As BMW details a bold plan to sell two million EVs by 2025 and for EVs to account for 50% of its global sales just five years later, we must reconcile ourselves with the notion that the snarling, popping, rev-hungry M car is an endangered breed.
We've already had our first taste of how M's engineers will set about heating up pure-electric cars, courtesy of the warm i4 M50, and that its first plug-in hybrid, the XM, is also its most powerful model yet should provide some reassurance that potency and pace won't fall by the wayside in the great pursuit of reduced emissions.
Questions remain over just how effectively differentiated M-badged EVs will be from their common-or-garden counterparts – it would take a true expert to discern the standard iX from the upcoming iX M60 range-topper – but for the next few years, BMW M GmbH’s propensity for variety will continue to capture the imagination of performance car fans around the world.
Has any brand shown such awareness of what enthusiasts want in recent years? We’ve been waiting decades for a BMW M3 estate, for example, and there could surely be no better antidote for EV anathema than the puristic BMW M2 sports coupé and rip-snorting BMW M4 CSL.
And even if you’re no huge fan of the XM’s, er, divisive styling, you must surely feel stirred by the potential of its electrically boosted V8, which will become available in more conventionally styled cars down the line.
M has yet to set an all-out electrification deadline, but whichever way you cut it, BMW’s new petrol-burning performance cars will be the last of their kind, so there is an element of ‘enjoy them while you can’ at play. But as long as M division’s engineers can instil some of their trademark flair in the allelectric follow-ups, there’s no need to be alarmed.
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Although the new iX and i4 have received more favourable reviews than I expected, any hybrid or fully electric M cars will be evaluated differently. There is a spectrum of opinion about all the M cars since the glory days of the E46 M3 and E39 M5, but people will be expecting any future M cars to be as characterful and as light as possible - in addition to being good to drive.
For BEV M cars, it's going to hard to minimise the weight and to dial back how that weight affects handling. With the Tesla Model S Plaid and the Porsche Taycan Turbo S, we already have two possible benchmarks (based on current battey tech) for future M cars.
It's going to be hard for car makers generally to produce lightweight high-performance BEVs.
The XM's hybrid V8 does nothing for me I'm afraid. Ditto the electrified V8s in the Panamera and AMG 4 door. Once you go down this route the V8 just feels like a dirty and inefficient block of weight to carry around.
The iX is catastrophically ugly but clearly the future and much more appealing. An ICE engined car has charisma and agility on its side - give us or don't bother.
In a way I agree, because transport of the future will eventually be carbon neutral, what the exterior looks like will large become irrelevant, it's what's inside in the interior that'll matter most, going to need more room in there to cram all this tech we're told we really really need, more social inside a Car then?, that'll be shock for some, imagine, actually having to talk face to face in the same space!
In a way I agree, because transport of the future will eventually be carbon neutral, what the exterior looks like will large become irrelevant, it's what's inside in the interior that'll matter most, going to need more room in there to cram all this tech we're told we really really need, more social inside a Car then?, that'll be shock for some, imagine, actually having to talk face to face in the same space!
When you manage to create a successful brand that drivers love they have to have that bit more, so a Sport isn't as good as an M-sport and a full M Car and so on, having driven all three levels I'd say there's a difference,so taking this into the Ev era isn't going to be that easy which means, how they're made what there made with will make them cost more.