Interesting, I find it to be more pleasing than many recent BMW EVs I've seen. I was preparing to not like it as I clicked the link and was pleasantly surprised. Don't love the tail lights, but otherwise it's good/fine to my eye.
I am a great example of how true this is. I wanted an electric car, I wanted a BMW for a long time, I tried to convince myself to buy one for months but couldn't get over how ugly they were. Why do companies destroy their iconic designs when they go electric? So sick of "space car" designs for electric.
The screen cut ins, typographic headlights, and crystal scroller wheels scream "teenager escaped room due to Bitcoin". BMW has many timeless designs to pull from in the last 30-40 years, but chose to pass the mature confident adult torch to the likes of Volvo and Rivian...
For me the last generation, F-series, was pretty much e46 3.0. You can only iterate so many times.
Neue Klasse is a bit odd but I thought the same thing about the F and G model runs. I’ll need to see it in person.
BMW is dethroning Mercedes and continually beating Audi sales in the US. I’m surprised so many people would buy a car if they thought it was ugly. Benz reliability has tanked and Audi is lackluster as usual.
I finally gave up on bmw last year (after 15 years and 4 models) due to their reliability and cost of repair. I don’t think I’d touch them after spending thousands chasing down coolant repairs due to poor design (plastic parts, high labor cost location to inspect and replace).
It's also just a ginormous hunk of metal. Which also makes the long range kinda moot, strapping a bigger battery will of course result in a bigger range. I'm guessing the car doesn't make any improvements on the efficiency?
I mean compared to the other BMW tanks this looks actually slightly less like tank
I guess people would buy it just for the brand with whatever design, personally I find current BMW tank design the worst in last 30-40 years I am watching car design
Remember when they released the i3? From the company that released some pretty amazing looking cars, that was their first entry into the EV market? They certainly didn't want them to sell and were going to use the low sales as evidence that no one wants EVs. Now I fear it's too late for them as they're going to get their lunch eaten by Chinese EV companies that actually put in a good faith effort.
BMW did have the _iconic_ "halo angel eye" headlights in the mid-2000s - the most iconic headlight signature at least in my memory. So your point would make sense.
Those were often copied by enthusiasts and "ported" to other cars via aftermarket headlights.
The real competition has 1MW charging. BYD has installed some of these chargers in Europe recently. It's really interesting to see the battery charge go up in real time.
I own a G90 M5. While definitely a heavy car, I love having best of both worlds on demand. Having driven 7 different Tesla's previously as daily drivers, there is something convenient about being able to fill up extremely quickly when on road trips. My only issue with it is the small gas tank which means I have to refill it once a week currently with the way I drive.
I really don't like BMW's direction with Neue Klasse. It just looks stupid for the sake of being different.
My g05 X5 M60i is a great car, probably the best SUV I’ve ever owned. Fantastic gas mileage on long trips and more power than I need for when I don’t care. The Tesla interior was so cheap I couldn’t make the jump.
The PHEV X5 50e or 550e is what I want in a car. EV Range for my commute and daily stuff plus I can fill up instantly on long trips. I have 3 young kids so long stops are not ideal for me.
Agree with Neue Klasse, I’m more of an LCI guy myself when new models come around. I’m tempted to grab a g80 M3 before production stops but the idea of 3 kids kicking my Tartufo Carbon Buckets is a put off.
We just bought an Audi A6 Avant Performance which is a year old and about the same spec?
Missus is a BMW person and really wanted another, but they were not competitive. I did a 380 mile journey in it at around 85% battery and it was awesome.
Is it a better trend to add more and more batteries to increase range or keep a target 250ish mile range and over time remove batteries as they improve in power density?
First off range should be based off of 70mph/110kph since that's what actually matters when people talk about range (how far away from home can I get on a full tank?).
And 250 miles just isn't far enough to fully mitigate range anxiety. I would say about 300-350+ miles is the sweet spot that higher end makers should target.
Well, it's an X5 competitor, and it's apparently only $10k more than the base ICE version. Considering this is the extended range EV version, that's not terrible. TFA says pricing for the regular-range version has not been announced yet. I will be curious to see where it comes in, since this the extended range version is only $2,500 more than the PHEV. Not a lot of wiggle room in there!
