BMW's latest EV will do over 450 miles on a charge and even close its own doors.
Too many manufacturers are getting too clever in trying to reinvent the humble door handle lately, sometimes with fatal consequences. BMW is certainly joining that crowd with the upcoming electric SUV, the iX5. It's the effective replacement for the iX, the next step up the model line from the recently released iX3, and a battery-powered alternative to the two-row X5.
The iX5 has little winglets at the top of the front and rear doors containing strain meters that can detect a subtle pull without actually flexing. It's a vastly complex system that enables something surprisingly nice: power doors that actually work.
Reinventing the door handle
Pull the little winglet and the door swings itself open as far as it can, relying on embedded sensors to avoid slamming into you or the car you parked next to. Get inside, step on the brake pedal and the door quickly closes itself. This isn't novel technology by any means. A fair few cars (mostly expensive ones) have offered this in the past, but I tend to find them extremely annoying.
Most are so slow that I never want to wait for them, so sluggish that they're hard to close manually or so unreliable that I couldn't trust them to not create a power-assisted ding into the next car over. In the iX5, they actually work, adding a little more luxury to the electric version of BMW's second-best-selling machine in the US.
It's far from the only luxurious touch. The SUV I drove was the 570-horsepower, 593-pound-foot iX5 60 xDrive model, outfitted with plush, massaging seats. The matte silver paint on the outside gave it a premium look, even if the styling is polarizing, to say the least.
A shared safety experience
The driver assistance system also has some decidedly premium touches. BMW evocatively calls it "Symbiotic Drive," and though that sounds vaguely alien and ominous, it just means that the system works with you. On the highway it'll steer itself, and you can take your hands off the wheel. But if you want to change lanes, you can either tap the turn stalk, or just grab the wheel and execute the change, then let it go again.
You can speed up and even slow down manually without the system disengaging, something that definitely takes some getting used to. This isn't like an old-school cruise control system that turns off the second you touch the brake pedal or launches itself up to full speed as soon as it's engaged. You can apply the brake to bring yourself to a complete stop for a light, then lift off again and the car will smoothly resume.
It works excellently, as does the infotainment system, which runs on a curiously inclined, 17.9-inch touchscreen in the center of the dashboard. Everything is quick and responsive, and though the integrated AI assistant was a little over-eager to chime in whenever anyone in the car said "BMW," it was at least able to find restaurants and answers to all of the inane queries we expect from our agentic future overlords.
Panoramic Vision
Above that touchscreen, situated far back on the dashboard, is BMW's Panoramic Vision display. It runs from pillar to pillar, with six segments that you can customize to show everything from the current weather to arbitrary pictures of vintage BMWs. It looks a bit much at first, but it's actually quite nice to have, and is a lot easier to see than your average gauge cluster hidden behind the steering wheel.
It's certainly more useful than the final display in the iX5, the optional 14.6-inch passenger display. This is situated to the right and slightly behind the central display, to obscure it from the driver's view. That's because BMW opted not to use the same kind of perspective-limiting display technology that many other premium SUVs have used.
Instead, the system relies on the driver-monitoring camera to detect when the driver's gaze wanders to the passenger display. When it does, the screen goes blank and whatever video the passenger is watching pauses. The screen turns back on again when the driver looks away, but the passenger has to manually resume the video. As far as user experiences go, it's not ideal.
Range-topper
The iX5's most luxurious feature might be the range. The iX5 carries a prodigious 144-kilowatt-hour battery slung down below the passenger compartment. It charges at a remarkable 460kW via NACS port, enough to get from 10 to 80 percent in 22 minutes if you can find a charger with enough juice.
BMW hasn't completed its EPA testing, but says to expect more than 450 miles on a charge. To prove that's attainable, one of BMW's engineers drove over 500 miles from San Francisco to LA without stopping and still had 50 miles remaining.
My road trip was a fair bit shorter, but I did spend about six hours behind the wheel of a pair of BMW's new SUVs. The first half I was in the X5 40 xDrive, the internal combustion version. The second half was in the electric, and it was my clear preference.
Though the gasoline-burning X5 had good power at higher speeds and made a nice sound when I floored it, the throttle response on the iX5 was infinitely sharper. It is certainly heavier, but the lower center of gravity made it feel that much more engaging in the corners, and it can do the same stopping trick as the iX3, relying on the electric motors to come to a standstill so smoothly that if you close your eyes you literally can't tell when the wheels stop rolling.
Wrap-up
But there's honestly not much between the gas-powered X5 and battery-powered iX5. That's a big change of positioning compared to the even more polarizing iX and the prior-generation X5. Though similar in many regards, those two looked and drove nothing alike.
For this generation, BMW is bringing the family together, making the internal combustion and battery-electric versions look nigh identical. They're even pricing them similarly, with the plug-in X5 50e starting at $77,500, and the iX5 starting at $79,800.
Maybe this, combined with the generous range, will finally help break down some of the EV stigma that still poisons the American automotive landscape. If not, perhaps the cool, automatic doors will woo people over. Yes, you can get them on the gas-powered X5, too, but they cost extra there.