Representatives of the German car manufacturer BMW have confirmed that the letter “i” will no longer be used to denote their cars with gasoline engines. Now the letter “i” has been returned to BMW’s electric models, while gasoline cars will not have their own additional designation.
Traditionally, and for many years, BMW names were constant and understandable, allowing to distinguish the car series, engine capacity and fuel type. For example, the ‘320i’ tells us it’s a 3 Series with a 2.0-litre petrol engine, while the diesels had a ‘d’ at the end. Simple, common, understandable. Well, this system has not been working for some time, because, for example, the current “330i” uses a 2-liter gasoline engine. So, henceforth the petrol version in these particular examples will be ‘320’ or ‘330’, while the diesels will retain the ‘d’ designation, eg ‘320d’.
BMW Senior Vice President Berndt Kerber said in response to questions from BMWBlog that the “i” will remain in BMW model names, but from now on it will only be associated with electric models such as the i4, i5, iX1 and so on.
BMW isn’t the only automaker to get a little lost on model names as the electrification process continues. There is also some groping going on in the offices of their rivals Mercedes, who are also gradually abandoning the ‘EQ’ designation used to denote current electric models.
