2022 BMW i4 40 eDrive review

A little while ago I drove the BMW i4 M50, the marque’s first M-fettled EV (or so they say) to go on sale. It was very fast and a lot of fun but also probably a fair bit more than people expect from this four-door coupe. And this is where the 2022 BMW i4 eDrive 40 tested here comes in.

It’s more relaxed, with a lower power figure, just the rear wheels driven (in classic BMW style), lighter and, perhaps crucially, it has a longer claimed electric range. It’s probably more in keeping with the 4 Series Gran Coupe buyer, someone who is looking for a bit more style than the excellent 3 Series can offer but without necessarily wanting the performance the looks suggest.

I guess you’d call it more of a lifestyle purchase than a practical one. Up until the last couple of years, an EV was not on the minds of the average car buyer and probably even less so those looking to buy a high-end German one.

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Pricing and features

The 40 starts at $99,900 before on-road costs and features 19-inch alloys, leather interior, auto LED headlights, head-up display, adaptive suspension, auto parking, keyless entry and start, front, side and reversing cameras, auto wipers, three-zone climate control, electric front seat adjustment, a powered tailgate, digital dashboard and a tyre repair kit.

The sweep of the 14.0-inch touchscreen and 12.3-inch dashboard features BMW OS 8, the brand's latest version of iDrive. As always, you can control either via the rotary controller on the dashboard or the touchscreen or via gestures that might get you arrested/road-raged in certain circumstances.

You also get a three-year subscription to a range of connected functionality, sat-nav, wireless Apple CarPlay, wireless Android Auto and digital radio. The standard 10 speakers are more than enough but there is a Harman Kardon upgrade to 16 thumpers should you so desire.

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The safety list comprises six airbags, the usual ABS and stability controls, forward auto emergency braking, steering and lane control assist, lane-keep assist, lane departure warning, lane change warning, forward and rear cross-traffic alert, crossroad warning and evasion assistant.

As tested, this car features the $5800 Visibility Package (metallic paint, glass sunroof, Laserlight headlights), 20-inch aerodynamic wheels ($2000), the $1500 Comfort Package (heated seats front and rear, heated steering wheel and driver’s lumbar support) and M Sports front seats ($2000) taking the total to $113,050 plus on-road costs, or about twelve grand short of the M50 which has pretty much all of that apart from the wheels.

Non-electric versions of the 4 Series scored five ANCAP stars in 2019 but the electric version has not yet been crashed or rated.

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Comfort and space

The standard i4 front seats are sports seats of the BMW “sports” variety but this car had the even better M Sport seats. They have plenty of adjustment available as well as a highly adjustable steering column.

Storage comes in the form of bottle holders in the doors (small), a pair of cup holders in the console, a shallow tray under the armrest with a USB-C socket and a wireless charging pad under the centre stack, as well as a USB-A port.

The curved twin-screen setup from the iX looks fantastic on the dash, housing a 14.0-inch media system screen and a 12.3-inch digital instrument panel. I’m a big fan of both of these even if there are probably slightly too many options to click through on the screen and you have to tap a shortcut to get into the climate control.

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Being so obviously based on a 4 Series Gran Coupe, it should come as no surprise that things are tight in the back seat.

While the fuel tank and diff are chucked, they need to be replaced with batteries and an electric motor, which means the rear seat actually sits slightly higher, knocking out a few millimetres of headroom.

It’s pretty cosy for me at 180cm, with my knees very close to the seat in front when set for my driving position. The seats themselves are comfortably shaped in the outboard positions and will ensure you stay in place in during cornering should you find yourself in the rear seats.

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The near-useless middle seating position features an armrest with two cup holders and there are air vents, a climate control zone and two USB-C ports for the rear, so while BMW taketh with one hand, it delivereth with another.

As with the occupant space, cargo capacity is down by a barely noticeable 10 litres to 470L with the 40:20:40 split-fold bench in place and 1290 litres with all three sections folded.

Under the boot floor is a space for your charging cables that will actually take your charging cables, although the stereo upgrade eats a fair bit of that.

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Battery and charging

The i4 40 has an 84kWh lithium-ion battery, with 81kWh of useable capacity for a WLTP range of 520km, about 65km more than the M50 that has two motors drawing power rather than one.

AC charging starts at 1.8kW from the supplied three-pin charger, which will take two whole days to charge the car from dead to full if you are the kind of person who runs their EV battery that low. Adding a wallbox at home will get you to 7kW and what will essentially be a long overnight charge to full. If you’ve got three-phase power, you go to 11kW, which will bring it down to about eight or nine hours.

You can program the system to charge to a certain point, for a certain departure time and to take advantage of cheaper rates, such as the NSW off-peak charge (based on time-of-use) that kicks in at 10pm and continues until about 6am. Or you can get it to charge during the day from your solar panels if you have them.

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BMW EVs come with a five-year Chargefox subscription, so you can charge for free at that company’s expanding EV charging network at between 50kW and the i4 40's maximum of 200kW.

The battery charges at full whack between 10 per cent and 80 per cent charge, slowing considerably on either side of those numbers for battery health reasons.

If you can find a charger that will give you 200kW, BMW says you’ll go from 10 to 80 per cent in 31 minutes. At 50kW, I got 24.84kW in 26 mins, which is $14.91 if you’re paying for it.

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In the short term, the Chargefox subscription is a little dicey as so many of its Tritium chargers are flat-out broken. In my review of the M50, I noted that the two fast chargers were out. That remained the case almost two months later, but the week following my i4 40 drive in early June 2022, the 350kW chargers were back.

