‘Range range above 12 degrees Celsius very good’
The BMW i4 is sometimes called the first real competitor to Tesla’s Model 3. The electric BMW was built on the basis of the regular 4 Series Gran Coupé. Anyone who thinks that such a conversion to electric will result in a small battery is wrong, because the i4 eDrive40 and M50 have a capacity of no less than 80.7 kWh. What range does this give this BMW in practice?
To arrive at an answer, we combine various data. We look at the consumption of i4s during our own tests and at the consumption that users report in their BMW i4 reviews on AutoWeek.nl. That goes beyond data. They also regularly mention the circumstances under which the consumption and range were determined.
Range BMW i4 eDrive40
The BMW i4 eDrive40 appears most often in the review section. This is a rear-wheel drive car with a net 80.7 kWh battery pack. According to the WLTP test, this would allow a range of between 491 and 589 kilometers, with consumptions of 16.4 kWh/100 km and 13.7 kWh/100 km respectively.
In practice, it turns out to be more difficult, because ‘our’ drivers use considerably more electricity. At the bottom of the line we see a value of exactly 18 kWh/100 km, which represents a range of 448 kilometers. Naturally, driving behavior has a major influence on consumption and therefore on the range. One driver comes close to the WLTP values. “Consumption so far is 14.4 kWh/100 km,” writes a driver after almost 4,500 kilometers. “At one hundred percent full, the driving range is around 550 km.”
Another driver has been on the road for a while longer and consumes considerably more. Yet he is pleased with his electric BMW. “The range above 12 degrees Celsius is very good,” he writes. “If you drive well, up to about 115 km/h, you will continuously stay below 18 kWh/100 km. Over 26,000 km my average consumption is 22 kWh/100 km.” Doing the math, it means that this rider squeezes an average of about 366 kilometers out of a battery charge. In practice, that seems to be even slightly more. “Within the Netherlands I almost always have enough range – about 320 km with a charge of up to eighty percent – to get through the day.”
Consume other variants
In addition to the eDrive40, BMW also supplies the eDrive35, with 67 kWh net battery capacity, and the more powerful i4 M50 with all-wheel drive. These versions are considerably rarer in our database, which means we cannot paint as complete a picture as we can of the eDrive40. That’s why we’ll keep it an indication, starting with the eDrive35.
With an average consumption of 17.5 kWh/100 km, this entry-level variant seems slightly more economical than the i4 with a larger battery, but due to the more modest capacity, the maximum range is still smaller at 384 kilometers. The i4 M50 also does what you expect: consumption is slightly higher and therefore the range is more limited. We arrive at an average of 19.1 kWh/100 km and a maximum driving range of 423 kilometers from the 80.7 kWh battery.
– Thanks for information from Autoweek.nl