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There are two ways (well, at least two, but bear with me) to make an electric car. The first is to make it look very different indeed from anything else you (and preferably anyone else) manufacture. This is what BMW used to do with its first uniquely purpose-built battery electric cars – the odd little i3 and the (still) breathtaking i8 sports car (both out of production and near-instant classics, of course).
The second approach is the one BMW mostly uses now: to make its “i” electric vehicle versions of any given model in the range. Hence the i5 Touring, which is the all-battery powered version of the 5 Touring, is distinguished by appropriate badging and an almost fully filled-in version of the famous kidney grille, with only a slim LED light where the chrome usually sits.
The M60 designation refers to the 600 or so horsepower at your disposal, and this top-of-the-range i5 will take you to 60mph from rest in 3.9 seconds and on to 100mph by the time you’ve counted another five seconds (where legal).
It does that courtesy of a hefty 81.2kWh battery pack and a motor on each axle (the lesser M40 version makes do with rear wheel drive). You can even turn on a rather subtle “engine” soundtrack.
For performance, a traditional M5 driver ought not feel short-changed (at least in that sense). So, no complaints.
Of course, the other distinctive thing about the i5 is less visible – the price, which is about double that of the mild hybrid version (with equivalent disparities for leasing) – say £57,000 to something closer to £100,000, depending on your taste for extras.
In the case of my test car that amounted to a generous £15,000 worth of kit (as much as many of us would spend on a whole motor car), and I thought it might be of interest to list the goodies that don’t actually come as standard: adaptive suspension (it works); panoramic glass sunroof; carbon exterior styling; “crafted clarity controls”; interior camera (it takes selfies, and no, I’m not sure about it either); parking assistant (still afraid of using that); head-up display (essential); heated steering wheel (nice to have); front and rear heated seats (ditto).
THE SPEC
BMW i5 M60 xDrive Touring
Price: £100,555 (as tested, range starts at £69,945)
Propulsion: Twin electric motor, powered by 81.2kWh battery
Power (hp): 593
Top speed (mph): 143
0-60 (seconds): 3.9
Economy (Wh/mile): 312
Range (miles): circa 250
CO2 emissions: 0
You also get some funky interior mood lighting – blue for cruising, red for when you’ve got the hazards on), and a superb Bowers and Wilkins sound system.
I was interested to see that BMW still have a big dial on the centre console to control the entertainment system, in-car info and the satnav, but the excellent voice and steering wheel controls make it pretty much redundant (unless your co-driver wants to help out/interfere). And that also means not mixing the volume control with the automatic gear selector, both with pretty little crystal stalks.
It looks classy on the outside, feels classy on the inside and is moderately practical with it.
It does have a fairly high lip to the boot, and a slightly shallow floor, but I found it can cope with smaller bits of furniture perfectly adequately.
The boxy back end (a tradition firmly established with the original 5 Series Touring, launched in 1991) is a sensible move – a sporty fastback line would make the back too cramped to be much use.
For simple driving pleasure, I reckon BMW have done the best job with the smaller i4, which has an instantly attractive feel to it. The i5 is an ideal companion to cheer you on, say, a long journey back from Walsall’s Poundland Stadium (that’s the actual name, not a cheap gag), on a damp Tuesday night having scraped through to the next round of the Carabao Cup.
It’s so intelligent and helpful that it will use your satnav destination to calculate the optimal route to the nearest hyper-charger (not any old charger), where you can top up (in my case) in five minutes, greatly alleviating range anxiety (which is a decent 250 miles, in my experience).
And the best thing of all? It’s an electric car that isn’t an SUV. That’s the way to do it. Let’s hope it catches on.
