2024 BMW i4 xDrive40 10,000-Mile Update: Oh, Deer!

10,000-Mile Update

Here in Michigan, cars are to deer as magnets are to steel: They exert an inexorable pull toward each other. On the two-lane country roads not far from our Ann Arbor office, drivers know they’re going to have a close encounter of the deer kind sooner rather than later. Whitetails pop out of fields of tall summertime corn that line many roads. They bolt out of thick roadside woods at full gallop, suddenly filling your windshield and gone again—if you’re lucky—before you can gasp, let alone hit the brakes. Your author had that exact thing happen just the other day.

Sometimes it doesn’t work out that well, though: Our BMW i4 xDrive40 long-termer is the latest victim of a deer-related shunt, so we’ve had to pause our test just before the 14,000-mile mark while the body shop surgeons operate. A couple-hundred-pound deer colliding broadside or running at top speed (35 to 40 mph) into the side of your car can do serious damage—to both parties. We’ve had a few test cars tangle with Bambi, and it can happen anywhere; a deer ran into the side of our long-term 2022 CT5-V Blackwing during acceleration runs at our test track.

What we first thought would be cosmetic surgery for the Bimmer—no more than a new left headlight, a replacement hood, a fresh bumper cover, and new faux-grille pieces—has turned out to be a far more extensive hospital stay. Expensive busted components like a $3828 laser-LED headlamp, a $1228 radar sensor, and an arm’s-length list of supports, crossbars, tie bars, ducts, shutters, deflectors, and assorted hardware affected below the i4’s purple Mora Metallic sheetmetal have driven the repair estimate north of $17,000. Thank goodness for insurance. We’ll get back to you with the final tally when the i4 returns to service.

Aside from this minor catastrophe, we haven’t had to visit the BMW dealer for required maintenance at all since taking delivery. EVs don’t require oil and filter changes so the first checkup is at 20,000 miles. The dealer, however, did install a set of BMW-spec Goodyear winter tires early on to cure the loopy dry-road handling that we experienced with the Michelin X-Ice Snow winters we’d bolted on (see intro story, below, for the sordid details).

Another tire issue cropped up (what is it with this car and tires?) when spring arrived and we took the winters off: We noticed that the Hankook Ventus S1 Evo3s that came on the car had been badly torn up by our standard skidpad testing—something we’ve never experienced with summer tires before. We swapped them out for a set of BMW-spec Michelin Pilot Sport 4 rubber in the stock sizes. It remains a mystery why the Hankooks that arrived as part of the M Sport package got ripped up during our normal testing, but since i4 owners won’t be doing extended lateral-g testing, we doubt the Hankooks will be a problem in normal driving.

As to our daily driving, it was almost entirely sunshine and smiles. Putting miles on the i4 has only reinforced the staff’s sense that this is a BMW worthy of the badge, a car that harks back to the best gas-powered driver’s cars of Bimmers past. As testing director Dave VanderWerp observed, “I maintain my assertion that electrics such as this i4 are better than most of BMW’s gas-powered lineup these days, such as the lukewarm new 5-series.” Added associate editor Caleb Miller: “The i4’s ride is splendid, so placid and really quiet. It handles the roughest roads with aplomb and grace.” Senior features editor Greg Fink enthused, “If range anxiety wasn’t a thing, I’d be asking to take this on all of my weekend road trips.”

Indeed, if America’s charging infrastructure were more reliable, the i4 would be racking up miles even quicker than it is, because it’s proving to be both efficient and capable of delivering good range. Several editors noted that the i4 makes the most of its moderately sized 84.3-kWh battery. “I did 234 miles with 7 percent charge left,” said VanderWerp, “so, 250 miles is definitely reachable. Even with the majority of my miles at 80 mph on the highway, it still averaged comfortably over 3 mi/kWh.” To date, our leadfoot staff has averaged 81 MPGe against an EPA-estimated 99 MPGe combined. The EPA pegs the car’s maximum range at 279 miles with the 19-inch tires our car rolls on. Go for the alternative 18-inch rubber and an i4 xDrive40’s combined MPGe crests at 109 and range jumps to 307 miles, according to the EPA.

