June 20, 2024 • 46 mins
BMW’s new 5-series offers buyers the option of electric or gas. We drive both and decide which one we like more. BMW product planner John Kelly joins hosts Tony Quiroga and Eddie Alterman to discuss the new 5-series and BMW’s electrification strategy.
For more on the BMW’s new 5-series visit Car and Driver online.
See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.
Mark as Played
Transcript
Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
Speaker 1 (00:04):
Hello, and welcome to Car and Drivers Into Cars, a
podcast from iHeartMedia is Ruby Studio, brought to you by
eBay Motors. I'm Tony ki Roger, the editor in chief
of Car and Driver, and I'm joined by my co host,
former editor in chief and current Chief Brand and Content Officer,
Eddie Alterman, and together We're Into Cars.
Speaker 2 (00:22):
Each episode of this podcast covers a new car we
think is worthy of your attention. The cars we select
for this podcast may feature a novel design, cutting edge engineering,
or offer something entirely new. We'll be covering the stories
behind the cars too, answering the whys and exploring the whats.
We'll drive the cars and let you listen in, and
then we'll sit down with the people who made the
(00:42):
cars to answer our questions about them. Come along for
the ride and you'll hear it all the good, the bad,
and the ugly in the way that only carent Driver delivers.
So today we've got two BMW's to drive and talk about.
Two BMW's, but they're the same car. It's the five series,
but the gas version and the EV version.
Speaker 1 (01:07):
And it basically comes down to a customer's choice. Do
you want battery or gas tank charging station or gas station.
Do you want a turbot charge in line six or
an electric motor? I mean, it's an interesting choice, and
it's a choice that more and more people are going
to be facing over the next five ten years.
Speaker 2 (01:21):
BMW has a really interesting approach here within the envelope
of the five series. You can get a mild hybrid
gas engine or a full EV. You can just pick
which technology you want.
Speaker 1 (01:35):
Right, it comes down to what do you want, what
fits your needes. They have both options and you get
the exact same car essentially. And maybe it comes from
being a little gun shy after building something like the
BMWi three, which launched about a decade ago, carbon fiber structure.
It was a purpose built EV. It was super practical,
It had some quirkiness that people sort of expected of evs,
(01:57):
but it just didn't sell. So this this might be
a reaction against that. That must have been a pretty
expensive mistake.
Speaker 2 (02:03):
Yeah, the I three was super exotic. The interior was incredible.
It had suicide doors, these tiny little sort of bicycle tires.
They built a concept car that was actually pretty affordable,
didn't have a ton of range, and it sort of
looked like a science experiment.
Speaker 1 (02:19):
Yeah, did you ever look at the rear end of
that thing? It looked like it was swallowing a nine
to eleven. If you look at the rear bumper of
that car, it looks like it's just a nine to
eleven has driven into the I three and just you
can just see the bottom of its tail.
Speaker 2 (02:29):
Like, I'll have to take a look. But they are
sort of gunshy, I would say.
Speaker 1 (02:33):
And EV adoption, the timeline has kept changing. Having two powertrains,
an electric and a gas one on the same platform
allows them to have flexibility. So if the market is
turning away from eves, if the market's turning towards gas
or vice versa, they have some flexibility to move more
evs or more gas cars. And I think that makes
total sense. Yeah, that's right.
Speaker 2 (02:54):
You can scale production of one model based on consumer
demand instead of shoving this stuff down people's throats, you know.
And I think that's been a lot of that EV backlash.
It's been due to people saying, you know what, I
still want an internal combustion car. The ultimate freedom is
choice and BMW allows people to have that freedom. And
(03:15):
the five series is really an icon of the sports
Sinanan World and the E thirty four version, the E
thirty nine version. These were sort of seen as the
pinnacle of the mid size sports sedan, and so I
think the question before us today is is the electric
a better sports sedan than the gas version.
Speaker 1 (03:36):
So today we have the top of the five series ranges.
We have the top gas engine car, which is the
five forty I X drive, and then we've got the
I five M sixty. So we've got the top ones
until the M five shows up. The five forty in
traditional BMWA has terbocharged in line six, and I want
to see how that compares to the I five M sixty.
I mean, the I five M sixty has a lot
(03:57):
more power. It's got five hundred and ninety three horsepower.
It's also got a lot more weight. Yes, it is
a bit heavier, but it is. It's also more expensive.
It's close to twenty thousand dollars more expensive than the
more but it got a lot more power. You got
more than two hundred more horsepower.
Speaker 2 (04:13):
And there's three levels to the I five. Right, there's
the rear drive you know, base car, which is three
hundred and thirty five horse power, which is plenty quick
the three hundred and eighty nine horse power Extrive forty version,
and then this top Dog, which, as you say, is
almost six hundred horse power, which is you know, adequate.
They really look very very similar. You'd be hard pressed
(04:34):
to see which is the EV and which is the
ice version. But let's go out into the parking lot
do a little walk around and see what those differences
really are.
Speaker 1 (04:46):
We're standing in front of the I five Eddie and
the five forty. I can't see the badges. Which one's
the gas one, which one's the electric. It is extraordinarily
hard to tell. They're the same.
Speaker 2 (04:59):
They're the same. I mean they both have the same
plastic grill. One has an M badge, so maybe that's
the gas one. But then I look at the BMW
rondel and it has a blue ring around.
Speaker 1 (05:13):
Oh yeah, that's the Oh and it's got that on
the wheels too.
Speaker 2 (05:16):
Okay, so that's but the wheels are exactly the same. Yes,
the height of the cars are exactly the same, the
size is exactly the same, The body is the same.
Speaker 1 (05:24):
They've got the same body kit.
Speaker 2 (05:26):
If you look at the five forty, it has that
sort of thick rocker section you go, oh, that's the evy. No,
it's the exactly the same.
Speaker 1 (05:35):
Yeah, this one just doesn't have a battery in it
in that space. That's basically it. I mean, if you
look really close, the tires are different. It's the same
kind of tire, but the I five has a little
bit more tire. It's a wider tire. Yeah, and it's
got the new HL rating for tires, which is for
heavy load. Because this is a big boy at like
over fifty two hundred pounds. Oh my god. And so
what is the five. It's also a big boy. I
(05:58):
think it's around forty three hundred pounds. Let's walk around
the back. Okay, they don't even show off the exhaust pipe,
so you get this like pseudo diffuser on both cars,
but you can't even see the exhaust.
Speaker 2 (06:08):
Oh difference, different license plates and one is red and
one is blue. But other than that, it's nothing. And
I do have to say these are some of the
least grotesque is coming out of the Doctor Font's laboratory.
Speaker 1 (06:22):
Yeah. Yeah, they've been edited for sure.
Speaker 2 (06:25):
Yeah, looking at you, XM, these look like proper luxury cars,
high reard.
Speaker 1 (06:30):
Deck, the proportions are right, it's got the long dash
to axle, which is the distance from the middle of
the front wheel to the windshield. That shows it's not
a front wheel drive car basically exactly. They're pretty.
Speaker 2 (06:41):
They do have that kind of angularity and some of
the graphics that is so popular these days.
Speaker 1 (06:46):
But yeah, it's not the brick that the I seven
and the seventh series are. It looks more like a
five series has always looked. Here's another Easter egg. Oh
on the B pillars A five middle post of the cars.
A little five. That's cool in case you forget what
you're driving.
Speaker 2 (07:01):
How do we feel about the electric wearing the M badge?
Speaker 1 (07:06):
Well, I mean it has almost six hundred horse bar,
so I feel okay with it. Okay, I can make
I can make.
Speaker 2 (07:11):
Peace with it. Well that's the xterior. Let's talk about
the interior.
Speaker 1 (07:15):
Let's up inside. Would you hear that? It's got startup music.
We're looking at carbon fiber trim. It's got this huge
center screen, which is a touch screen. I like this touch.
When you turn the hazard lights on, illuminates.
Speaker 2 (07:36):
The the whole hype lights.
Speaker 1 (07:39):
The whole hYP lights up, so you can't just leave
your hazard lights on. It's got the M sports seats,
which are really comfortable. It's got the M steering wheel
with a little red piece of leather in the middle,
so you know what the top is, which is kind
of hilarious.
Speaker 2 (07:51):
Decently upright windshield for cars these days.
Speaker 1 (07:54):
That's very true. Yeah, and this one's got a big.
Speaker 2 (07:57):
Hud head up display, which, yeah, exactly always turn off.
Speaker 1 (08:00):
I hate those. Oh you don't like those. I'm a
big fan.
Speaker 2 (08:02):
I find it so distracting. I'm not a toimecap pilot.
I'm not Maverick. I don't need it. I'm not even Goose.
Speaker 1 (08:11):
It has the latest version of I Drive. BMW still
has eye drive. I think it's like I Drive thirty
seven point two. But yeah, so you still get the
big knob, you still get the big control now. But
you know, mercifully, BMW puts a touchscreen into this thing too.
