[Auto/Moto] BMW Built an Excellent 4 Series Sedan. It's Also an EV

[-_-Moltres-_-]

 

So much of the conversation about EVs isn't about EVs. We owe much of this to Elon and identity politics, of course, but even with the political shellac stripped back, we rarely talk about EVs in the context of "normal" automobiles. The automakers are partly to blame. In a desperate bid to separate their EV lineup from "traditional" vehicles, most automakers divert from established norms. For example, Mercedes won’t simply sell you an EV that looks, feels, and drives like an E-Class. Instead, it builds the awful EQE.It’s a Mercedes sculpted by painfully generic "aero" body lines, wrapped around a dysfunctional interior. The EQE is an astonishingly fast vehicle that’s less joyful to ride than your dentist’s chair. This is nearly an industry-wide phenomenon. Automakers think that because EVs use a fundamentally different means of propulsion that customers expect a fundamentally different driving experience. What if, however, a company took its most-beloved model and did something different, preserving or even enhancing its road manners? Take BMW. What if it built a normal 3 Series sedan that happened to have some batteries in the floor? How would it drive? How would it function?BMW calls this mid-size EV sedan the *deep breath* 2024 BMW i4 eDrive35 Gran Coupe. Effectively, it’s a classic 3 Series sedan with a liftback, saddled by some clunky nomenclature. That’s where the bad news ends. Once you hurdle the awkward naming conventions, you’ll find BMW has adhered to its older, better conventions. Like every single 3 Series, the i4 GC looks great, drives pleasantly, and folds into daily life like it was borne into your own garage. During a week with the i4 Gran Coupe, I ran errands, suffered traffic, chased one sunset down a mountain backroad, and generally just lived with the car. The i4 didn’t misstep even once.

https://www.motor1.com/reviews/732414/2024-bmw-i4-ev-review/