Living with any car will reveal its innermost secrets, and no car is perfect. After nine months with the i4 we’ve discovered a couple of compromises that come with the Gran Coupe’s sleeker-than-a-sedan body style. The rear seat has proven adequately roomy for middle-school-size humans but not so much for adults or infants in rear-facing car seats. About the bulky kidlet thrones, managing testing editor Dave Beard said, “I’m not tall, but my kid’s rear-facing seat is pressed up against my seatback when I have it installed behind me. You have to push the front seats far forward to have room for a rear-facing child seat in back.” And though the i4 is a hatchback, don’t expect the cargo room of a crossover. There’s 17 cubic feet of space behind the rear seats versus 29 cubes in the square-tail X3 SUV; though the i4’s trunk is deep, the sloping roofline means the space isn’t tall. At least there’s a useful cargo-bay cover to hide your stuff from view.

The i4 should be back in our hands soon, in time for plenty more warm-weather driving. We’ll keep our hopes up that we can make it all the way to the 40,000-mile mark without another chance meeting with one of our four-legged local inhabitants.

Months in Fleet: 9 months Current Mileage: 13,971 miles
Average Fuel Economy: 81 MPGe
Service: $0 Normal Wear: $0 Repair: $0
Damage and Destruction: $0

UPDATE 3/13/2024: We have revised this story since it was first published to incorporate new information about issues we experienced with the winter tires fitted to this long-term test car.

Introduction

The Hyundai Ioniq 5 won our 2022 Electric Vehicle of the Year award. But if the compact electric SUV with origami styling was that year’s valedictorian, the BMW i4 Gran Coupe was surely the salutatorian. The i4 M50 that participated in EV of the Year ’22 wowed us with its poise, power, and chest-compressing speed. Subsequent drives of the then-base-model eDrive40 convinced us that the i4 lineup embodies the same three core dynamic traits—supple suspension, talkative steering, and intuitive handling—that made the best BMWs of the past incandescent automobiles, ones we remember warmly. The i4 proved our initial impressions true by beating a host of impressive gasoline-powered cars to win a 2023 10Best award.

Cars that get a 10Best medal hung on them are special enough to warrant a more in-depth look. That’s even truer in the brave new world of EVs. Each new electric vehicle brings its own grab bag of pluses and minuses, any one of which could turn out to be a breakthrough or a fail. BMW gives buyers the choice of electric or gas propulsion in the same vehicle—the i4 is the electric doppelgänger of the gas-powered 4-series Gran Coupe—so we’re eager to see how that strategy plays out in a 40,000-mile test.

Going against our instinct to reach for the version with the most power, we ordered the second-most powerful model in the four-trim lineup: the 396-hp, twin-motor, all-wheel-drive xDrive40, which starts at $62,595. That was all the restraint we could muster, though. We couldn’t resist the M Sport package (19-inch summer rubber, plus a racy steering wheel and aluminum cabin trim) or the Premium, Shadowline, Driving Assistance Pro, and Parking Assistance packages. We also sprang for adaptive LED headlamps, Oyster Vernasca leather, and a Harman/Kardon surround-sound system, then topped it all off with a special order of purplish Mora Metallic paint, bringing our test car’s sticker to $77,920.

Broken in with around 1200 miles on its odometer, the i4 was a sprightly performer at the test track, with a 60-mph time of 4.4 seconds and a quarter-mile zip of 12.9 seconds at 109 mph. It stuck to the skidpad at 0.89 g and stopped from 70 and 100 mph in 161 feet and 325 feet, respectively. At a DC fast-charger, the i4 replenished its 84.3-kWh battery from 10 to 90 percent in 38 minutes, with a peak charging rate of 208 kilowatts and an average of 104 kilowatts—a solid midpack result.

Instrumented testing was the easy part; we’ve now started on the challenges posed by day-to-day living and, dare we say, a road trip or two. The miles that we’ve put on the i4 since it left the test track have reconfirmed our feeling that it’s a finely honed driver’s car. The M Sport package firms up the suspension a bit—but not too much—though we think the i4 would be almost as enjoyable to daily without the sportier chassis pieces or its summer tires.

Its behavior on its first set of winter tires is another story, however. We replaced the Hankook Ventus S1 Evo3 summer rubber with a set of Michelin X-Ice Snow winter tires of the same size—245/40R-19 front, 255/40R-19 rear—just in time for a two-week blast of single-digit temperatures, snow, and icy roads to roar through our home state of Michigan. Unfortunately, though, the winter rubber caused the i4’s confident dry-road handling to go south along with the milder temperatures.