Probably, yeah. Wouldn't surprise me if it got close to $110k fully equipped. We looked at the BMW iX (which this iX5 replaces), and that was going for ~$95k, although it had some insanely good lease deals.
We settled on the X5 50e. ~40-45 mile electric range with an overall ~450-500 mile range, and rather good performance when you want/need it. Total price well equipped was ~$92-94k. Also drives a lot nicer than the iX did.
We are getting an equivalent of about ~800 miles a tank. Could do better, but we only use the basic charger on 110v, which charges at a rate of ~1 mile an hour.
How much does maintenance cost? When I had a BMW, service was really expensive. Does the fact that most of your miles are on electric change the calculus? Obviously things like tires wear out based on total miles, but presumably some of the ICE-related services don't end up being as frequent?
What worries me is that FSD in Tesla does seems to sometimes introduce problems in the driving behavior with new updates. I have not experienced this first hand ( don't own one ) but I am following the r/TeslaFSD and it looks like new versions are sometimes regressing on situations that were handled correctly on older versions.
This leads me to believe that FSD is not yet solved to the level we thought and training to handle a certain new thing correcty can degrade handling of other situations
I'm curious what is in your rubric to determine that a self driving car that doesn't need supervision is a worse driver than a car that does, by your own admission, need supervision.
99% of my FSD disengagements are navigation related: leaving it too late to merge into an exit lane (or CA drivers speeding up to not let me merge), not being aggressive enough at going into the opposing lane to overtake a stationary truck (though, it's a lot better at this in recent versions).
I can only recall one "oh shit" moment on an older FSD version when it carrier too much speed down a steep hill in SF and went through a 4-way stop and I had to slam the brakes. A lot of the strangeness / hesitance of previous FSD version is gone in the latest updates.
I don't expect self driving to be 100% perfect. I feel like FSD today is a 90th percentile human driver with super human reaction speed + visibility. Holding a "never gets into an accident" it too high of a bar. FSD consistently drives better than me (with the caveat of navigation: I know the city, I know which unprotected left turns are easy vs. hard, I know which routes tend to be faster due to local conditions, etc).
FSD is excellent in how reactive it is to thing you don't even see: e.g. car on the 101 at slightly drifts into my lane, I didn't notice it, FSD reacted. I feel WAY more unsafe now riding in an Uber vs. hands off FSD'ing in a Tesla.
Only had a handful of Waymo experiences but a lot more with Tesla. Tesla may be leading but is still not great. Driven over 100k miles in autopilot and roughly 30k in FSD miles, you still need manual intervention about 5-10 percent of the time for various reasons.
Waymo has a lead. Tesla's lead is about the same as a Roomba's.
Seriously though, if you're considering an EV, please give the traditional US/EU/JP/KR automakers a chance. Don't try to help the planet in one way while staking its heart in another.
The battery is warranted for 8 years or 100,000 miles and you are a simple internet search away from many articles on how long EV batteries are lasting (which is generally quite long).
i checked and that warranty assumes constant unchanging weather conditions in reality these cars get used in fluctuating weather that expand and contract the battery unit and put additional wear on them, there is simply no way the warranty itself is expected to last as long as they claim
Porsche in particular have found out the hard way .
There is o evidence the typical EV will need a battery replacement within its useful life. The Leaf is the only EV with that problem, everyone else so far seems to be doing well as a battery is a lifetime part.
Only time will tell, but that is what our current data says.
I'm sure there will be exceptions but they are collectors who keep a car for 100 years.
There have been a few highly publicized situations where the pack gets damaged (road damage), and is not covered. The replacement is more the new car.
I think it’s overblown. A combination of it all just being new and getting figured out, and manufacturers selling the cars at a loss (for various reasons), but not the spare parts.
Crate engines sell for between $3000 and $12000 for cars. Transmissions $2000 to $5000. (Prices from the first source I found, a reasonable sample range but I suspect you can find things outside the range) In stock and ready to pick-up today at a warehouse near you.
It’s a shame it’s quite possibly the ugliest car I’ve seen in a long time.
