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BMW iX5 Blows Away the Competition with 460-KW Charging, 435-Mile Range (insideevs.com)
22 points by 01-_- 1 hour ago | hide | past | favorite | 56 comments
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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.

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.


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!


taillights look like a vinfast.


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?

TBH even ICE BMWs from recent years all look like fugly tanks

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

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 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.


144kWh (!!) to get 435mi range though.

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

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

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.


Realistically $100k for a 5 series.

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.


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!

A scant 6,393 pounds, empty. California needs to outlaw this bullshit immediately.

Outlaw physics? Batteries weigh a lot.

...except self driving, where Tesla and Waymo have enormous leads

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.

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.

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.

Do you think Tesla could do 20 million truly unsupervised rides without killing someone?

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.

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.


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 ?



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