Electric wagons are few and far between, wherever you are in the world. The only one available in the U.S. is the Porsche Taycan SportTurismo (which you can also get as the taller CrossTurismo). In Europe, there are a few more options. But the only one that can and with the sporty Taycan is the BMW i5 Touring.
Unlike the Taycan, it is not built on a bespoke EV platform, and it lacks the Porsche’s advanced 800-volt architecture. However, for a 400-volt EV that shares its underpinnings with a combustion car, the i5 Touring is outstanding. I got to spend a weekend with the top-tier i5 Touring M60, and I was impressed by its blend of comfort and performance. Yet it was disappointing in one important way.
The idea of driving a big, luxurious electric wagon was in and of itself a big draw. Wagons offer cavernous interiors and the kind of excellent handling you can only get from a low-riding car. This might be lost on the droves of luxury SUV drivers that you see everywhere these days, but I found it to be a car with a lot of substance and appeal.
The M60 version I drove featured a dual-motor setup, which provides plenty of straight-line pace. But I was expecting it to be quick. What surprised me was how good this big and heavy family wagon was through the corners, where several technologies helped mask its length and heft. I had previously tried the i4 M50 on a twisty mountain road, and that didn’t feel nearly as good to drive as the larger i5 Touring. Even at its hefty price here in Romania—€101,000 ($110,000 at today's rates), €130,000/$141,000 as equipped—it felt like a great option.
(Full Disclosure: BMW Romania lent me a fully charged i5 Touring from its press fleet to test for an entire weekend.)
Handsome Brute
The designs of many recent BMWs have proven controversial. The iX and i7 are both polarizing, but the i5 Touring isn’t like that at all. Finished in a dark shade of satin gray with the Shadow Line pack and those wheels, my tester was captivating. I found myself turning back to look whenever I walked away from it. When returning to the car, I was always impressed by its design and just how good it looked in every setting, from sitting outside a posh restaurant to waiting in a sea of other cars in a crowded shopping center parking lot.
I've always found something to criticize about the three-box body of the new 5-Series Sedan. Because BMW decided to make both electric and ICE versions of the new 5, it had to make the car extra tall to be able to accommodate a big battery pack in its floor.
The result is a car that looks tall from pretty much every angle, especially from the side, where no amount of design flourishes can hide the extra height. Compare the side profile of the G60 to any of its predecessors and you'll find the older designs are without exception sleeker and more attractive.
However, the G61 wagon somehow manages to elegantly mask its height. It may even be the best-looking 5 Series Touring of the last three generations. But we’ll leave that up to you in the comments: Do you like the look of the i5 Touring?
The front fascia was fully blacked out thanks to the M Sport Pro pack. That option also includes gloss black kidney grills, red brake calipers and tinted rear windows. All exterior trim that isn’t body-colored is gloss black, including the side skirts and the diffuser in the back.
There are a couple of things about the exterior that I think could be improved. BMW could have done a better job integrating the array of sensors. They currently live in an unsightly rectangle placed between the two kidney grilles, making them awkwardly prominent. The grilles themselves look a bit strange too, with a horizontal bar that divides the part that opens from the one that doesn’t. That’s where BMW chose to put the M badge for the M60 variant. The more time I spent focusing on that part of the fascia, the stranger it looked.
The M Sport bumper is also a bit busier than it has to be. It has streaks and creases that don’t seem to blend well with one another. It just seems a bit over-designed; simpler would have been better in this case. The rear didn’t give me the same impression, even though a lot is going on in the lower section of the bumper. While I don’t like the idea of a fake diffuser, I do prefer this bumper design to the ones that seem to be missing exhausts, like on the i4.
My tester rode on 20-inch wheels, the smallest you can get on the i5 M60 (you can get 19s on the single-motor i5). They look great on the car and fill the arches nicely, so you don’t have to go for the larger and flashier 21s to make the car look good.
Family Luxury
BMW currently makes some of the best interiors of any luxury carmaker, and the i5 is no exception. Design and materials are excellent,. If you get a well-specced M60 car like my tester, it feels like a nice blend of old-world luxury and futuristic design.
