My College Dream Car Might Go Electric!

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It was 24 years ago or so, but when I was young and foolish, before going through a kind of life-changing awakening, I was often ogling cool cars, hot babes, and … well, that was about it. I was drawn in by sociology courses and was intent on helping to protect the environment, particularly our all-important climate, but I didn’t really know much at the time and would also scroll through the models on Audi and BMW websites without giving much thought to the emissions the cars would create.

Anyway, that unnecessary intro is all to say that my dream car at that time was the BMW Z4. Perhaps it was related to the “Z” and my name, but I just loved the car. It looked like the perfect, fun little vehicle for a young guy in college. (In reality, it’s probably highly advisable to keep such a car away from a young man, but we’ll skip that topic today.)

I don’t really ever see or hear about the Z4 any more. Or if I do see the model around, I don’t notice it. I focus on EVs, for obvious reasons, and there’s no electric Z4. But there may be one soon….

“BMW Hints the Z4 Could Go Electric—And Drop Its Iconic Engine,” an Autoblog title reveals.

Admittedly, there is not much to go on with this yet. The main BMW EV news is about a new i3, which Steve Hanley is writing about. Here’s what Autoblog is piecing together: “This generation’s BMW Z4 is on its last legs and due for an update, with a Final Edition bidding farewell to the current model. It did relatively well, selling a number, retaining its front-engine rear-wheel-drive platform with TikTok’s favorite engine, and jokingly referred to as a drop-top Supra and vice-versa, but with both the Toyota- and the BMW-coded models getting dropped from their respective lineups, the current Z4 platform’s future is up in the air for now.” Okay, not much there, but here’s the line from BMW Senior Vice President Bernd Körber’s recent presentation and Q&A that caught their attention: “EV has a space in sports cars also, yes. So I would say not unlikely, but not something that will be imminently launched next year.”

So, using common sense to read between the lines, one would think that BMW very well might electrify the Z4. But it’s not happening soon, and it’s really not a mass-market car anyway, so perhaps its not something worth our time. However, when something connects to an interesting relic of our youth, it catches our eye and perhaps feels bigger and more important than it is. An electric Z4 — wow, I’d love to see it. Now, I would need to get a bit older and a lot richer for it to have any pull on me I guess, but it’s just fun to think about us reaching this marker or milestone.

Naturally, when one mentions “electric sports car,” the Tesla Roadster often comes to mind. It didn’t for me until I saw people making the link, but I guess that’s just because the Roadster 2.0 was “unveiled” almost a decade ago but is never ready for actual release for some reason, so I’ve been forgetting about it. Maybe it will come out before the electric Z4, though. Or maybe not.