For a couple of days before one of them stopped working and the 50kW went down in sympathy. Once again, the 165kW ABB-branded Chargefox charger that won’t deliver more than 50kW saved the day.

I am quite certain that Chargefox and Tritium will get this problem sorted. When it will be sorted is the big unknown. Kind of like BMW’s stubborn refusal to increase the length of its warranty. One day we’ll get a press release announcing the longer warranty and this nightmare will be over.

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On the road

This entry-level i4 40 has but one electric motor fitted at the rear axle, with still-impressive outputs of 230kW and 430Nm. The power figure lines up between the 430i with 190kW/400Nm and the M440i’s 285kW/500Nm.

Weighing, quite literally, against the i4 is the extra heft of all the EV gear, with the i4 coming in considerably over the two-tonne mark, around 500kg more than the four-cylinder turbo. As always, it is my solemn duty to inform you that being an EV, the weight is lower in the car and therefore not as debilitating from a ride and handling perspective.

That’s true enough, but this car had the 20-inch wheels that the M50 didn’t have and I was very curious to see how that would pan out. The M50’s ride could be a little rugged on occasion and that car is heavier again, so I did make a mental note to find out what an i4 on 20s would be like.

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Turns out, it’s pretty good, much better than I was expecting. I figured it would have to be reasonably stiff to stop it from hitting the bump stops, but it had a much more fluid ride. It’s only when you get into really tight turns or quick changes of direction that you notice how much heavier it is and, let’s be honest, most buyers of this variant will not be hounding hot hatches down a twisty road all that often, if ever.

If they did, they’ll have a great deal of fun, of course. The 0-100km/h time of 5.7 seconds is hot-hatch quick and given the torque is available from zero, it rinses them in the run to 80km/h before the single gear starts to get too long and the hydrocarbon huffing hatch catches up.

You can get the i4 into a really nice rhythm in the bends, though, and it’s so serene even on the big 20-inch rims. I saw little point in switching to Sport mode most of the time but did prefer to have the shifter in B mode, which amps up the regenerative braking energy recovery system.

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You can select how the energy recovery works in Drive, with three levels on offer plus adaptive. I found that when sharing the car with my wife, leaving it up to us both to switch to B for the maximum one-pedal driving effect was better.

And as I discovered on the iX, the adaptive system can catch you out, meaning you’ll be lunging for the brake pedal when you approach a stopped car but steer it towards the empty lane, the recovery suddenly winding right off like you have taken your foot off the brakes yourself. I guess you’d get used to it, but I wasn’t a fan despite being impressed with the thinking behind it.

On top of operating based on what the sensors can see, it also uses the sat-nav to decide if it’s coming up to a T-intersection and will reduce speed at a stronger rate. You’ll still need the excellent brakes on occasion and BMW has nailed the transition from energy recovery to physical braking.

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Which brings us to the car’s range. The official figure of 520km is not bad at all, but you’re not going to get it, at least not easily. When I stepped into the car just one percentage point off full, the dashboard told me it was well short of 520km, indicating 409km.

I knew it was a pessimistic number because that’s what BMW does and it began to climb as I drove it home through Sydney traffic. At 60 per cent it told me it had 242km, but again that was pessimistic as after it gulped down 24kWh it rose to 399km. So it’s a bit confusing and I do wonder if it would quite make the 465km number the M50 claims.

Another annoyance is the fact that unlike Tesla, Polestar and Volvo, the sat-nav doesn’t warn you straight up if you won’t make it to the destination on the remaining charge in your battery.

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When I punched in Albury from my Sydney home it laid out a route but not one that explicitly took me past Chargefox chargers nor indeed any available charger at all.

I know it will do what the ICE cars do – let you know when range is becoming a problem and offer to route you to a servo – but it just makes the planning of a long trip more difficult.

On the bright side, I bested the 22.2kWh/100km claimed energy consumption figure by nearly ten per cent, landing at 20.1kWh/100km.

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Ownership

I’m tempted to cut and paste my usual complaints about the BMW’s warranty, but I won’t.

Instead, I will say in a frustrated and bored tone that a three-year, unlimited-kilometre warranty is no longer competitive or defensible either at this price point or in this market where five is normal, seven not unheard of. Mitsubishi, of all companies, offers a ten-year warranty.

Cheeringly, the battery warranty of eight years/160,000km is rather more like it and the five years of Chargefox rapid charging will make a material difference to you as the network expands.

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If you live near one, you’ll be saving a lot of money given the company recently jacked up its retail rates to 60c/kWh for rapid charging on its seemingly unrepairable network.

Another bit of good news comes in the form of pre-paid service plans, or at least their cost. As ever, BMW offers condition-based servicing and the plans come in four and six years. 

A four-year plan is $1240, or $310 per year and six years is $1765 or $294 per year. Both are usefully cheaper than the ICE or PHEV service plans.

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VERDICT

After driving the dual-motor M50, I wondered if the i4 40 would be a better car all round. Practicality, as expected, is identical, but the 40's steering is certainly better and the ride a bit more compliant.

It's arguably more fun to drive with the more purist vibe of the rear-wheel-drive set-up and steering less corrupted by a metric crapton of torque. They're certainly quite different cars; the 40 is more of a wafter and the M50 a glory-chaser and, for some folks, even an M3 replacement/alternative.

With its sensible range, everyday usability, and ability to put a smile on your face, it would find a home on my driveway without a single objection from my wife, who fell in love with its easy-going demeanour.

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