BMW will reportedly adopt a new naming convention for its gasoline-powered models, which will reportedly drop the “i” designation, according to a company insider’s latest entry on the Bimmerpost forum.
The BimmerPost user, ynguldyn, who has previously made accurate predictions, suggests certain models will abandon the “i” suffix. “No more ‘i’ in the gas-powered model names,” he writes when referring to the facelifted 1 Series. If this turns out to be true, future models will go by BMW 118 or BMW 120 instead of 118i or 120i. Interestingly, the diesel models will retain the “d” designation, so the 118d nomenclature, for example, would continue.
On gas-powered vehicles, the ‘i” denotes fuel injection, which has been used in nearly all BMWs for several decades. Recently, “i” has also been used to identify an all-electric BMW, where it’s placed ahead of the model name. For example, an electric 5 Series is called the i5. Apparently, this is causing some confusion.