Is the lesser i4 the rear-drive electric saloon you've been waiting for?
The 13th letter of the alphabet never carries more meaning than when it's stuck to the bootlid of a BMW. Fix an M badge to the back of one of those and our expectations change in an instant. Even if the car in question isn't a full M model but a second-tier M Performance variant, we suddenly demand speed, excitement, engaging handling and a great soundtrack.
It all means you approach the i4 eDrive40 with an open mind. It's lighter than the M50 by 165kg, has the same 83.9kWh battery pack spread across its floor, a 367-mile WLTP range compared to the M50's 317 miles and only 340hp rather than the full 544hp. It looks so much like the 4 Series Gran Coupe that it's closely related to you'd need to look out for the subtle i badges in the front grille and on the bootlid to identify the electric model.
Right away you sense composure in the i4's ride, the car gliding serenely across poor surfaces and smothering sunken drain covers and other intrusions surprisingly well. Remember when even base-spec BMWs rode as though their damper fluid had frozen solid? That seems a distant memory as you zip comfortably and effortlessly through town in the i4. In that environment I think you'd not miss pistons or a transmission for a second, so quiet and smooth is this car's powertrain.
As Mike wrote in his M50 review, it does feel as though BMW has calibrated the accelerator pedal to give an unnatural amount of froward urgency for a given application, but it's more measured in Comfort mode. You'll want Sport when the road opens up ahead of you, and when it does you discover exactly what it is that makes this car so enjoyable to drive - it handles like a BMW.
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