BMW has hired a Hollywood producer to create an electric car’s vroom.

The i4 will be the basis of the M Division’s first electric project. What will it sound like?

REALITY check – electric BMW cars are coming and the vaunted M Division is not excluded from the battery drive.

So, with that in mind, we know electrics can be made to go fast – and be remarkably quick off the block. The big hang-up with petrol-addicted purists is what they sound like.

BMW has announced that it is working on creation of suitable synthetic sounds for its forthcoming electric models with Hans Zimmer, a film music creator and Academy Award winner.

It has made a point of enforcing that this collaboration will extend to electrified BMW M models.

Yes, those.

BMW has all but confirmed that the regular i4, effectively a 4 Series Gran Coupe with electric power coming to New Zealand next year, will be joined by an M version. Speculation is rife, but it's expected to be called the i4M, making it the first ever all-electric BMW M car.

Quit your whinging. Look at the positives. The standard BMW i4 range will include a version with almost 400kW and a 0-100kmh time of just four seconds, which begs the question, how much more power will an M version get?

But what will it sound like? Well, an exact replication of the current M car roar would be nice, but from the tone of what BMW is assaying – and has hinted at in today’s video – it’s not easy to replicate entirely faithfully.

Zimmer has already worked on sound creation for BMW, in conjunction with Renzo Vitale, Creative Director Sound at the BMW Group, resulting in unique sounds for the 2019 BMW Vision M Next – a stillborn proposal of a BMW i8 replacement - and also the i4 concept.

The production-ready version is tagged BMW IconicSounds Electric, and it is expected to be released in 2022. It will be standard on the new BMW iX SUV, an option on the non-M i4 and it will be possible for owners of existing examples of those cars to download it via the Remote Software Upgrade feature, presumably for a fee.

The sound varies depending on how you drive, but also by driving mode. In the Eco Pro setting, it is disabled. There are differences between the Comfort and Sport modes, though the sound is said to deepen as load and speed increase in both. There's even a specific sound for when energy is being recuperated.

M cars will get a unique sound profile.

“When you press the pedal of an M car, you suddenly get goosebumps all over your body,” says sound designer Renzo Vitale. “We translated this feeling into a drive sound that expresses a fusion of superior power and flowing energy.”