BMW i4 review

Oof, prices have taken a hike recently. And not for the first time. The most basic i4 is now the eDrive35 at £50,755, while the eDrive40 with its extra range and power is eight grand more. It used to cost what the entry car costs. Want the M Sport pack? That’s another £1,500.

Fancy going the whole hog and M50ing your life away? We wouldn’t bother, but if you’re not to be dissuaded by us, how about by its gargantuan price tag? £72,140, if you please.

Help me spec mine.

Right, you want the eDrive40 - the best balance between price and ability - but that comes on 17s as standard. No. The £950 19s look suitably futuristic, and the chassis is sophisticated enough to cope with them.

We’re not massively keen on the leather, so save yourself £950 there instead. Then there are various packs, most of which give you stuff you want next to stuff you don’t want. Most of the options are selectable individually if you venture a bit deeper into the configurator.

What’s it going to cost on lease?

There’s a lot of choice on BMW’s own finance schemes, from PCPs, via Hire Purchase to Contract Hire. The trouble is the same as everywhere else – high interest rates. 5.9 per cent APR as we write this, although that's nothing on the 8.9 BMW was offering in January 2023.

Roughly it means monthly PCP payments for an eDrive40 M Sport are going to be around £700 over four years with £4,500 down. It now makes way more sense than ever to make that deposit as big as you can. Make it £12k down and the monthlies drop to £500.

Yeah, a 430i is going to be cheaper to buy and more fun to run. But if you can charge at home, the i4 will start to claw cost back. If you’re paying 35 pence per kWh at home, that should take you about 3.5 miles. If the 430i is doing 35mpg, that’ll be around 75 pence of petrol to do the same distance. About twice the price.

And don’t charge away from home if you can avoid it. The EV cost argument soon falls flat on its face. That said, for charging away from home, BMW gives a year's subscriptions to the members' discount prices on the Pulse and Ionity networks. It’s not enough to make a huge difference.