Suddenly, this highly capable EV sedan started acting like something was amiss underneath. Since we fit all of our long-term vehicles with winter tires, we’re very familiar with the usual additional tread squirm and less crisp dynamics, but this was way more than that. It reacted to steering inputs sloppily and felt wobbly and unpredictable at the rear in brisk low-speed corners. At Interstate cruising speeds, merely nudging the steering wheel off center when making gentle lane changes caused the tail to wag. This was a clear case of cause-and-effect—new winter tires, unnerving handling—so we set out to understand why the normally agreeable i4 was having a violent disagreement with its new winter rubber.

We looked at several factors that might have influenced the car’s handling. The i4’s weight—5056 pounds—could have been one, but it was not too porky for the winters, which have the same load index ratings (98 front, 100 rear) as the summer tires. That means that the winters could support a vehicle with a maximum gross vehicle weight of up to 6834 pounds, roughly 800 pounds more than the i4’s gross vehicle weight rating. Although the margin at the rear axle is barely more than 100 pounds, it’s the same differential as with the OEM summer tires. The Michelin winters have an H speed rating (130 mph) while the summer Hankooks are Y rated (for use up to 186 mph) even though the i4’s top speed is governed to 122 mph. Was that a contributor? Possibly.

We suspect that i4’s poor dry-road handling—we found no problems in nasty conditions—is a matter of construction differences related to the X-Ice winter tire’s mission: optimum snow-and-ice performance. While the i4’s high-performance summer tires are internally stiffer and have stiffer tread blocks to optimize dry-road handling, grip, and high-speed performance, the winters need to work well on sloppy roads, and their large, deep, flexible tread blocks squirm more. Something in the tires’ different construction upset the i4’s handling. Michelin said as much in answer to our queries. Though they couldn’t pinpoint a definitive reason for the car-and-tire mismatch, they noted that their Pilot Alpin line of winter tires are “sport oriented” while the X-Ices are not. Indeed, we’ve fitted Alpins to several of our long-termers, including our Porsche Cayman GTS 4.0, and found them excellent handlers on dry roads. But we’ve also run X-Ice winter tires on other vehicles, including our long-term Tesla Model 3, without these dramatic side effects.

We contacted BMW, and they told us its dealers carry BMW-spec Goodyear and Pirelli winter tires for the i4 that are not readily available on the open market. These tires have a small star molded into the sidewall that indicates that they have been vetted by BMW to work well on their cars without causing undue degradation to the handling or the stability control and anti-lock brake systems. (Other manufacturers use their own unique symbols for their spec tires.) We opted for a set of Goodyear Ultra Grip winters in the stock sizes ($1335 at our local dealer) and voila! The i4’s secure, planted feel returned as soon as the BMW-spec winter tires were bolted on.

What that change proved was that there is nothing inherently wrong with the i4, and that it drives as it should when fitted with the approved winter tires. We’ve been fitting winters to our long-termers for decades without ever encountering an issue like this, so we’ve learned something worth passing along: if you’re about to purchase a set of winter tires, first check to see if there’s a brand-specific spec tire available for your particular ride. That’s the best insurance you can get that the new winter donuts will work well when the roads are clear, not just when they’re covered in snow and ice.

With the winter-tire issues resolved, the staffers who’ve put miles on the i4 have already discovered some strengths and idiosyncrasies that can only surface over time. Early on, the i4’s driving range indicator seems to be spot on. Yet, one driver put an expletive into the logbook about his frustration with being locked out of the climate-control system while charging. We’ll have to delve into the many menu options to see if there’s a way to program around that. Another editor doubted that this car’s newest iteration of iDrive is an improvement. We’ll have more definitive things to say about that, about driving range, about winter tires, and much more as the weeks and miles accumulate. And we’ll see how, in our estimation, the i4 stands up over the long haul as a BMW. We have our suspicions, and its status as a 10Best award winner couldn’t be a better start.

Months in Fleet: 9 months Current Mileage: 13,971 miles
Average Fuel Economy: 81 MPGe
Service: $0 Normal Wear: $0 Repair: $0
Damage and Destruction: $0

Source: Reviews - aranddriver.com