Speaker 2 (08:24):
And I like the width of this car. You know,
it's so a little less closely coupled than the I four.
It feels a little bit more luxurious. There's tons of
leg and knee room. Yeah, it's super comfy. This would
be an amazing cross country cruiser if it wasn't an EV.
Speaker 1 (08:40):
Although it can fast charge pretty quickly, not as quick
as some of the fastest cars. It is a DC
fast charger which can do up to two hundred and
five kilowatts. It's a four hundred volt system, which isn't
you know the eight hundred volt system of a pors
Of ty Can or some of the Hyundai cars, So
it can't fast charge quite as fast as those.
Speaker 2 (08:57):
Yeah, that's really the state of the r right now,
the eight hundred. And it's funny that, you know, portion
Audi have it and so does Hyundaikia Genesis, right, yeah,
I know. Well it's incredibly quiet at idle.
Speaker 1 (09:11):
Yes it has. It has a really nice idol. But
you know, the in our testing, the five forty is
only like two or three decibels louder than this at idle.
So they've really masked the machinery.
Speaker 2 (09:24):
You know, it's going to be interesting to dry these
things because motor is right in the middle of the
name yep, and for the longest time that meant engine YEP.
Now it means actual motor.
Speaker 1 (09:38):
And it meant in in line six for the longest time,
which at least they still have it. They still make it.
I mean, you can get a four cylinder turbot with
the five thirty I, and then you can get the
five forty I, which has you know, the traditional inline
six at PMW has been making for els. God bless them.
I caught half of the twelve it is. It basically is.
It's so smooth, it's so quiet, it's so refined, but
(09:59):
you still get sound. You don't get the sound in
the electric Yeah you don't. Let's go step in the
five forty and see if we can pick out any differences.
Sounds good. So here we are in the five forty I.
(10:19):
What do you not first? Yeah, it doesn't have the
carbon fiber trim, but otherwise it's identical. It doesn't have
a little red stripe on the steering wheel either, so
that's I'm not buying this one. Start it up. Let's
see what it sounds like. Okay, okay, it's very quiet.
It's got a nice little hum to it.
Speaker 2 (10:36):
Yeah, but everything is exactly as it is in the
electric version.
Speaker 1 (10:41):
Yeah, it's exactly the same. It's it's really kind of freaky.
Oh you get it's a cometer. Oh right, it's acometer
instead of a power percentage gauge. How do you feel
about those gauges? Remember the old BMW gauges. They used
to take such pride in having large, clear, round analog gauges,
and now this is what the companies doing. No, it's
been a.
Speaker 2 (11:01):
Long descent from the days of video and Jaeger gauges,
or as they say in the Watch World, ja ja.
Speaker 1 (11:11):
That's what they watchers say. This looks like you remember
that that video game Tempest. These are the Tempest where
you're it's Tempest. And the designers must have played Tempest
at an early age and decided that this is what
they want in their gauges. And it's not. They're not
as clear, they don't work as well.
Speaker 2 (11:28):
Look, this is an Apple Watch versus a Rolex argument,
right right right once you rather have the analog thing,
you know, especially in an analog seeming car or a
car that is old school internal combustion.
Speaker 1 (11:41):
I want real gauges. All right, let's try.
Speaker 2 (11:44):
I think what BMW is trying to do here is
normalize the EV version as just another powertrain choice.
Speaker 1 (11:53):
Oh interesting, Yeah, it's kind of like it's no different
than when they offered a diesel in a gas There's
really no difference exterior or into or your wise. You
just have a different decometer, and that's basically the difference here.
Speaker 2 (12:03):
You want the four, you want the six, or you
want the uh you know the battery?
Speaker 1 (12:12):
Oh that engines so smooth in the inline six is
it doesn't matter if you're at one thousand rpm or
six thousand rpm. It's just a slightly louder thing, but
you feel no vibration coming through the car. It's just
isn't an amazing It's so wonderful.
Speaker 2 (12:25):
I love that they've stuck with it, and I think
our mission today try to figure out which is the
best sports stand between.
Speaker 1 (12:38):
Two Yeah, which one has more E thirty nine ers
full late nineties early two thousands five series, which I
think is the high water mark. I do to think
it's the high water mark. I do too.
Speaker 2 (12:47):
That car is great, But you know that car weighed.
Speaker 1 (12:52):
Six thirty seven. I mean we thought it was heavy
at the time. I know it was heavy because it
was heavier than it's pressor.
Speaker 2 (13:01):
But as when the engines so went everything else in
that car. It was just so incredibly smooth and progressive
and predictable, and you knew where you were at all times.
Speaker 1 (13:12):
Oh yeah, BMW's pumping in some engine sound that's coming
out of there speakers. Yeah sounds good. Though it does
sound good, it sounds real.
Speaker 2 (13:22):
So much of the car's personality is in the engine.
It's the heart of the car, you know.
Speaker 1 (13:28):
Yeah, you just lose it. You just lose it and
you gain acceleration. They're fun. I mean, electrics are super fun.
But yeah, I mean the personality of a BMW was
a lot of it was built out of the inline
six and how flu it was and how different it
was from every competitor V sixes and even from competitor
inline sixes. Yeah.
Speaker 2 (13:47):
And my beef with evs when you drive a bunch
of them back to back is they all start to
feel the same. I don't care if it's like a
Lucid Sapphire or an Ionic five from Hyundai. They all
have the same power delivery and they all really have
that same character.
Speaker 1 (14:05):
They try to fake it with the fake noises which
sort of sound like, you know, anywhere from like the
Jetson's car to an angry robot, but it just doesn't
do it for me, and it doesn't really. Since there's
only one gear, you're not going through the gears, there's
no change in the experience you've taken such an important
part of driving a car out of it an important
(14:27):
part of a brand's personality too.
Speaker 2 (14:29):
Yes, So what's the differentiator at that point between evs.
It's brand whatever that means, it's styling its interior. I
will say, However, there are some edge cases to this, Okay,
like the Porsche Ti Kon. Somehow that thing still feels
like a Porsche.
Speaker 1 (14:49):
It does, and for me, you sit in it and
it feels you're sitting so low. They really played that up.
You can see the front fenders. They really did it
right so that you feel, even though you're in a sedan,
it feels like you're in a sports car. Yeah, let's
do a quick launch. Okay, Oh, it's pretty hard. My
lobships watch is super hard. Oh my god.
Speaker 2 (15:13):
Nauseating, great, nauseating.
Speaker 1 (15:16):
That's fantastic.
Speaker 2 (15:18):
You know, humans weren't engineered to go to accelerate that quickly.
Speaker 1 (15:24):
It's like, if you travel faster than a horse, will
you die? Maybe? Yeah. Now we're on the highway. I
mean it's really quiet as uh, you know, as you
expect from a mid sized BMW.
Speaker 2 (15:37):
At the five series Tony, there is a v sun
Rogue ahead of us with a neurbur ring track sticker
on the back of it.
Speaker 1 (15:44):
Will you catch up to him? Check this out? Oh,
it's so good. It's so wonderful. And there's no change
in like, you don't feel any bad vibes coming through
the car at all. It's just magic. It's just a wonderful,
wonderful magic in Line six still has a ton of
(16:13):
grip on the skid pad. It was about the same
as the as the I five. And it's so balance.
I mean, it's not understeering, it's not oversteering. You know.
The all four tires are working equally hard, it feels like,
and this one doesn't have the fifty to fifty balance
that BMW's used to be famous for. It's a little
bit nose heavy, but you kind of stepped away from that. However,
(16:36):
the electric is fifty to fifty weight distribution, and.
Speaker 2 (16:41):
You can still control the cornery attitude of these cars
with the throttle.
Speaker 1 (16:47):
Yeah, the steering is pretty asleep. You're not getting a
ton of feel through the steering, and even in this
sport mode, it's really really sort of overly light and
that's a shame. Okay, want to hear my theory about
BMW's I do.
Speaker 2 (17:05):
They're always moving on to the next thing. They're always
putting their deepest talent in the next technology. You know,
when Europe was making great sports cars, they focused on
sports sedans. When everybody caught up and started making great
sports edans, they had shifted to making great SUVs, and
(17:27):
the sports dans suffered a little bit, and they weren't
quite as good as they had been.
Speaker 1 (17:33):
Yeah, because X five was sort of like the first
great driving suv see right.
Speaker 2 (17:39):
Okay, and they made great SUVs and even the X one,
the front drive one, the rear drive one was incredible,
but even the front drive one was good, much better
than the Mercedes equivalent.
Speaker 1 (17:51):
You think they put all the talent into what's next?
I do? I think.
Speaker 2 (17:55):
You know, they've moved a lot of people from what
I understand, off the M cars and in to the
I cars, and they're really like front loading a lot
of their talent into what's next.
