BMW M makes foray into EV world with quat motor prototype

BMW’s M division is world famous for building supreme performance cars. With the EV revolution well and truly started, the future for performance divisions is looking bleak as everything will be dependent on just one battery. 

However, M has different plans as it is looking to set itself apart from the crowd by putting the first ever all-electric M car in the works. The German carmaker has revealed that M has started testing a prototype having a quad motor setup with a motor on each axle of the M xDrive four-wheel drive system.

The prototype is basically a beefed up BMW i4 M50 which has an adapted body strut from the BMW M3 and M4. We’re told that the unique quad motor setup will enable the first all-electric M car to have “variable, precise and fast” distribution of torque that “conventional drive systems” cannot match. 

The quad motor setup will be able to harvest the braking energy and put it back into the battery while continuing M’s 50-year legacy of “a linear build-up of drive power and lateral dynamics that permits controllable handling right up to the limits”.  

That’s not all as M is also testing an to monitor the driving conditions and ascertain what the driver wants. It will be able to transfer all this information “within milliseconds” to the multi-plate clutch and to the four motors so that the driver can use the extreme performance of the M EV in a controlled manner. Impressive and very intelligent, at the same time. 

“Electrification opens up completely new degrees of freedom for us to create M-typical dynamics,” says Dirk Häcker, Head of Development at BMW M GmbH. 

“And we can already see that we can exploit this potential to the maximum, so that our high-performance sports cars will continue to offer the M-typical and incomparable combination of dynamics, agility and precision in the locally emission-free future.”