so sure whether that's an industry-wide pet peeve or something that car shoppers really care about. So why don't you tell me? Do you want physical climate controls as much as automotive journalists think you do? Let us know in the comments. These seats are just gorgeous. The color is called Takora Red after a volcano in the Andes. They're not the super grippy hold-you-in-place seats that I've come to expect from a sports car, but they are beautiful and they're nice and comfortable. The seats in the back are comfy too, but it's not so spacious back here. I'm 5'2 and I can fit comfortably behind my own driving position, but no one, not even I, can fit comfortably behind a six-foot-tall passenger or driver. Now legroom aside, we've got climate controls down here, got two USB-C ports. It's pretty standard fare. Are you looking for the cupholders? BMW. Now behind these rear seats we have 10 cubic feet of cargo space. BMW has not published the specs on cargo space with the rear seats folded down, but the space feels sufficient to me. It's worth noting that there's no frunk, as you might expect on an EV, because there's an electric motor under here. Now it's covered in plastic just like any BMW engine, so actually at first glance you might not even know that this isn't a regular 4 Series. The BMW i4 is available in two trims. First there's the regular i4 with eDrive40. It's rear-wheel drive and has a single electric motor which makes 335 horsepower and 317 pound-feet of torque. And then there's this one, the i4 M50. This car is all-wheel drive, so it has two electric motors, one for the front axle and one for the rear axle. Altogether that powertrain makes 536 horsepower and 586 pound-feet of torque. Now it's direct drive, which means it doesn't have a transmission, so technically we don't need this tunnel running through the middle of the rear floor, but maybe they've got some wires in there. Both versions of the i4 have an 81-kilowatt-hour capacity battery, and it's supposed to take just under 12 hours to charge the battery from empty to full using a 240-volt outlet. BMW also includes two years of complimentary 30-minute charging sessions at Electrify America public charging stations. These are DC fast chargers, which means you should be able to add up to 108 miles of range in just 10 minutes plugged in. In theory. The base i4 has a driving range of around 300 miles on a full charge. This one, with its bigger wheels and its double motors, has a range of 227 miles. On the 81-kilowatt-hour battery, that comes out to about 2.8 miles per kilowatt-hour, and I've actually been getting pretty close to that, even though, as you'll see in a second, I've been having some fun with the car. I just love that startup sound. It lets you know that the vehicle is actually on, which is something that I think more electric and hybrid car manufacturers should think about doing. BMW's tagline has long been the ultimate driving machine, so you'd better believe I'm expecting good things here, and the car really lives up to it. It does zero to 60 in 3.7 seconds, and let me tell you, you haven't lived until you floored it in an electric vehicle and felt that instant power. Having all of that torque available immediately is astonishing, and it just makes it so dangerously easy to glide right up to, maybe even over, speed. Even when it's warping up to speed, this car is very quiet. It's almost creepy. In the M version, you can choose to turn on something called BMW Iconic Sounds. They were created by the legendary composer Hans Zimmer, and it's a pretty cool thing. They will give you this auditory sense of, if not driving a car, then at least piloting a spaceship, but personally, I found them comical and also distracting. Like all electric cars, the i4 has regenerative braking, but my favorite thing about the regen system in this car is that you can turn it down. Switching to low makes the braking much easier to modulate, especially in city driving, but I realize that there are people who may prefer the level of assistance that the adaptive regenerative braking gives you. Luckily, you can set your preferences, and the car will remember them. The question we posed at the start was, does the i4 M50 deserve the M badge? I'm going to say yes. The variable sport steering that's standard on this trim and available on the base i4 really goes the extra mile to make sure that this car handles great at any speed. It gives you a snappy, fun driving experience that just feels authentically BMW. It also rides nicely, especially considering the size of the wheels and the low-profile tires we're working with here, but that's to be expected thanks to the standard rear air suspension, and it's self-leveling, so if the car is really loaded down, it should still handle just as well. This car is really the definition of effortless speed, but it's not scary because you can feel that it's not going to just take off on its own. This is not one of those sports cars that's trying to kill you. It's just a really invigorating driving machine. I could even see where you might get ultimate. I mentioned earlier that I really like this giant panel here. It's called the BMW Curve Display, and technically it's made up of two different screens. We have a 14.9-inch screen for infotainment, and then we have a 12.3-inch digital gauge cluster for the driver. Altogether, the whole thing looks great. It does cost an extra grand, but you also get the head-up display into the bargain. Now on this infotainment screen, we're running BMW iDrive 8, which is BMW's latest infotainment system. It can be accessed through this rotary iDrive controller, and this little control station down here incorporates some physical buttons for key actions like home and maps. This can also all be managed through the touchscreen. In general, I found that to be faster and easier, but the beauty of it is that you can take your pick. Just do whatever comes naturally. Now in this infotainment system is also where we're going to access BMW ID, which is one of the really cool features of iDrive 8. This lets you save settings like your seat position, your preferred ambient light color, your radio settings, and your preferences for your drive modes like turning down regenerative braking. We've also got wireless charging down here. That's an optional upgrade. The i4 comes standard with wireless Apple CarPlay and Android Auto, and the M50 has the upgraded Harman Kardon surround sound stereo, which is excellent. When it comes to safety, the i4 also has BMW's Active Driving Assistance standard. This includes frontal collision warning, lean departure warning, and active blind spot detection. i4s also get BMW's Active Protection System standard, which is pretty cool. If it senses that an accident is about to happen, it's going to close your windows and moon roof, pre-tension your seat belts, and activate post-crash braking. Adaptive cruise control is also available, and this particular M50 has adaptive LED headlights, which are a $1,000 upgrade. Let's talk a little more about cost. The i4 joins the BMW lineup at a pivotal time in an increasingly competitive space. Now there might not be many vehicles that can exactly match it right now. In fact, if we want to compare it just to cars that are roughly equivalent in terms of price range, power, and luxury appointments, we may be limited to the Tesla Model 3 and the Polestar 2 for now. But don't forget that there are more luxury EVs coming soon, like the Lucid Air Grand Touring, and it's important to keep in mind that in the EV space, the difference between a car from a mass-market manufacturer and a car from a luxury manufacturer is rapidly shrinking. For reference, the base i4 starts at $55,400, but if you're a BMW fan, you're going to be feeling the allure of the M-badged offering, so you're going to be looking at a $65,900 starting price, and ours, as tested, actually clocks in at $76,670. That does include the $995 destination fee. Now in a typical comparison, we would never have a Ford or a Kia up against a BMW, but we're in EV territory now, and cars like the Ford Mustang Mach-E GT and the upcoming Kia EV6 GT could be genuine competition for the i4 M50. The Mustang Mach-E GT starts at $61,995—$4,000 cheaper than the M50, and it's even faster. It does 0-to-60 in 3.5 seconds. The EV6 GT is reportedly just as fast, and it's not likely to be any more expensive than that. But here's the thing—they're not BMWs, and this is. So if you as a car shopper are thinking to yourself, German sports sedan—let's keep it under $80,000. Let's make it electric. You're either going for the i4, or you're waiting until the Mercedes EQE hits the market in 2023. Until then, there's really not much that can challenge this. Hey, thanks for watching. Don't forget to subscribe to the YouTube channel, and head over to CarGurus.com to read our full written review of the 2022 BMW i4. And check back soon, because we'll be driving something else next week.