Speaker 1 (18:06):
That's how I four feels. I four feels like the
best people at BMW, the people who had all the
institutional knowledge of how to make a car handle, how
to make a car steer, or put on that car,
and then they brought back some of that magic. It's
really really great. Oh so good, I mean so smooth.
If somebody said there's a V twelve under the hood,
(18:28):
you'd be like, oh, yeah, totally, exactly, totally, it's so smooth.
Speaker 2 (18:32):
And all the piped in engine noise in the world,
which there is some can't really replace that, or the
feel under the ball of your foot.
Speaker 1 (18:42):
Yeah, and just being able to downshift a few gears
and just bring the engine alive because it is sort
of a living thing. I totally agree.
Speaker 2 (18:49):
Like, you know, this is the closest that man has
come to creating an animal. The internal combustion motor car
and the engine is the heart of it. The thing
is growling. You have to kind of innate connection to
it because of the sounds it's making. But there is
(19:10):
an opacity to an ev you know, there is that
like what's really going on here? You know there is
a motor. There's a motor that's moving, but it feels remote.
Speaker 1 (19:22):
It does, it's not the same. Let's see if.
Speaker 2 (19:25):
You know BMW in the I five can give us
some of that feel.
Speaker 1 (19:30):
Yeah, let's take this five point forty back and go
step into the I five and see what happens. Okay,
now we're inside the I five M sixty.
Speaker 2 (19:46):
Let's start it up and see what it sounds like.
Who foreboding? Does Industrial Light and Magic get a royalty
for I was going to use a really dated reference.
It's close encounters. I think I beat you with that. No, No,
close Encounters is like eighty three or something.
Speaker 1 (20:06):
I think it's like seventy eight. Oh, okay, all right,
let's get go on. Put it in drive. Sounds good,
Oh it's silent. I know.
Speaker 2 (20:16):
BMW spends a lot of time and energy on the
sounds that its cars make, from the turn signals to
the door chimes to all that stuff. And I'm sure
they got some tricks up their sleeve when it comes
to ev sounds.
Speaker 1 (20:32):
But we'll see. Well, it has this iconic sounds which
the other car also has. You can sort of turn
that on and off to see how or to make
it louder or quieter. What you want to do?
Speaker 2 (20:43):
Does it sound like a batmobile? So car Driver, whenever
it tests a car, it produces a track sheet. And
I'm looking at the one from the I five sixty
X drive right now, and I'm looking at curbweight. Okay,
it's five two hundred and twenty five pounds, almost perfectly
(21:05):
distributed front rear.
Speaker 1 (21:06):
Yep. But you can do that with the electric car,
and I used to be such an important part of BMW's.
Speaker 2 (21:12):
That was a huge part of their brand, but you know,
a lot of it was marketing. Oh oh man, that's
brutal acceleration. Okay, So crazier acceleration from this car, just
in that little little run from a much heavier car. Okay,
(21:32):
the five point forty I'm looking at the trackshet that
weighed forty three hundred and sixty five, not a lightweight,
fifty four point two percent of its masses on the front,
forty five point eight percent on the rear. So this
is a much heavier car, but it's also much much quicker.
Speaker 1 (21:52):
But I bet the center of gravity of this car
is lower because you've got the battery pack in the floor,
so you've got that mass all in the floor. Yeah,
So it'll be interesting to see how it handles compared
to the other one. The extra weight in a good
place isn't necessarily a bad thing. They put a little
more tire underneath to compensate for the extra weight, but
(22:13):
both are about point nine g. I do miss the
little vibrations of the engine. I miss the intake noise.
Speaker 2 (22:21):
This feels very clinical and anti dine in comparison. The
noise is such a huge part of that car, the
five forty, I mean, such a great sound it it
engine makes.
Speaker 1 (22:35):
And then having I mean this is a one gear.
I have one gear here. I'm always in the right gear. Yeah,
and I've got a ton of torque. It's got amazing
accelerator response. Notice I'm not saying throttle response.
Speaker 2 (22:48):
Let's do an acceleration run and see how it stacks
up to the five forty.
Speaker 1 (22:52):
You guys ready instantaneous torque.
Speaker 2 (22:55):
Oh that's a lot of mass moving real quick.
Speaker 1 (23:01):
Oh man, yeah, sixty and three three I think it was.
Speaker 2 (23:05):
Yeah, Okay, let's look at the numbers. Sixty in three
three versus the five forties sixty in four seconds.
Speaker 1 (23:12):
Which is still remarkably quick. The quarter mile they really
start to separate. That's where you really see the difference
in horsepower in the quarter This one did eleven and
a half at one twenty four and the other one
I think it was twelve and a half at one eleven. So, yeah,
that's right. Gap. It just keeps growing. The gap just
keeps growing as you accelerate harder and harder. It's crazy.
Speaker 2 (23:31):
Yeah, at one hundred and fifty or one hundred and forty,
the gas car is at twenty two point one seconds.
Speaker 1 (23:36):
How quick is this one fifteen point four? It's crazy.
You feel the torque, you feel the power, but it's
just one linear blast. You don't get the change in
the engine revolutions. You don't get the gear shifts. And
there's drama in that. I mean there's drama in this
because you're pressed so hard into the seat, but there's
(23:57):
drama in those gear shifts. There's real character.
Speaker 2 (23:59):
Yeah, it does it a certain way that you have
to appreciate. You know, it's a lot harder to make
a gear change that smooth. It's a lot harder to
make all those reciprocating parts move in concert that way.
And I think you innately just appreciate that.
Speaker 1 (24:16):
So for me, when a machine works hard is when
I find it most rewarding. Electric cars don't ever feel
like they're working that hard. They just do it, and
they do it like sort of blindly, like a with
a flat face. It just gets it done, and it's
brutal and it's quick, but a GASCAR really feels like
(24:38):
it's working to do it.
Speaker 2 (24:39):
It's uncanny Valley, it really is. You know, this thing
is robotic. Now, let's see if you can change the
cornery attitude in this car the way you could with
the five forty.
Speaker 1 (24:55):
I mean it feels similar. I feel like it feels
a little bit heavier. The steering actually feels a little
nicer than the gas car. Yeah, definitely, mean what the
tires are doing. You can feel what the tires are doing. Yeah,
a little bit. The steering feels nicer, there's more feedback,
(25:15):
there's more waiting. It just feels like a bit more
connected in a way that the other steering didn't. It
also speaks to your theory that maybe they've got the
best people on the electric car.
Speaker 2 (25:26):
What about breaking, did you get a sense of you know,
break field modulation. You know, because this has a both
regenerative and friction braking system.
Speaker 1 (25:38):
It's blended beautifully. A break pedal feels just as good
as it does in the five forty, And the five
forty has a really nice break pedal, super predictable, really linear,
it's not doing anything weird and grabbing as the handoff
from the regenerative breaks to the friction breaks happens. I
can't really discern a difference. I mean, it feels really great,
well tuned. Huh. Yeah, we've used five percent of the
battery just in the time that we've left the office.
(26:00):
That's crazy. A couple of short acceleration blasts and that's
what happens. But yeah, I mean the immediacy of the
response of an electric car is intoxicating. I do have
to say, like in passing in our five to sixty tests,
basically what we try to do in the five to
sixty test is recreate what happens on the street. In
the street, you're not setting your car up for launch control,
you're not doing all that nonsense. You're just matting the throttle.
(26:22):
So we roll at five miles an hour, stomp on
the accelerator, and the difference between the gas car and
the electric car is remarkable. The gas car does it
in five seconds, so it adds a second to its
zero to sixty. In the electric car, I think you
only add three tenses, yes, three, six, yeah, So I
mean this thing you can line up to anyone at
(26:45):
a dragstrip. You don't have to do very much to
prepare the car. You really don't have to do very
much more than just stomping on the accelerator and flooring
it and making sure that you hold your foot down.
I mean, it's just that simple.
Speaker 2 (26:55):
I can say anecdotally that EV drivers, EV sedan drivers
drive like complete maniacs. They're going for all the whole shots.
I mean they're put in the accord and ultimate guys
to shame.
Speaker 1 (27:08):
Yeah, well you can do it. I mean you just
you just squeeze the you squeeze the accelerator. You're always
in the right gear. You have this all this immediate torque,
and the car just delivers the acceleration. Let's try it now.
Let's let's try it if we shut the iconic sounds
off and accelerate. Okay, oh yeah, that's even more robotic.
It's just it doesn't even make any noise. It's soulless,
(27:31):
but it's quick. I mean it snaps your head back. Yeah,
it does, go back to iconic sounds. I'm not hating
it that much. In this car, the iconic sounds. This
actually sounds like an internal combustion engine. They've really faked it.
Speaker 2 (27:47):
I think it sounds more like, you know, a kind
of ev sounds signature, which I appreciate, like it.
