Energy consumption of the BMW i4 eDrive40 tested at highway speeds

With the new BMW i4, the German automaker has finally added a sleek and comparatively affordable all-electric sedan to its EV lineup last fall. While the sporty top-end M50 model comes with a convincing performance of 544 metric horsepower, price-conscious electric car buyers will probably be more interested in the significantly less expensive rear-wheel drive base model of the BMW i4, which has now undergone a real-world range and consumption test.

The reviewers at InsideEVs have recently put the BMW i4 eDrive40 through its paces on the French highway at speeds of up to 80 miles per hour. More precisely, this test involved a round trip from Paris to Rennens and back, covering a total of 421 miles. Fortunately, the BMW i4 base model only missed its official WLTP figures for energy consumption and range by a fairly small margin.

The BMW i4 eDrive40 consumes just a bit more energy than advertised

While the electric car recorded a consumption of 3.35 miles per kWh according to the on-board computer on the first leg of the round trip, 3.10 miles per kWh were measured during the second part of the test drive. Thus, the average from these two consumption tests with the BMW i4 eDrive40 is a tad higher than its maximum combined consumption of 3.7 miles per kWh according to the widely used WLTP standard. In conjunction with the 81 kWh battery, the electric BMW 4 Series therefore has a highway range of approximately 260 miles in practice, which is still a very reasonable result overall.

In comparison to the US, where the more powerful BMW i4 M50 was actually able to exceed its official EPA range by almost 20 percent, European EV owners often struggle to meet the higher WLTP range and consumption estimates during real-world driving. Meanwhile, the probably most annoying observation during this highway drive with the BMW i4 eDrive40 was its rather mediocre charging capacity, which maxed out at 128 kW during the range test. Officially, the sporty electric sedan should be able to reach peak values of up to 205 kW, although the battery's charge level and the ambient temperatures obviously play a significant role in this case.

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