Even though my tester had an M Sport pack, it was configured with the sumptuous comfort seats. The plush thrones are fully electric and had both heating and cooling. They're endlessly adjustable, and I was able to get the perfect driving position that felt both commanding and comfortable for a back-road blast or a long-haul road trip. The only downside is that they're so adjustable that you need to use the infotainment system to fully configure them.
That's a bit annoying, but once you find the right driving position you can just save it vand never have to fiddle with it again.
Sitting in the back of the i5 Touring was also great. In many EVs—especially ones built on the same underpinnings as ICE cars—taller passengers' knees get pushed up by the combination of a high floor and low seat. In the i5, I got none of that. I also had plenty of knee room even when sitting behind a six-footer like myself, and the vast optional panoramic glass roof (that sadly doesn’t open) made it feel open and pleasant.
When sitting in the back, you can adjust settings on the two-zone rear climate controls via a small central touchscreen that works quite well. This adds to the futuristic feel of the cabin. What I don’t understand is why BMW has eliminated the pockets or nets on the backs of the front seats. It’s not like they took up too much room or were particularly expensive. If I owned this vehicle, their absence would infuriate me.
One of the visual highlights was the interaction bar, which is an illuminated crystal-like bar that runs across the width of the dashboard. You can change the color of its backlighting and play animations on the bar. When you put the car in Sport mode it turns red, but then a strip of blue moves toward the center to complete the M color palette. It also flashes red when you activate the hazards.
The twin-screen array comprised of a 12.3-inch driver’s display and a 14.9-inch infotainment screen is as good as in any BMW. There’s not much you can customize, although you can choose from several digital gauge cluster designs. You can display an augmented reality view in the middle of the screen, which overlays navigation information atop a feed from the front-facing camera.
The infotainment screen runs iDrive 8.5, which is still Linux-based, rather than the iDrive 9 that BMW uses in its smaller models, which is based on Android Automotive. It looks and works great, and its interface is improved over the older version 8, especially the climate screen.
But the screen is a still a bit too far away. Despite BMW curving it toward the driver, I had to stretch out my arm to reach it. I used a similar driving position in the Tesla Model 3 and found it easy to operate the touch screen. In the BMW, though, using it for more than a few seconds at a time was uncomfortable. If you're a shorter driver, this may be an even bigger issue, so make sure to test it out if you're considering a new BMW 5 Series or i5.
Cargo Capacity Conundrums
Opening up the tailgate, I assumed that since it is based on the largest 5 Series ever, the i5 would have a cavernous cargo area. Yet with the seats up, you get 20.13 cubic feet of space. That's big, but not giant, and you'll need to drop the seats to swallow larger items. With the second row down, cargo space grows to 60 cubic feet. That's plenty of space for a wagon, but still less than you get in, say, an X3.
What makes it worse is that there’s no usable underfloor storage compartment. This is bad because you have nowhere to put the included Level 2 charging cable, so you either leave it to flop around the trunk as you drive or install the elastic netting that comes as part of one of the options packs.
One plus point is that you can load the trunk up to the brim even with heavy items, and the rear suspension won’t sag. All electric or plug-in hybrid 5 Series Touring models get self-leveling air suspension as standard, which also helps with comfort.
BMW could have done a better job with the space left unused under the hood. This is still essentially an engine bay that could accommodate a long six-cylinder engine or a big twin-turbo V-8, yet in the i5 with no combustion engine, the space seems very poorly used. There are some high-power lines and what looks like an inverter alongside some HVAC, and there’s a lot of space around them. If the equipment was better organized, BMW would have had room for a frunk big enough to store the charging cables.
Delightful To Drive
On paper the i5 Touring M60 looks like a big, overweight barge, with its almost 118-inch wheelbase and nearly 5,200-pound weight. But from behind the wheel it fools you into believing it's a far smaller and lighter car.
The variable-ratio steering combined with the M60 variant’s standard active rear-wheel-steering system lends the car remarkable agility. There’s even a bit of feel that makes its way through the thick-rimmed M steering wheel, which I wasn’t expecting in this car.