Interesting, I find it to be more pleasing than many recent BMW EVs I've seen. I was preparing to not like it as I clicked the link and was pleasantly surprised. Don't love the tail lights, but otherwise it's good/fine to my eye.
It’s got Bugs Bunny teeth.
Beaver teeth
What exactly do you find particularly ugly on this car?
The only thing that is a bit weird to me are the headlights, otherwise I quite like the look.
Any BMW with a grill smaller than an ASHPD portal is palatable.
Haven't you seen the Ferrari Luce?
Anyway, the iX5 is also not my taste but at least it looks like a BMW.
A very heavy BMW. 2900kg!
I am a great example of how true this is. I wanted an electric car, I wanted a BMW for a long time, I tried to convince myself to buy one for months but couldn't get over how ugly they were. Why do companies destroy their iconic designs when they go electric? So sick of "space car" designs for electric.
The screen cut ins, typographic headlights, and crystal scroller wheels scream "teenager escaped room due to Bitcoin". BMW has many timeless designs to pull from in the last 30-40 years, but chose to pass the mature confident adult torch to the likes of Volvo and Rivian...
For me the last generation, F-series, was pretty much e46 3.0. You can only iterate so many times.
Neue Klasse is a bit odd but I thought the same thing about the F and G model runs. I’ll need to see it in person.
BMW is dethroning Mercedes and continually beating Audi sales in the US. I’m surprised so many people would buy a car if they thought it was ugly. Benz reliability has tanked and Audi is lackluster as usual.
I finally gave up on bmw last year (after 15 years and 4 models) due to their reliability and cost of repair. I don’t think I’d touch them after spending thousands chasing down coolant repairs due to poor design (plastic parts, high labor cost location to inspect and replace).
Yes my wife’s x7 has been through 2 water pumps and now the control and thrust arms were leaking hydraulic fluid. Only 60k miles.
It's also just a ginormous hunk of metal. Which also makes the long range kinda moot, strapping a bigger battery will of course result in a bigger range. I'm guessing the car doesn't make any improvements on the efficiency?
My impression of new car design aesthetics is they're mostly ugly to me because they're optimizing for selling to a different market than mine (USA).
New automobiles starting looking Alien after China started buying more of them than the US, and it's continued ever since.
TBH even ICE BMWs from recent years all look like fugly tanks
taillights look like a vinfast.
It's like a different brand now. Apparently the Chinese drove this trend: https://www.hotcars.com/bmw-moves-on-big-grille-era-neue-kla...
I mean compared to the other BMW tanks this looks actually slightly less like tank
I guess people would buy it just for the brand with whatever design, personally I find current BMW tank design the worst in last 30-40 years I am watching car design
Elon Musk would love it lol
Remember when they released the i3? From the company that released some pretty amazing looking cars, that was their first entry into the EV market? They certainly didn't want them to sell and were going to use the low sales as evidence that no one wants EVs. Now I fear it's too late for them as they're going to get their lunch eaten by Chinese EV companies that actually put in a good faith effort.
dang that's nice but what's up with the Elon's X logo on the lights?
That's prior art if there ever was prior art. It's just unicode U+1D54F
BMW doesn't seem to use that specific X anywhere else for any of their EV lineup. Even the back of the car uses a normal "X" character.
I think it's some mandate to give their car models some kind of "signature" headlight design.
BMW did have the _iconic_ "halo angel eye" headlights in the mid-2000s - the most iconic headlight signature at least in my memory. So your point would make sense.
Those were often copied by enthusiasts and "ported" to other cars via aftermarket headlights.
sure, but no other unicode has a multi-million dollar branding campaign behind it ;)
Xitter? It used to be called Twitter, but the T crossbeam came loose and down.. sorry
It's not like they're manji headlights
The real competition has 1MW charging. BYD has installed some of these chargers in Europe recently. It's really interesting to see the battery charge go up in real time.
BYD is doing some amazing things
1MW charging is a cute stunt but the economics simply do not make sense. The amount of copper and equipment to support that rate is ridiculous.
I don't doubt that, however they seem to have approx. 500 of these chargers across China.
