Late to the EV race, BMW is on a mission from god. To kill, destroy Tesla Model 3 sales. But they are going about it in the slowest possible way, and it begins with the Concept i4, hitherto a concept which is designed to do all the talking for BMW and the all the killing for God. And boy do BMW like talking a good fight. But as usual with BMW the preliminary talk is self-aggrandizing bullshit. It’s rather like BMW is bringing a knife to the Tesla nuclear-armed fight.
Think about it this way, Tesla is far advanced in the electric vehicle race because thats what they do, since the company’s very inception. BMW, on the other hand, experimented, with the i3 and the i8. If my next car was to be fully electric, my personal instinct is to go with Tesla because the company is in a way more advanced electric vehicle state.
Think of the current electric car industry in terms of the Kardashev Scale. The Kardashev Scale theorizes that a civilization’s technical advancement runs parallel to the amount of energy that the civilization is able to harness and manipulate.
Essentially, the more energy that a society can produce, the more technologically advanced they are. The Kardashev Scale proposes three stages of advanced civilization. Type 1 civilizations, at a bare minimum, can harness fusion power. Type II, can harness the power of the sun. Type three has the power equivalent of the entire galaxy.
On this basis the electric car industry is primordial. However, Tesla is the equivalent or at least close to Type 1 Civilisation… in comparison to BMW’s electric car production. As another example, Land Rover’s electric car ambitions are sub-primordial. Nevertheless, the Concept i4 is late but better late than never. What we’re trying to say is… BMW is premium luxury rubbish (we’ve gotta include that phrase when talking BMW).
BMW claims the Concept i4 has a predicted range of 600 km (373 miles), output of up to 530 hp, 0 – 100 km/h (62 mph) acceleration of approximately 4.0 seconds and a top speed in excess of 200 km/h (124 mph).
You can be sure that the Concept i4 will be loaded with technology. But the real question is, how much and when? BMW says that the Concept i4 will be virtually unchanged when it hits production in 2022, on the expectations of seeing pigs fly. The price? That’s another press release away.