Speaker 1 (27:54):
Should sound like what it is.
Speaker 2 (27:55):
There's a little grit at the bottom end. But I'm sorry,
sitting in the passenger seat, I like the experience of
the five forty.
Speaker 1 (28:06):
Bet you were more involved too. I mean, anytime you're shifting,
even if it's through the paddles of an automatic, you're
still taking control of the car.
Speaker 2 (28:16):
And that's ultimately what a sports dance about. Feedback sensitivity.
Speaker 1 (28:22):
Joy. Although I gotta say I'll take the steering of
this one every day of the week. It's really sweet. Fair.
Speaker 2 (28:30):
They gotta do something to keep you involved.
Speaker 1 (28:32):
Yeah, what do these things cost? Oh? Yeah, that's a
good question. I think this one starts around in the
high eighties for the electric and there aren't too many options.
And the five forty is I think it's in the
sixty six thousand dollars range base price, but this one
has at least ten thousand dollars worth of options on
it to make it basically the same spec as the
(28:55):
I'm sixty. Okay, what do you like better? Like the
five forty. I think I'd buy the five forty. How
about you? Eddie? You always want to buy one.
Speaker 2 (29:05):
I always want one to buy one. It's a five
forty for me, Doug. I just love that straight six.
Speaker 1 (29:10):
Yeah, I don't really care that this is quicker. Four
seconds of sixty is quick enough, and even in the
rolling start the real world number five seconds is still
plenty quick, still quick, and it's a really enjoyable five
seconds because the car is straining, you're going through the gears,
you're hearing it. It's special and it works for me.
That's the one i'd buy. Yeah, I agree, Well, that
(29:32):
was fun. I know which car we would choose. But
who are these cars? Four? I mean, they're very different cars.
Who's each one? Four? Yeah?
Speaker 2 (29:40):
And I think the EV world is sort of separated
into the halfs and have knots, right, those people who
have a garage or or regular place to charge it
in those who don't. For car like this, a performance
EV that's draining the battery at a pretty alarming rate,
you need a place to plug in, if not every night,
(30:00):
than every other night.
Speaker 1 (30:01):
It totally has to work for you, and that's such
a big element of it. And it also depends on
the tire size and the wheel size. The nineteens get
two hundred and fifty six miles of range in the
EPA testing. If you go to twenty inches you get
the best range of two hundred and seventy eight miles.
But if you do what we did and have the
twenty one inch wheels with the summer tires, your range
goes all the way down to two hundred and forty miles. Yeah.
Speaker 2 (30:23):
It's not just the size, it's also the compound, right, Yeah, totally.
To answer the question of who would buy the EV
over the Straight six, it's someone who welcomes our robot
overlords because that thing is dead eyed. It's insanely quick,
it's impressive as hell, but it's soulless.
Speaker 1 (30:44):
Yeah. Yeah, the soul's gone.
Speaker 2 (30:45):
Yeah, and BMWs should be about souls definitely.
Speaker 1 (30:51):
When we return, we're speaking with product planner John Kelly,
who works in BMW's US Product and Strategy department.
Speaker 2 (30:56):
Stay Tuned, Welcome back to Car and Drivers into Cars.
Product planner John Kelly works in BMW's US Product and
Strategy department, and he's responsible for both the electric and
gas versions of the BMW five series. Welcome to in
(31:20):
the cars, John, We've driven both of these cars back
to back and we have some thoughts and questions.
Speaker 1 (31:25):
Can you talk about the strategy of building an electric
and GASCAR off the same platform. The cluster platform allows
you to do that. What are some of the benefits
and what are some of the compromises.
Speaker 3 (31:36):
Yes, So, as you mentioned, the current architecture that the
five series is built on is referred to as our
cluster architecture. It's actually a very very flexible architecture. It
allows us to build many different drive trains on the
same chassis. So in the US we have the combustion
engine cars, and it's not just combustion engine PEV or
full BEV, but even within those there's a lot of
(31:58):
complexity and a lot of variation, and this is really
important to us for us to be able to offer
the customers exactly what they want. And in this case,
we have one architecture where we have combustion engines. In
the US, we have a four cylinder and a traditional
BMWN nine six, which is really fantastic. We have the
plug in hybrid, so this is a six cylinder plug
in hybrid that comes out this summer. This car makes
(32:21):
over four hundred and eighty horse power. But then we
also have the fully electric variant, and even there we
have we actually have three different models, but two of
them are quite similar. So we have the forties in
re real drive with one E machine. We have the
X drive forty two E machines, one front, one rear,
and then we have our performance variant with nearly six
hundred horsepower. That's the one I drive every day and
(32:41):
the car is awesome.
Speaker 2 (32:42):
That's what we drove too. So how do you achieve
that platform flexibility? I mean, short wave of answer asking
that question is where do all the batteries go?
Speaker 3 (32:53):
Yeah, and it's pretty straightforward, and actually it's something that
I hope you recognize when you were driving the car
is the batteries are below the floor, so they're between
the wheelbase, between the track below the floor. Despite the
battery being quite heavy, it gives you a nice low
center of gravity and the carstial handles like you would
expect to a mid size BMW sports sedan to handle.
But you mentioned what does it take to be able
(33:14):
to do this in one platform and the answer is
it's not that simple. It's not as easy as just
let's say, taking out the combustion engine. It's really quite
complex because you need to start with a platform that's
flexible enough to allow you to do this without significant downsides.
So if you were to just, let's say, take out
the combustion engine, you're going to have major inefficiencies in
terms of packaging and weight and so forth. But by
(33:37):
using our cluster architecture, which is very flexible, it allows
us to package these components in a very intelligent way,
such as having the battery below the floor. We have
what we call a heat unit, so it's a highly
integrated drive train unit, so has your electric motor, transmission
and power electronics all in one housing. And fitting that
in the front where you can fit a rather long
(33:58):
inline six engine not terribly difficult. But in the rear
it is where in the rear typically you have a
differential and not much else. So by using an architecture
that is adaptable and can fit these components quite easily,
you end up being able to fit them without many
downsides in terms of packaging.
Speaker 1 (34:16):
I have a question about the BMWi three and sort
of how that relates to the cluster architecture in the
current five series. The I three was a pretty radical
ev carbon fiber structure. It was pretty exotic vehicle and
now it seems like you've shifted over to a conventional sedan.
Is that sort of a reaction to how the I
three did in the marketplace or was it an expense thing?
(34:38):
How does the I three fit into the strategy today?
Speaker 3 (34:41):
Yeah, that's a really good question, and to be honest,
that's one that I love talking about because I've been
with the company for twenty years, and prior to the
ten years i'm in product management, I was in product engineering.
I had the pleasure of, while I was in product
engineering of working on the I three and I eight
and launching those products, so I know them in a
very detailed technical way, and the cars were very much
(35:02):
ahead of their times in many ways. That carbon fiber
passenger cell was spectacular, lightweight, very strong, and so forth.
A little challenging to produce, of course, but that was
I would say, a very unique example basically a two
door hatch which has a relatively small or limited market
in the US, and it used technology that was perfect
(35:23):
for a low volume kind of niche product like the
I three was, but it doesn't scale as well to
big volume products like what we have today with I four,
I five, I seven.
Speaker 1 (35:33):
Yeah, I three was really an exotic car.
Speaker 3 (35:36):
It was, and you look at the construction, the fact
that had the range extender, it had a heat pump,
which at the time was not very common in electro vehicles.
So it really had a lot of fantastic technology which
we learned a lot from and we learned a lot
about how customers use the cars and what they expect,
and all that transfers into the future products that we're planning.
(35:56):
But of course it didn't make sense to continue with
that particular car when we want to scale up into
larger volume vehicles and we have such a great tradition
and fan base when it comes to our sports sedans
that that's the perfect opportunity to expand the BEV offerings
is with sports sedans, they have much more potential, and
so to do that in a way that looks similar
(36:17):
to the combustion engines was a great opportunity, but still
utilizing some of those learnings from the I three.
Speaker 2 (36:24):
Yeah, and it strikes us as really a smart strategy.
So you can throttle volume on the ice cars versus
the evs with the same model line, the same sort
of marketing behind it. Effectively, the EV becomes another powertrain
option for the five series, and so what has the
model mix been so far.
Speaker 3 (36:44):
It's fairly evenly split between ICE and BEV. I think
the ICE actually is a little bit higher, but not
too much, which is also, I have to say, a
pretty big testament to how good the car is and
how well it's being received, because if you look at
our overall growth with electric vehicles last quarter, we were
up sixty two percent from the same quart of the
(37:05):
year before, so there's a lot of growth there. But
even still, that was a twelve percent overall BEV mix
in the portfolio twelve percent we're in the five series.
It's far far higher than that, So it just shows
I mean, granted, we don't have electric vehicles in every
segment just yet, but it just shows that there is
a lot of demand there if you have the right product.
