Naming cars is not an easy task, especially at a time when the advent of electric cars has practically led some brands to double their model ranges, offering one with combustion and another with zero emissions. It is this reality that seems to lead BMW to introduce changes to the nomenclature of its vehicles.
The German brand, traditionally, has had a very clear use of letters when it comes to identifying the nature of its cars.
Thus, the ‘i’ had always been for gasoline, while the ‘d’ identified diesel models. In recent years the ‘e’ was incorporated to describe the plug-in hybrid variants. So far no problem, but the use of the ‘i’ again, to refer to the electric cars in the house leads to unwanted confusion.
That is why BMW has had to take a solution and, according to rumors, this has been to eliminate the vowel from the surnames of gasoline and that it remains exclusively for its battery-powered models.
In this way, a BMW X3 xDrive20i would change its name to be called BMW X3 20 xDrive, or an M135i would stay at M135. In addition, although the diesel variants would not lose their ‘d’, they would adapt to the new structure, so that, for example, a BMW X3 xDrive40d would be renamed BMW X3 40d xDrive.
But the changes would not stop there, and it is that BMW electric cars would also release new features, and it is that all of them would begin to wear numerical suffixes, as is the case with the brand’s combustion models.
Thus, there is already evidence that the German manufacturer has registered the names i420, i430 and i450; which would serve to structure the ranges of all types of mechanics in a similar way and thus avoid confusion.
Source: Drive