So, basically none
I own a G90 M5. While definitely a heavy car, I love having best of both worlds on demand. Having driven 7 different Tesla's previously as daily drivers, there is something convenient about being able to fill up extremely quickly when on road trips. My only issue with it is the small gas tank which means I have to refill it once a week currently with the way I drive.
I really don't like BMW's direction with Neue Klasse. It just looks stupid for the sake of being different.
My g05 X5 M60i is a great car, probably the best SUV I’ve ever owned. Fantastic gas mileage on long trips and more power than I need for when I don’t care. The Tesla interior was so cheap I couldn’t make the jump.
The PHEV X5 50e or 550e is what I want in a car. EV Range for my commute and daily stuff plus I can fill up instantly on long trips. I have 3 young kids so long stops are not ideal for me.
Agree with Neue Klasse, I’m more of an LCI guy myself when new models come around. I’m tempted to grab a g80 M3 before production stops but the idea of 3 kids kicking my Tartufo Carbon Buckets is a put off.
We just bought an Audi A6 Avant Performance which is a year old and about the same spec?
Missus is a BMW person and really wanted another, but they were not competitive. I did a 380 mile journey in it at around 85% battery and it was awesome.
Is it a better trend to add more and more batteries to increase range or keep a target 250ish mile range and over time remove batteries as they improve in power density?
First off range should be based off of 70mph/110kph since that's what actually matters when people talk about range (how far away from home can I get on a full tank?).
And 250 miles just isn't far enough to fully mitigate range anxiety. I would say about 300-350+ miles is the sweet spot that higher end makers should target.
144kWh (!!) to get 435mi range though.
Headline should be "BMW iX5 Blows Away the Competition in the US". This is lagging stuff coming out of China.
Realistically $100k for a 5 series.
Well, it's an X5 competitor, and it's apparently only $10k more than the base ICE version. Considering this is the extended range EV version, that's not terrible. TFA says pricing for the regular-range version has not been announced yet. I will be curious to see where it comes in, since this the extended range version is only $2,500 more than the PHEV. Not a lot of wiggle room in there!
Probably, yeah. Wouldn't surprise me if it got close to $110k fully equipped. We looked at the BMW iX (which this iX5 replaces), and that was going for ~$95k, although it had some insanely good lease deals.
We settled on the X5 50e. ~40-45 mile electric range with an overall ~450-500 mile range, and rather good performance when you want/need it. Total price well equipped was ~$92-94k. Also drives a lot nicer than the iX did.
We are getting an equivalent of about ~800 miles a tank. Could do better, but we only use the basic charger on 110v, which charges at a rate of ~1 mile an hour.
How much does maintenance cost? When I had a BMW, service was really expensive. Does the fact that most of your miles are on electric change the calculus? Obviously things like tires wear out based on total miles, but presumably some of the ICE-related services don't end up being as frequent?
€102,800 to €125,000 lol
Yeah I know it's a luxury car but still
...except self driving, where Tesla and Waymo have enormous leads
Holding tesla to the same standard as waymo is a wild take.
I've done 234 Waymo rides and ~5k miles driven FSD in a Model Y (HW4), all in and around the bay area.
The gap isn't that big. Tesla still needs supervision (most around navigation honestly). Waymo's have definitely done some really dumb things.
Waymo's certainly feel safer but if I had to choose which was the better "human driver" I'd put it on Tesla.
What worries me is that FSD in Tesla does seems to sometimes introduce problems in the driving behavior with new updates. I have not experienced this first hand ( don't own one ) but I am following the r/TeslaFSD and it looks like new versions are sometimes regressing on situations that were handled correctly on older versions.
This leads me to believe that FSD is not yet solved to the level we thought and training to handle a certain new thing correcty can degrade handling of other situations
I'm curious what is in your rubric to determine that a self driving car that doesn't need supervision is a worse driver than a car that does, by your own admission, need supervision.
99% of my FSD disengagements are navigation related: leaving it too late to merge into an exit lane (or CA drivers speeding up to not let me merge), not being aggressive enough at going into the opposing lane to overtake a stationary truck (though, it's a lot better at this in recent versions).