Speaker 2 (37:23):
One of our favorite three Slash four series cars is
the I four and that has a lot of the
BMW hallmarks in that package. It just feels like a BMW.
And BMW's known for that driving soul, that driving you know, engagement,
and a huge part of that has been its internal
(37:44):
combustion engines, specifically straight sixes. So how do you get
that soul. I think you've done it with the I four.
How do you get that soul into a big car
like the five series.
Speaker 3 (37:58):
Yeah, so, a number of good points, and the first one,
as you mentioned, the inline six, it's iconic. It's got
sol interesting to note the current five series generation, the
five traditional six cylinder, is only for the US. When
we talked about what we're planning and why we plan it,
we look at what do we need in the market,
and of course a five forty I with a traditional
(38:19):
inline six traditional sports today and proportions traditional sports today
and BMW lateral dynamics and so forth is super super important,
and this was something we fought very hard for to
ensure we got it in the US. There's no question
from my side, fantastic car, the acoustics that come along
with an inline six, the smooth running characteristics of an
(38:39):
inline six, I mean, they're undoubted. When it comes to
combustion engines, with an electric, of course, things are different,
and our engineers have worked incredibly hard on developing the
electric drive train as well as the chassis and the
dynamics and the steering and the brakes and so forth
to ensure that you still have the best overall package.
It doesn't sound like an and as it shouldn't, but
(39:02):
the engineers have done a great job of giving it
its own character and its own sound, and so it
does have what we call iconic sounds. And this you
can switch on or off depending on what you prefer,
and it does give you some acoustics that, let's say,
are aligned with the power demand and the power output
of the vehicle. I've been driving an I five M
sixty every single day for the last six months or so,
(39:25):
and one of the things that I realized when I'm
driving this is I'm a gearhead. I always have been
since I was a little kid. I've owned many M
cars and I still have you know, ones on the
side and so forth. And despite that, I absolutely love
driving the I five M sixty. And what you mentioned
about the soul and that character, one thing I noticed
was that the other attributes tend to take over a
(39:47):
little bit.
Speaker 1 (39:48):
And I actually drive.
Speaker 3 (39:49):
The car despite somebody that likes, you know, loud exhausts
and so forth, I actually drive the car in silent mode,
and I actually spend more time honing in and paying
attention to the characteristics and the steering characteristics and maybe
exploiting them a little more than I have in the
past as well. So I think it's not that it's
a downside. I would just say it's different, right, The
(40:11):
soul is different, the characteristics are different, but you still
have all of those dynamic characteristics.
Speaker 1 (40:17):
Well.
Speaker 2 (40:17):
With that in mind, and because of the performance of
the I five, especially the M sixty that we drove
is so staggering, where does that leave the M five.
Speaker 3 (40:28):
So I am super excited about the M five. I
hope my smile says it all. I can't wait for
this car. Unfortunately I can't get into all the details.
It's a little bit too early, but overall it leaves
plenty of room because here we have we have a
V eight. It's a plug in hybrid. The power is
far beyond what we've seen on the previous M five.
(40:50):
Performance is absolutely fantastic. And with an electric vehicle versus
a combustion engine or plug in hybrid, it's not just
about power output. It's about the overall package, the overall
feeling and the emotion that it gives you. And as
much as I love my I five sixty, it's not
an M five. It's different. It's an M performance vehicle,
not a full high performance vehicle like DM five is.
(41:12):
So it's something that we're really excited about and it
really is a fantastic package.
Speaker 1 (41:18):
Yeah, you can't wait for that as a former E
thirty nine five forty six speed owner. And that's the
car for people who don't know the internal product codes.
That was built the five series built from nineteen ninety
seven to two thousand and three. I'm curious if you've
been influenced on some of those classic BMWs, if you've
driven those classic five series and M fives.
Speaker 3 (41:37):
So it's funny you mentioned that I love talking about
older BMW's and my experiences, and like I said, I'm
a gearhead. Even from the time I was a little kid,
I would always ask for automotive publications for Christmas, not
a new baseball bat or whatever, and read them cover
to cover. That was just that was my thing, and
that's what led me through engineering and into the auto industry,
and throughout all of that. I've always loved driving some
(41:59):
of the old cars and being inspired by them in
many senses. It's funny you mentioned the E thirty nine
because I actually just sold my E thirty nine M
five and this car was fantastic.
Speaker 1 (42:09):
I loved it.
Speaker 3 (42:10):
And one thing we see is that every generation the
cars change, and not just about being better or worse,
it's that they're different. So the E thirty nine you
had the V eight naturally aspirated. Then you had E
sixty V ten a V ten with it. You could
have it with a manual transmission and it revs to
over eight thousand rpm and the sounds it makes at
those speeds is absolutely spectacular. And then we went to
(42:33):
a twin turbo V eight and so on and so on.
So things have evolved quite a lot. And having been
in the company for a while and in the industry
for a while, you learn a lot from these in
terms of what makes people, what gets them excited, what
makes them want to buy these cars, and things evolve. Right,
So the days of having the naturally aspirated V ten,
that's behind us. But we have many other great things
(42:55):
coming forward, such as now with the new M five
with a V eight twin turbo with electricis cation to
support it and just enhance the overall experience. So the
short answer is yes. Absolutely. Being a fan of the
older cars, we always use them as inspiration as.
Speaker 1 (43:08):
We move forward, what was your first car?
Speaker 3 (43:12):
My first BMW was an E thirty before I worked
for BMW. This car was really a lot of fun.
I ended up turning it into an autocross car and
then took it to the track and so forth. So
that was my first BMW. My first ever car was
a Volkswagen Karado VR six.
Speaker 1 (43:27):
Oh my god, yeah, this car.
Speaker 3 (43:32):
This car was cool. I really enjoyed the car, but
as much as I enjoyed it being a front wheel
drive car, once I started driving real, real drive cars,
I really started to not just appreciate them, but just
enjoy driving re real drive cars more. And that's when
I started driving BMW's. But yeah, Karado VR six, it
was a cool car.
Speaker 1 (43:51):
Not the nerd out a little, but the M twenty
in line six, the two point five liter is so
characteristically similar to that BR six engine. It's amazing, and
even the power everything is so similar to them. So
it seems like a natural that you then went into
a three twenty five. Yeah.
Speaker 3 (44:06):
Actually they did make around the same amount of power.
They sounded different, but they both sounded excellent.
Speaker 1 (44:11):
They're super smooth, yeah.
Speaker 3 (44:12):
Super smooth, fun to drive.
Speaker 1 (44:14):
That's such a cool first car.
Speaker 3 (44:15):
Yeah, it was really cool. It's one of those cars,
you know. I think people say this very often about
their first car, like you never should have sold it,
just even if you don't drive it anymore, just put
it away somewhere. And I feel that way about my
first BMW as well. I probably shouldn't have sold it,
but I did.
Speaker 1 (44:29):
Well.
Speaker 2 (44:29):
This is great, John. Thank you so much for your
insight and your passion. And keep cranking them out man, Yeah,
thank you. That interview was brought to you by eBay Motors.
Visit ebaymotors dot com for more.
Speaker 1 (44:47):
Car friends. Today, we examined and drove two cars that
are very similar but also incredibly different. We asked ourselves
the question electric or gas. Although the I five is
quicker and more efficient, the sound of an engine straining
and the serial nature of combustion still captivates and delights us.
Speaker 2 (45:03):
Yeah, I guess I'm old school. I'll take the five
forty every day. And that's what we came here to
find out. Which is the better sports seed in The
five point forty is just more rewarding. It gives you
more feedback, It's more visceral.
Speaker 1 (45:16):
For more on the BMW five forty, I X Drive
and I five M sixty. Visit carent driver dot com
and be sure to pick up the latest issue of
carent Driver magazine.
Speaker 2 (45:25):
Tune in next week where we take you on an
insider's tour of Cadillac House in Warren, Michigan. We'll sit
down with the team behind the all new Cadillacs Celestic
to learn more about its design and engineering.
Speaker 1 (45:37):
And then the center tunnel. We turned the pouches that
are about half the width of the car. We turn
them ninety degrees and there's two stacks of twelve down
the meddown the mount under the center console. Here like
a Fiera gas tank. I can't think of a more
elegant reference, but yes, I like a Hiera guess. Thank guest.
Speaker 2 (45:59):
Thank you for joining us on Car and Drivers into Cars.
If you enjoyed the show, join us every week for
new episodes, and don't forget to rate and review wherever
you listen to podcasts.
Speaker 1 (46:09):
Car Drivers into Cars is produced by Ruby Studio from
iHeartMedia in partnership with Car and Driver and hosted by
me Tony Kiroga and Eddie Alterman. And visit Carndriver dot
com for the latest car reviews and news.
Speaker 2 (46:20):
Our executive producer is Matt Romano. Our EP of Post
production is Matt Stillo, along with supervising producer Sierra Kaiser.
