BMW has announced an M Performance 5-series, coming to our shores as a 2018 model. The M550i xDrive should satisfy those customers who fancy themselves a sports car enthusiast, but don't want all that pesky sports car power.

The M Performance cars are a bit more tossable than their standard offerings, but keep the power a bit lower so you can keep speeding tickets at bay. While the M5 sedan has 560 horses under the hood, the M550i will get a slightly more practical 456 horsepower and 480 pound-feet of torque.

All that slightly more sane fun emanates out of a twin-turbo 4.4-liter V8 engine. BMW says peak torque comes on at a low 1,800 rpm and that the sedan can scoot from a standstill to 60 mph in four seconds flat.

Power gets from that V8 to all four wheels through an eight-speed Steptronic Sport transmission. The all-wheel drive system is rear biased, but the computer should split that torque as it sees fit, so feel free to dive into the turns with abandon.

While M Performance does give the 550i a few sporty characteristics, like the larger engine and an adaptive M Sport suspension for a lower ride height, much of the "M" is merely cosmetic. A rear spoiler helps a bit with aerodynamics, but let's face it, it just looks cool. There are some M Performance design accents on the front air intakes in a grey metallic finish paint, which is carried over to the mirror caps and grille frame. The exhaust features black chrome tailpipes, and again, they look pretty cool.

We expect the interior of the M550i to carry over many of the same features as the 2017 five series, with an upgraded tile-based iDrive system with gesture control and a 10-inch touchscreen. The system can do all kinds of crazy tasks for you, like identify your driving patterns and make route suggestions based on real-time traffic as well as reserve and pay for a parking space. The damn thing will even park itself with the driver outside of the car. Will wonders never cease?

No word on pricing yet, but we expect the 2018 M550i xDrive in dealerships in spring 2017.

Perhaps Google (Alphabet?) should have googled its new name before it decided to restructure the whole company.

The New York Times reports that Google's new parent company, Alphabet, has encountered an issue with german automaker BMW, which owns a fleet services company with the same name and the domain Alphabet.com.

A spokesperson for BMW told the Times the company isn't planning on selling its domain and that Alphabet was a large part of its business.

SEE ALSO: '21' Interesting Facts About Google Probably you didn’t Know

With the major restructuring announcement yesterday, Alphabet launched abc.xyz as its domain name. Alphabet, led by Google founders Larry Page and Sergey Brin, is now the parent company of Google, a move designed to separate the core products (search, Gmail, Android, etc.) from its more far reaching projects (Fiber, Calico, X, self-driving cars).

While the move makes sense for Alphabet, it confused many.

Other companies also have the Alphabet name. Reuters notes that more than 100 companies have trademark registrations in the U.S. that incorporate the word alphabet in some capacity. For example, Alphabet, Inc. is an Ohio company founded in 1965 that manufactures electrical components for the auto industry, according to Bloomberg.

Even the @Alphabet Twitter handle already has an owner. It belongs to a man named Chris Andrikanich, who is probably receiving a bit more attention than he's used to.

Y Combinator founder Paul Graham wrote a blog post saying it is an absolute must for companies to own the .com domain for their names just days before Google's announcement. While Graham says domains aren't as important for finding a company's online presence as they used to be, not owning the .com domain "signals weakness."

This might not prove to be an issue for the new Alphabet, however. Google founder Page said Alphabet wouldn't be introducing products under its own name, so it wouldn't be a public facing name like Google.

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From mashable - The inside story of why Google is becoming Alphabet now