There are plenty of sporty electric sedans on the market, and they are among the best EVs you can buy, masterfully blending style, comfort, efficiency and fun. But there are almost no electric wagons that also add extra practicality into the mix, which is why the BMW i5 Touring is special.
The G61 wagon version of the all-new 5 Series looks better than the G60 sedan, hiding the new model’s extra height much better. It’s such a head-turner that has made countless people stop and stare while I’ve been driving it for the last few days here in Bucharest, Romania, where it was loaned to me from the local BMW Romania press fleet.
I’ll be driving it for a few more days, so if there’s anything in particular you would like to know about, tell us in the comments section. I can already tell you this thing is nice to drive, and like all new BMWs, its agile handling hides its weight and tricks you into thinking it’s a smaller car.
You also don’t notice it’s a wagon with more weight over the rear wheels. To me, this felt virtually identical to the i5 sedan through the corners and under braking—it’s remarkably accomplished from a dynamic standpoint, just like the three-box body car.
My i5 Touring M60 tester is finished in a dark shade of frozen gray, which is supposed to make it look a bit understated, but somehow seems to make the car more obvious. It’s one of those cars that people seem to really notice as you drive by. And if you’re not familiar with Romania in general and Bucharest in particular, we have a lot of BMWs here and other premium EVs here, and there are already plenty of new 5 Series and i5 sedans on the road, so it’s probably the wagon form factor that’s making this particular car stand out.
In a straight line, this has way more performance than it needs. If your passengers aren’t prepared with their heads firmly planted on the headrests, accelerating in the i5 with the boost mode engaged can be a painful experience that one person who is no stranger to fast cars described as “taking the air out of their lungs.” This is because my tester is an i5 Touring M60, the more powerful variant, with nearly 600 horsepower and a naught-to-sixty time of around 3.7 seconds, one-tenth slower than the sedan.
It’s not as spacious in the trunk as I would have thought. Because it’s an EV built on an adapted ICE vehicle platform, the battery eats into what would have been the underfloor storage compartment, so there isn’t even a place to put the charging cable—you have to pay extra for the optional elastic netting and use that to keep the cable from moving around in the trunk as you subject it to the serious longitudinal and lateral forces that the car is capable of delivering.
I’m also going to try to run the battery down and charge it back up via a 300 kW DC rapid charger, which should be enough to provide the maximum 205 kW that electric BMWs can take (for now). BMW says the 10% to 80% charge takes 30 minutes, but we’ll see how close my tester comes to matching that in the blistering summer weather we’ve had here this year.
My i5 Touring M60 tester costs just over €129,000, or just shy of $140,000 at current exchange rates. BMW removed luxury features like air suspension and soft-closing doors for this generation 5 Series, yet it charges an arm and a leg for one if you want options. The performance, driving dynamics and looks justify it to a degree, but I’ve yet to decide whether it’s overpriced. Tell us what else you would like to know about the i5 wagon and we’ll try to answer your questions.