Speaker 1 (46:28):
This show was edited by Sierra Spreen special thanks to
our location sound recordist Matthew Sisco. Thanks for listening. We'll
see you next time.
Hello, and welcome to Car and Drivers Into Cars, a
podcast from iHeartMedia is Ruby Studio, brought to you by
eBay Motors. I'm Tony ki Roger, the editor in chief
of Car and Driver, and I'm joined by my co host,
former editor in chief and current Chief Brand and Content Officer,
Eddie Alterman, and together We're Into Cars.
Speaker 2 (00:22):
Each episode of this podcast covers a new car we
think is worthy of your attention. The cars we select
for this podcast may feature a novel design, cutting edge engineering,
or offer something entirely new. We'll be covering the stories
behind the cars too, answering the whys and exploring the whats.
We'll drive the cars and let you listen in, and
then we'll sit down with the people who made the
(00:42):
cars to answer our questions about them. Come along for
the ride and you'll hear it all the good, the bad,
and the ugly in the way that only carent Driver delivers.
So today we've got two BMW's to drive and talk about.
Two BMW's, but they're the same car. It's the five series,
but the gas version and the EV version.
Speaker 1 (01:07):
And it basically comes down to a customer's choice. Do
you want battery or gas tank charging station or gas station.
Do you want a turbot charge in line six or
an electric motor? I mean, it's an interesting choice, and
it's a choice that more and more people are going
to be facing over the next five ten years.
Speaker 2 (01:21):
BMW has a really interesting approach here within the envelope
of the five series. You can get a mild hybrid
gas engine or a full EV. You can just pick
which technology you want.
Speaker 1 (01:35):
Right, it comes down to what do you want, what
fits your needes. They have both options and you get
the exact same car essentially. And maybe it comes from
being a little gun shy after building something like the
BMWi three, which launched about a decade ago, carbon fiber structure.
It was a purpose built EV. It was super practical,
It had some quirkiness that people sort of expected of evs,
(01:57):
but it just didn't sell. So this this might be
a reaction against that. That must have been a pretty
expensive mistake.
Speaker 2 (02:03):
Yeah, the I three was super exotic. The interior was incredible.
It had suicide doors, these tiny little sort of bicycle tires.
They built a concept car that was actually pretty affordable,
didn't have a ton of range, and it sort of
looked like a science experiment.
Speaker 1 (02:19):
Yeah, did you ever look at the rear end of
that thing? It looked like it was swallowing a nine
to eleven. If you look at the rear bumper of
that car, it looks like it's just a nine to
eleven has driven into the I three and just you
can just see the bottom of its tail.
Speaker 2 (02:29):
Like, I'll have to take a look. But they are
sort of gunshy, I would say.
Speaker 1 (02:33):
And EV adoption, the timeline has kept changing. Having two powertrains,
an electric and a gas one on the same platform
allows them to have flexibility. So if the market is
turning away from eves, if the market's turning towards gas
or vice versa, they have some flexibility to move more
evs or more gas cars. And I think that makes
total sense. Yeah, that's right.
Speaker 2 (02:54):
You can scale production of one model based on consumer
demand instead of shoving this stuff down people's throats, you know.
And I think that's been a lot of that EV backlash.
It's been due to people saying, you know what, I
still want an internal combustion car. The ultimate freedom is
choice and BMW allows people to have that freedom. And
(03:15):
the five series is really an icon of the sports
Sinanan World and the E thirty four version, the E
thirty nine version. These were sort of seen as the
pinnacle of the mid size sports sedan, and so I
think the question before us today is is the electric
a better sports sedan than the gas version.
Speaker 1 (03:36):
So today we have the top of the five series ranges.
We have the top gas engine car, which is the
five forty I X drive, and then we've got the
I five M sixty. So we've got the top ones
until the M five shows up. The five forty in
traditional BMWA has terbocharged in line six, and I want
to see how that compares to the I five M sixty.
I mean, the I five M sixty has a lot
(03:57):
more power. It's got five hundred and ninety three horsepower.
It's also got a lot more weight. Yes, it is
a bit heavier, but it is. It's also more expensive.
It's close to twenty thousand dollars more expensive than the
more but it got a lot more power. You got
more than two hundred more horsepower.
Speaker 2 (04:13):
And there's three levels to the I five. Right, there's
the rear drive you know, base car, which is three
hundred and thirty five horse power, which is plenty quick
the three hundred and eighty nine horse power Extrive forty version,
and then this top Dog, which, as you say, is
almost six hundred horse power, which is you know, adequate.
They really look very very similar. You'd be hard pressed
(04:34):
to see which is the EV and which is the
ice version. But let's go out into the parking lot
do a little walk around and see what those differences
really are.
Speaker 1 (04:46):
We're standing in front of the I five Eddie and
the five forty. I can't see the badges. Which one's
the gas one, which one's the electric. It is extraordinarily
hard to tell. They're the same.
Speaker 2 (04:59):
They're the same. I mean they both have the same
plastic grill. One has an M badge, so maybe that's
the gas one. But then I look at the BMW
rondel and it has a blue ring around.
Speaker 1 (05:13):
Oh yeah, that's the Oh and it's got that on
the wheels too.
Speaker 2 (05:16):
Okay, so that's but the wheels are exactly the same. Yes,
the height of the cars are exactly the same, the
size is exactly the same, The body is the same.
Speaker 1 (05:24):
They've got the same body kit.
Speaker 2 (05:26):
If you look at the five forty, it has that
sort of thick rocker section you go, oh, that's the evy. No,
it's the exactly the same.
Speaker 1 (05:35):
Yeah, this one just doesn't have a battery in it
in that space. That's basically it. I mean, if you
look really close, the tires are different. It's the same
kind of tire, but the I five has a little
bit more tire. It's a wider tire. Yeah, and it's
got the new HL rating for tires, which is for
heavy load. Because this is a big boy at like
over fifty two hundred pounds. Oh my god. And so
what is the five. It's also a big boy. I
(05:58):
think it's around forty three hundred pounds. Let's walk around
the back. Okay, they don't even show off the exhaust pipe,
so you get this like pseudo diffuser on both cars,
but you can't even see the exhaust.
Speaker 2 (06:08):
Oh difference, different license plates and one is red and
one is blue. But other than that, it's nothing. And
I do have to say these are some of the
least grotesque is coming out of the Doctor Font's laboratory.
Speaker 1 (06:22):
Yeah. Yeah, they've been edited for sure.
Speaker 2 (06:25):
Yeah, looking at you, XM, these look like proper luxury cars,
high reard.
Speaker 1 (06:30):
Deck, the proportions are right, it's got the long dash
to axle, which is the distance from the middle of
the front wheel to the windshield. That shows it's not
a front wheel drive car basically exactly. They're pretty.
Speaker 2 (06:41):
They do have that kind of angularity and some of
the graphics that is so popular these days.
Speaker 1 (06:46):
But yeah, it's not the brick that the I seven
and the seventh series are. It looks more like a
five series has always looked. Here's another Easter egg. Oh
on the B pillars A five middle post of the cars.
A little five. That's cool in case you forget what
you're driving.
Speaker 2 (07:01):
How do we feel about the electric wearing the M badge?
Speaker 1 (07:06):
Well, I mean it has almost six hundred horse bar,
so I feel okay with it. Okay, I can make
I can make.
Speaker 2 (07:11):
Peace with it. Well that's the xterior. Let's talk about
the interior.
Speaker 1 (07:15):
Let's up inside. Would you hear that? It's got startup music.
We're looking at carbon fiber trim. It's got this huge
center screen, which is a touch screen. I like this touch.
When you turn the hazard lights on, illuminates.
Speaker 2 (07:36):
The the whole hype lights.
Speaker 1 (07:39):
The whole hYP lights up, so you can't just leave
your hazard lights on. It's got the M sports seats,
which are really comfortable. It's got the M steering wheel
with a little red piece of leather in the middle,
so you know what the top is, which is kind
of hilarious.
Speaker 2 (07:51):
Decently upright windshield for cars these days.
Speaker 1 (07:54):
That's very true. Yeah, and this one's got a big.
Speaker 2 (07:57):
Hud head up display, which, yeah, exactly always turn off.
Speaker 1 (08:00):
I hate those. Oh you don't like those. I'm a
big fan.
Speaker 2 (08:02):
I find it so distracting. I'm not a toimecap pilot.
I'm not Maverick. I don't need it. I'm not even Goose.
Speaker 1 (08:11):
It has the latest version of I Drive. BMW still
has eye drive. I think it's like I Drive thirty
seven point two. But yeah, so you still get the
big knob, you still get the big control now. But
you know, mercifully, BMW puts a touchscreen into this thing too.
Speaker 2 (08:24):
And I like the width of this car. You know,
it's so a little less closely coupled than the I four.