With a 48-volt active anti-roll system and adaptive dampers, the car doesn’t really lean in the corners. This does wonders to disguise its heft, and it makes threading it around a twisty road with many quick direction changes a breeze.
Where you do notice its size is in parking lots, where its 39-foot (11.9-meter) turning circle makes it impossible to hide the length of its wheelbase. The standard i5 Touring without rear-wheel steering has a 40.3-foot (12.3-meter) turning circle, so it’s going to be even harder to maneuver in tight spaces.
At least it's plenty comfortable. I kept it in Sport mode but with its adaptive dampers in Comfort, and the car felt like it made some road imperfections vanish altogether. Going for the larger 21-inch wheels will surely affect comfort, so sticking with the standard 20s seems like the best bet to preserve the car’s pleasant long-legged, continent-crossing character.
Acceleration To Scare Your Friends
During the few days that I had the car, I managed to scare a few of my friends with it. One person even asked me to pull over for a breather after a couple of hard launches that sent his heart rate racing. With about 600 horsepower and 604 pound-feet of torque from its two motors, the i5 Touring M60 will sprint to sixty in around 3.7 seconds and on to 143 mph.
The 3.7-second figure doesn’t represent what it actually feels like to accelerate in one. I didn’t time it, but knowing BMW’s history, it wouldn’t surprise me to discover that it’s quicker than what the manufacturer states—it certainly feels like a sub-3.5-second to sixty car, and that’s without enabling the brutal launch control.
Once on the move, the impressive torque figure makes its presence felt. You only need the tiniest gap to overtake someone, and pulling the Boost paddle on the steering wheel takes the acceleration up a notch.
More Electrons, Please
The only real downside to this car other than the hefty price tag is its relatively small battery capacity. Both versions of the i5 Touring draw from the same 84-kilowatt-hour pack with a usable capacity of 81.2 kWh. This gives the M60 version a claimed WLTP range of up to 314 miles. That cycle is, as we know, very generous. I never saw more than 231 miles of predicted range unless I put the car in its maximum efficiency mode, which drastically limits power, caps the top speed at 56 mph and cuts air conditioning to eke out more miles.
With that setting enabled and very careful driving, sure, you could hit the WLTP claim, maybe even exceed it in ideal conditions, but it would be a pretty boring drive. That would defeat the purpose of getting the M60.
In the US, the i5 M60 sedan is rated at 240 miles, which is a more realistic real-world estimate. This means that while it looks and feels like an excellent road trip mobile, you will have to stop to charge more often than you’d like if you’ve got large distances to cover.
This car would benefit from the 105.2 kWh battery pack from the iX, which grants the SUV an EPA range of 324 miles. It would weigh the car down a bit more, but it would also let it be the mile-crushing touring car it feels like.
It needs that extra battery capacity because it's an electron hog. BMW says that it should use between 3.4 and 3.1 miles per kWh, but during my time with the car, it did under 2 miles per kWh. Granted, I drove it like a normal car and regularly used its performance, but its average since new (for the last 4,000 and a bit miles) was still 2.6 miles per kWh. That's still a ways off what the manufacturer’s lab tests yielded.
My local 300 kW charger was offline when I tried to charge the car and the next best thing I could find was a 150 kW charger. It only provided 75 kW for reasons unknown to me (I was the only one using said charger at the time). At that rate, it took about half an hour to get the car from around 35% state of charge to 93%.
That’s pretty good given that I was using less than half of its 205 kW maximum charging power, which should do the 10 to 80% charge in 30 minutes. Charging it to full using an Level 2 plug and its 11 kW onboard AC charger should take about 9 hours, but I didn’t get to try that out.
One thing I noticed is that when you open the charging port flap, you no longer have two additional flaps covering the charging ports. The big flap is now weather-sealed, so there’s no cover over the AC part of the charger, although you still have to remove a cap from the DC fast charging pins to be able to use those.
It clearly has the fast-charging performance to be a great grand touring car. It's got the comfort and the speed, too. All the i5 Touring needs to be a world-class electric GT car is a bit more endurance. If BMW can figure that out, the i5 will be a package that's hard to resist.
