If car manufacturers want to make electric cars feel light-hearted, they will have to actually become lighter. At least that is often the thought. At BMW they think differently about that.
Although electric driving is easy to combine with sporty driving when it comes to pure power and especially immediately available torque, it does not go well with two other things: the sound and the weight. The former is mainly a matter of taste, but weight is of course of great importance for how a car feels. BMW has a reputation to uphold when it comes to sporty driving, so there is a special challenge for the brand with the M versions of electric models.
According to BMW North America CEO John Kelly, the more than 2,200 kilo BMW i4 M50 is a good example of how you can still retain the ‘old-fashioned’ driving pleasure in an electric car, despite the much higher weight. Opposite the American AutoWeek he explains why: “My experience is that you don’t necessarily notice the extra weight. This is because of the low center of gravity and where the weight is in the car. There is an electric motor in the front, another in the back and the battery is in between. so gives you an almost perfect weight distribution.” According to Kelly, this largely negates the negative aspect of the extra weight. “The i4 M50 speaks for itself in that regard, I think.”
Do we think Kelly is right about this? In October Marco Gorter drove the BMW i4 M50 mentioned here.
– Thanks for information from Autoweek.nl