It feels a little bit more luxurious. There's tons of
leg and knee room. Yeah, it's super comfy. This would
be an amazing cross country cruiser if it wasn't an EV.
Speaker 1 (08:40):
Although it can fast charge pretty quickly, not as quick
as some of the fastest cars. It is a DC
fast charger which can do up to two hundred and
five kilowatts. It's a four hundred volt system, which isn't
you know the eight hundred volt system of a pors
Of ty Can or some of the Hyundai cars, So
it can't fast charge quite as fast as those.
Speaker 2 (08:57):
Yeah, that's really the state of the r right now,
the eight hundred. And it's funny that, you know, portion
Audi have it and so does Hyundaikia Genesis, right, yeah,
I know. Well it's incredibly quiet at idle.
Speaker 1 (09:11):
Yes it has. It has a really nice idol. But
you know, the in our testing, the five forty is
only like two or three decibels louder than this at idle.
So they've really masked the machinery.
Speaker 2 (09:24):
You know, it's going to be interesting to dry these
things because motor is right in the middle of the
name yep, and for the longest time that meant engine YEP.
Now it means actual motor.
Speaker 1 (09:38):
And it meant in in line six for the longest time,
which at least they still have it. They still make it.
I mean, you can get a four cylinder turbot with
the five thirty I, and then you can get the
five forty I, which has you know, the traditional inline
six at PMW has been making for els. God bless them.
I caught half of the twelve it is. It basically is.
It's so smooth, it's so quiet, it's so refined, but
(09:59):
you still get sound. You don't get the sound in
the electric Yeah you don't. Let's go step in the
five forty and see if we can pick out any differences.
Sounds good. So here we are in the five forty I.
(10:19):
What do you not first? Yeah, it doesn't have the
carbon fiber trim, but otherwise it's identical. It doesn't have
a little red stripe on the steering wheel either, so
that's I'm not buying this one. Start it up. Let's
see what it sounds like. Okay, okay, it's very quiet.
It's got a nice little hum to it.
Speaker 2 (10:36):
Yeah, but everything is exactly as it is in the
electric version.
Speaker 1 (10:41):
Yeah, it's exactly the same. It's it's really kind of freaky.
Oh you get it's a cometer. Oh right, it's acometer
instead of a power percentage gauge. How do you feel
about those gauges? Remember the old BMW gauges. They used
to take such pride in having large, clear, round analog gauges,
and now this is what the companies doing. No, it's
been a.
Speaker 2 (11:01):
Long descent from the days of video and Jaeger gauges,
or as they say in the Watch World, ja ja.
Speaker 1 (11:11):
That's what they watchers say. This looks like you remember
that that video game Tempest. These are the Tempest where
you're it's Tempest. And the designers must have played Tempest
at an early age and decided that this is what
they want in their gauges. And it's not. They're not
as clear, they don't work as well.
Speaker 2 (11:28):
Look, this is an Apple Watch versus a Rolex argument,
right right right once you rather have the analog thing,
you know, especially in an analog seeming car or a
car that is old school internal combustion.
Speaker 1 (11:41):
I want real gauges. All right, let's try.
Speaker 2 (11:44):
I think what BMW is trying to do here is
normalize the EV version as just another powertrain choice.
Speaker 1 (11:53):
Oh interesting, Yeah, it's kind of like it's no different
than when they offered a diesel in a gas There's
really no difference exterior or into or your wise. You
just have a different decometer, and that's basically the difference here.
Speaker 2 (12:03):
You want the four, you want the six, or you
want the uh you know the battery?
Speaker 1 (12:12):
Oh that engines so smooth in the inline six is
it doesn't matter if you're at one thousand rpm or
six thousand rpm. It's just a slightly louder thing, but
you feel no vibration coming through the car. It's just
isn't an amazing It's so wonderful.
Speaker 2 (12:25):
I love that they've stuck with it, and I think
our mission today try to figure out which is the
best sports stand between.
Speaker 1 (12:38):
Two Yeah, which one has more E thirty nine ers
full late nineties early two thousands five series, which I
think is the high water mark. I do to think
it's the high water mark. I do too.
Speaker 2 (12:47):
That car is great, But you know that car weighed.
Speaker 1 (12:52):
Six thirty seven. I mean we thought it was heavy
at the time. I know it was heavy because it
was heavier than it's pressor.
Speaker 2 (13:01):
But as when the engines so went everything else in
that car. It was just so incredibly smooth and progressive
and predictable, and you knew where you were at all times.
Speaker 1 (13:12):
Oh yeah, BMW's pumping in some engine sound that's coming
out of there speakers. Yeah sounds good. Though it does
sound good, it sounds real.
Speaker 2 (13:22):
So much of the car's personality is in the engine.
It's the heart of the car, you know.
Speaker 1 (13:28):
Yeah, you just lose it. You just lose it and
you gain acceleration. They're fun. I mean, electrics are super fun.
But yeah, I mean the personality of a BMW was
a lot of it was built out of the inline
six and how flu it was and how different it
was from every competitor V sixes and even from competitor
inline sixes. Yeah.
Speaker 2 (13:47):
And my beef with evs when you drive a bunch
of them back to back is they all start to
feel the same. I don't care if it's like a
Lucid Sapphire or an Ionic five from Hyundai. They all
have the same power delivery and they all really have
that same character.
Speaker 1 (14:05):
They try to fake it with the fake noises which
sort of sound like, you know, anywhere from like the
Jetson's car to an angry robot, but it just doesn't
do it for me, and it doesn't really. Since there's
only one gear, you're not going through the gears, there's
no change in the experience you've taken such an important
part of driving a car out of it an important
(14:27):
part of a brand's personality too.
Speaker 2 (14:29):
Yes, So what's the differentiator at that point between evs.
It's brand whatever that means, it's styling its interior. I
will say, However, there are some edge cases to this, Okay,
like the Porsche Ti Kon. Somehow that thing still feels
like a Porsche.
Speaker 1 (14:49):
It does, and for me, you sit in it and
it feels you're sitting so low. They really played that up.
You can see the front fenders. They really did it
right so that you feel, even though you're in a sedan,
it feels like you're in a sports car. Yeah, let's
do a quick launch. Okay, Oh, it's pretty hard. My
lobships watch is super hard. Oh my god.
Speaker 2 (15:13):
Nauseating, great, nauseating.
Speaker 1 (15:16):
That's fantastic.
Speaker 2 (15:18):
You know, humans weren't engineered to go to accelerate that quickly.
Speaker 1 (15:24):
It's like, if you travel faster than a horse, will
you die? Maybe? Yeah. Now we're on the highway. I
mean it's really quiet as uh, you know, as you
expect from a mid sized BMW.
Speaker 2 (15:37):
At the five series Tony, there is a v sun
Rogue ahead of us with a neurbur ring track sticker
on the back of it.
Speaker 1 (15:44):
Will you catch up to him? Check this out? Oh,
it's so good. It's so wonderful. And there's no change
in like, you don't feel any bad vibes coming through
the car at all. It's just magic. It's just a wonderful,
wonderful magic in Line six still has a ton of
(16:13):
grip on the skid pad. It was about the same
as the as the I five. And it's so balance.
I mean, it's not understeering, it's not oversteering. You know.
The all four tires are working equally hard, it feels like,
and this one doesn't have the fifty to fifty balance
that BMW's used to be famous for. It's a little
bit nose heavy, but you kind of stepped away from that. However,
(16:36):
the electric is fifty to fifty weight distribution, and.
Speaker 2 (16:41):
You can still control the cornery attitude of these cars
with the throttle.
Speaker 1 (16:47):
Yeah, the steering is pretty asleep. You're not getting a
ton of feel through the steering, and even in this
sport mode, it's really really sort of overly light and
that's a shame. Okay, want to hear my theory about
BMW's I do.
Speaker 2 (17:05):
They're always moving on to the next thing. They're always
putting their deepest talent in the next technology. You know,
when Europe was making great sports cars, they focused on
sports sedans. When everybody caught up and started making great
sports edans, they had shifted to making great SUVs, and
(17:27):
the sports dans suffered a little bit, and they weren't
quite as good as they had been.
Speaker 1 (17:33):
Yeah, because X five was sort of like the first
great driving suv see right.
Speaker 2 (17:39):
Okay, and they made great SUVs and even the X one,
the front drive one, the rear drive one was incredible,
but even the front drive one was good, much better
than the Mercedes equivalent.
Speaker 1 (17:51):
You think they put all the talent into what's next?
I do? I think.
Speaker 2 (17:55):
You know, they've moved a lot of people from what
I understand, off the M cars and in to the
I cars, and they're really like front loading a lot
of their talent into what's next.
Speaker 1 (18:06):
That's how I four feels. I four feels like the
best people at BMW, the people who had all the
institutional knowledge of how to make a car handle, how
to make a car steer, or put on that car,
and then they brought back some of that magic. It's
really really great. Oh so good, I mean so smooth.