I can only recall one "oh shit" moment on an older FSD version when it carrier too much speed down a steep hill in SF and went through a 4-way stop and I had to slam the brakes. A lot of the strangeness / hesitance of previous FSD version is gone in the latest updates.
I don't expect self driving to be 100% perfect. I feel like FSD today is a 90th percentile human driver with super human reaction speed + visibility. Holding a "never gets into an accident" it too high of a bar. FSD consistently drives better than me (with the caveat of navigation: I know the city, I know which unprotected left turns are easy vs. hard, I know which routes tend to be faster due to local conditions, etc).
FSD is excellent in how reactive it is to thing you don't even see: e.g. car on the 101 at slightly drifts into my lane, I didn't notice it, FSD reacted. I feel WAY more unsafe now riding in an Uber vs. hands off FSD'ing in a Tesla.
This is all about problems with FSD.
Why is a car where you don't have disengagements a worse driver?
Do you think Tesla could do 20 million truly unsupervised rides without killing someone?
I have an iX, the predecessor for these. The freeway automatic mode works well, that’s all I really want.
Yeah, BMW's self driving is the level of self driving I want. In my X7 I drove across North Dakota and barely touched the wheel.
In endless LA stop and go it’s a miracle
Only had a handful of Waymo experiences but a lot more with Tesla. Tesla may be leading but is still not great. Driven over 100k miles in autopilot and roughly 30k in FSD miles, you still need manual intervention about 5-10 percent of the time for various reasons.
It really bums me out that Mercedes still only offers self-driving on the S class sedan.
Waymo has a lead. Tesla's lead is about the same as a Roomba's.
Seriously though, if you're considering an EV, please give the traditional US/EU/JP/KR automakers a chance. Don't try to help the planet in one way while staking its heart in another.
>Tesla's lead is about the same as a Roomba's.
What is this supposed to mean? Tesla and Roomba are in separate industries.
People often think that Tesla is neck-and-neck with Waymo, but Waymo does 500,000 unsupervised rides/week and Tesla has done 0 ... ever.
That's completely false to say Tesla has done 0 ever. They have a fleet, admittedly small, of unsupervised robotaxis operating.
Unsupervised means no one in the car or remotely monitoring in real time. Last I heard, Tesla always had one or the other.
[dead]
A scant 6,393 pounds, empty. California needs to outlaw this bullshit immediately.
Outlaw physics? Batteries weigh a lot.
Nice headline, dumb looking car though. You’re designer definitely takes it in the bellybutton.
how much is the battery to replace ? did anybody fix that ?
The battery is warranted for 8 years or 100,000 miles and you are a simple internet search away from many articles on how long EV batteries are lasting (which is generally quite long).
i checked and that warranty assumes constant unchanging weather conditions in reality these cars get used in fluctuating weather that expand and contract the battery unit and put additional wear on them, there is simply no way the warranty itself is expected to last as long as they claim
Porsche in particular have found out the hard way .
There is o evidence the typical EV will need a battery replacement within its useful life. The Leaf is the only EV with that problem, everyone else so far seems to be doing well as a battery is a lifetime part.
Only time will tell, but that is what our current data says.
I'm sure there will be exceptions but they are collectors who keep a car for 100 years.
There have been a few highly publicized situations where the pack gets damaged (road damage), and is not covered. The replacement is more the new car.
I think it’s overblown. A combination of it all just being new and getting figured out, and manufacturers selling the cars at a loss (for various reasons), but not the spare parts.
Isn't that also true if the engine and transmission also took significant road damage and requires replacement on an ICE BMW?
Breaking news: expensive components of cars are expensive.
Crate engines sell for between $3000 and $12000 for cars. Transmissions $2000 to $5000. (Prices from the first source I found, a reasonable sample range but I suspect you can find things outside the range) In stock and ready to pick-up today at a warehouse near you.
So up to $17k in material costs before the many many hours of labor involved.
They are expensive, but rarely more than the car is new.
And in the account I read they had simply run over some unknown road debris on a highway. Something most people could imagine happening to them.
how much is the engine and transmission to replace on an ICE BMW ? did anyone fix that ?