After a long wait, the first fully electric M car arrived this year as the BMW i4 M50. Top Gear’s Saloon of the Year is available to order in many parts of the world, with customer deliveries in the United States kicking off in March 2022. To ease the wait, an extended video of the electric gran coupe shows a lovely Frozen Portimao Blue example roaming the empty streets of Berlin during the late hours of the day.
With no combustion engine to provide the soundtrack for this 14-minute video, BMW M decided to get in touch with DJ and producer Alex Niggemann to create a special mix just for this short film. We’re getting strong synth-pop vibes from the 1980s-like music, which we’d wager suits the footage quite nicely as it’s rather soothing.
Being driven on city streets with lots of speed limits, the zero-emissions i4 M50 was unable to unlock its full potential from the dual motors pushing out 536 horsepower. Since we’re in Germany, the Autobahn would be a great place to stretch the electric liftback’s legs and test its 0-60 mph time of 3.7 seconds and electronically governed 140 mph (225 km/h) top speed.
While the polarizing kidney grille hasn’t exactly grown on us, we’re beginning to learn to live with it. The i4 and its combustion-engined equivalent, the 4 Series Gran Coupe, are attractive cars otherwise, especially if dressed for the occasion in such a fancy paint. Should you want your swoopy four-door 4er with quad exhausts, BMW won’t be making an M4 Gran Coupe, but Alpina is coming out with its B4.
The $65,900 (before options) M-badged “i” model featured here paves the way for additional electric vehicles from BMW’s high-performance division. If recent reports are to be believed, coming up next is the iX M60 arriving next year with more than 600 horsepower on tap. With the next-gen 7 Series due in 2022 with an EV option much like the new 5 Series a year later, the future of electric M cars looks exciting.
[Source: BMW]
