When will we see an electric BMW M car? We speak to its boss to find out

Enlarge (credit: BMW)

LISBON, Portugal—Last week we wrote about driving a pair of new M-badged electric BMWs. With the arrival of the i5 M60 and the iX M70, there are now go-fast variants of all four of BMW's battery-electric vehicles. But as BMW will openly admit, those aren't true M cars. That's not to say that BMW's M Division is afraid of electrification—last year it debuted the XM, a performance plug-in hybrid SUV. And next year, the XM's powertrain will reappear in a plug-in hybrid M5. But when might we see a purely electric M car?

Conveniently for us, Frank van Meel, CEO of BMW M, was on hand in Portugal to sit down and talk about the future of M performance and electrification. And, as it turns out, we might see a fully electric BMW M car in plenty of time before the end of this decade.

"Well, if you look on social media, you can already see our mule test car with quad motors, because for us, that is a very promising concept for high performance," van Meel said, referring to recently released photos of a BMW i4 EV with the license plate M HP 4 E.