The BMW i4 M50 has finally made its debut in Malaysia, a year after being announced for our local market. Displayed to the public for the first time at the Malaysia Autoshow 2023, BMW’s first electric M-badged model will join the line-up here in Malaysia alongside the regular i4 eDrive40 variant.
Pricing for the BMW i4 M50 starts at RM430,210 here in Malaysia, although that’ll only come with the standard two-year warranty. With the extended five-year warranty and service package, pricing goes up to RM445,800. Either way, the high voltage batteries are covered by an eight-year/160,000 km battery warranty.
Despite wearing the revered M emblem, the BMW i4 M50 doesn’t look too different from its regular counterpart, with only a couple of extra touches setting it apart. These include the BMW M 50-year anniversary emblem (not pictured), the M badge on the front grille in place of the i logo, the BMW M wing mirrors, and extra blacked out touches all around, most notably on the rear diffusers with grey highlights.
The BMW i4 M50 also gets a set of 20-inch BMW Individual Style 862 aero alloy wheels, while an extra black strip on the rear spoiler ties up the exterior makeover.
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Moving inside, the M treatment on the BMW i4 M50 adds carbon fibre trims on the dashboard and centre console, alongside the M Sport front seats, M tricolour seat belts, and M Anthracite headliners. The seats are wrapped in Vernasca leather, and there’s also an additional sliding glass roof, both of which are not available on the regular i4 eDrive30 variant.
Aside from these, though, the rest of the interior equipment is identical to the standard i4. Perched atop the dashboard is the BMW Curved Display panel consisting of a 12.3-inch digital instrument cluster and a 14.9-inch touchscreen infotainment display, running on the BMW iDrive 8.0 operating system.
Other interior equipment highlights also include the three-zone climate control system with rear blowers and controls, Qi wireless charger, hands-free powered tailgate, a 17-speaker Harman Kardon surround sound system, as well as the BMW IconicSounds Electric system that “recreates the sporty M engine sound”.
The BMW i4 M50 is powered by a twin-motor all-wheel-drive eDrive set-up, for a maximum total system output of 400 kW (544 hp) and 795 Nm of torque. Those figures are only available for 10 seconds at a time in Sports Boost mode, but it enables the M-badged variant to reach 100 km/h from a standstill in just 3.9 seconds – nearly two seconds quicker than the regular eDrive40 variant. Top speed has also been increased from 190 km/h to 225 km/h on the i4 M50.
Powering the motors is the 83.9 kWh battery pack, giving the electric M model a driving range of 510 km in a single charge (WLTP). Charging takes eight hours and 15 minutes using the on-board 11 kW AC charger, or around 31 minutes from 10-80% using a 200 kW DC fast charger.
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As for safety equipment, the BMW i4 M50 in Malaysia comes with the full Driving Assistant Professional package, which includes features such as autonomous emergency braking, adaptive cruise control with stop/go functionality, lane centring and lane keeping assist, and blind-spot monitoring and collision prevention.
The 360-degree surround view monitor is also standard equipment here, as part of the Parking Assistant Plus package, as is the adaptive high-beam and acoustic pedestrian warning features.
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