If somebody said there's a V twelve under the hood,
(18:28):
you'd be like, oh, yeah, totally, exactly, totally, it's so smooth.
Speaker 2 (18:32):
And all the piped in engine noise in the world,
which there is some can't really replace that, or the
feel under the ball of your foot.
Speaker 1 (18:42):
Yeah, and just being able to downshift a few gears
and just bring the engine alive because it is sort
of a living thing. I totally agree.
Speaker 2 (18:49):
Like, you know, this is the closest that man has
come to creating an animal. The internal combustion motor car
and the engine is the heart of it. The thing
is growling. You have to kind of innate connection to
it because of the sounds it's making. But there is
(19:10):
an opacity to an ev you know, there is that
like what's really going on here? You know there is
a motor. There's a motor that's moving, but it feels remote.
Speaker 1 (19:22):
It does, it's not the same. Let's see if.
Speaker 2 (19:25):
You know BMW in the I five can give us
some of that feel.
Speaker 1 (19:30):
Yeah, let's take this five point forty back and go
step into the I five and see what happens. Okay,
now we're inside the I five M sixty.
Speaker 2 (19:46):
Let's start it up and see what it sounds like.
Who foreboding? Does Industrial Light and Magic get a royalty
for I was going to use a really dated reference.
It's close encounters. I think I beat you with that. No, No,
close Encounters is like eighty three or something.
Speaker 1 (20:06):
I think it's like seventy eight. Oh, okay, all right,
let's get go on. Put it in drive. Sounds good,
Oh it's silent. I know.
Speaker 2 (20:16):
BMW spends a lot of time and energy on the
sounds that its cars make, from the turn signals to
the door chimes to all that stuff. And I'm sure
they got some tricks up their sleeve when it comes
to ev sounds.
Speaker 1 (20:32):
But we'll see. Well, it has this iconic sounds which
the other car also has. You can sort of turn
that on and off to see how or to make
it louder or quieter. What you want to do?
Speaker 2 (20:43):
Does it sound like a batmobile? So car Driver, whenever
it tests a car, it produces a track sheet. And
I'm looking at the one from the I five sixty
X drive right now, and I'm looking at curbweight. Okay,
it's five two hundred and twenty five pounds, almost perfectly
(21:05):
distributed front rear.
Speaker 1 (21:06):
Yep. But you can do that with the electric car,
and I used to be such an important part of BMW's.
Speaker 2 (21:12):
That was a huge part of their brand, but you know,
a lot of it was marketing. Oh oh man, that's
brutal acceleration. Okay, So crazier acceleration from this car, just
in that little little run from a much heavier car. Okay,
(21:32):
the five point forty I'm looking at the trackshet that
weighed forty three hundred and sixty five, not a lightweight,
fifty four point two percent of its masses on the front,
forty five point eight percent on the rear. So this
is a much heavier car, but it's also much much quicker.
Speaker 1 (21:52):
But I bet the center of gravity of this car
is lower because you've got the battery pack in the floor,
so you've got that mass all in the floor. Yeah,
So it'll be interesting to see how it handles compared
to the other one. The extra weight in a good
place isn't necessarily a bad thing. They put a little
more tire underneath to compensate for the extra weight, but
(22:13):
both are about point nine g. I do miss the
little vibrations of the engine. I miss the intake noise.
Speaker 2 (22:21):
This feels very clinical and anti dine in comparison. The
noise is such a huge part of that car, the
five forty, I mean, such a great sound it it
engine makes.
Speaker 1 (22:35):
And then having I mean this is a one gear.
I have one gear here. I'm always in the right gear. Yeah,
and I've got a ton of torque. It's got amazing
accelerator response. Notice I'm not saying throttle response.
Speaker 2 (22:48):
Let's do an acceleration run and see how it stacks
up to the five forty.
Speaker 1 (22:52):
You guys ready instantaneous torque.
Speaker 2 (22:55):
Oh that's a lot of mass moving real quick.
Speaker 1 (23:01):
Oh man, yeah, sixty and three three I think it was.
Speaker 2 (23:05):
Yeah, Okay, let's look at the numbers. Sixty in three
three versus the five forties sixty in four seconds.
Speaker 1 (23:12):
Which is still remarkably quick. The quarter mile they really
start to separate. That's where you really see the difference
in horsepower in the quarter This one did eleven and
a half at one twenty four and the other one
I think it was twelve and a half at one eleven. So, yeah,
that's right. Gap. It just keeps growing. The gap just
keeps growing as you accelerate harder and harder. It's crazy.
Speaker 2 (23:31):
Yeah, at one hundred and fifty or one hundred and forty,
the gas car is at twenty two point one seconds.
Speaker 1 (23:36):
How quick is this one fifteen point four? It's crazy.
You feel the torque, you feel the power, but it's
just one linear blast. You don't get the change in
the engine revolutions. You don't get the gear shifts. And
there's drama in that. I mean there's drama in this
because you're pressed so hard into the seat, but there's
(23:57):
drama in those gear shifts. There's real character.
Speaker 2 (23:59):
Yeah, it does it a certain way that you have
to appreciate. You know, it's a lot harder to make
a gear change that smooth. It's a lot harder to
make all those reciprocating parts move in concert that way.
And I think you innately just appreciate that.
Speaker 1 (24:16):
So for me, when a machine works hard is when
I find it most rewarding. Electric cars don't ever feel
like they're working that hard. They just do it, and
they do it like sort of blindly, like a with
a flat face. It just gets it done, and it's
brutal and it's quick, but a GASCAR really feels like
(24:38):
it's working to do it.
Speaker 2 (24:39):
It's uncanny Valley, it really is. You know, this thing
is robotic. Now, let's see if you can change the
cornery attitude in this car the way you could with
the five forty.
Speaker 1 (24:55):
I mean it feels similar. I feel like it feels
a little bit heavier. The steering actually feels a little
nicer than the gas car. Yeah, definitely, mean what the
tires are doing. You can feel what the tires are doing. Yeah,
a little bit. The steering feels nicer, there's more feedback,
(25:15):
there's more waiting. It just feels like a bit more
connected in a way that the other steering didn't. It
also speaks to your theory that maybe they've got the
best people on the electric car.
Speaker 2 (25:26):
What about breaking, did you get a sense of you know,
break field modulation. You know, because this has a both
regenerative and friction braking system.
Speaker 1 (25:38):
It's blended beautifully. A break pedal feels just as good
as it does in the five forty, And the five
forty has a really nice break pedal, super predictable, really linear,
it's not doing anything weird and grabbing as the handoff
from the regenerative breaks to the friction breaks happens. I
can't really discern a difference. I mean, it feels really great,
well tuned. Huh. Yeah, we've used five percent of the
battery just in the time that we've left the office.
(26:00):
That's crazy. A couple of short acceleration blasts and that's
what happens. But yeah, I mean the immediacy of the
response of an electric car is intoxicating. I do have
to say, like in passing in our five to sixty tests,
basically what we try to do in the five to
sixty test is recreate what happens on the street. In
the street, you're not setting your car up for launch control,
you're not doing all that nonsense. You're just matting the throttle.
(26:22):
So we roll at five miles an hour, stomp on
the accelerator, and the difference between the gas car and
the electric car is remarkable. The gas car does it
in five seconds, so it adds a second to its
zero to sixty. In the electric car, I think you
only add three tenses, yes, three, six, yeah, So I
mean this thing you can line up to anyone at
(26:45):
a dragstrip. You don't have to do very much to
prepare the car. You really don't have to do very
much more than just stomping on the accelerator and flooring
it and making sure that you hold your foot down.
I mean, it's just that simple.
Speaker 2 (26:55):
I can say anecdotally that EV drivers, EV sedan drivers
drive like complete maniacs. They're going for all the whole shots.
I mean they're put in the accord and ultimate guys
to shame.
Speaker 1 (27:08):
Yeah, well you can do it. I mean you just
you just squeeze the you squeeze the accelerator. You're always
in the right gear. You have this all this immediate torque,
and the car just delivers the acceleration. Let's try it now.
Let's let's try it if we shut the iconic sounds
off and accelerate. Okay, oh yeah, that's even more robotic.
It's just it doesn't even make any noise. It's soulless,
(27:31):
but it's quick. I mean it snaps your head back. Yeah,
it does, go back to iconic sounds. I'm not hating
it that much. In this car, the iconic sounds. This
actually sounds like an internal combustion engine. They've really faked it.
Speaker 2 (27:47):
I think it sounds more like, you know, a kind
of ev sounds signature, which I appreciate, like it.
Speaker 1 (27:54):
Should sound like what it is.
Speaker 2 (27:55):
There's a little grit at the bottom end. But I'm sorry,
sitting in the passenger seat, I like the experience of
the five forty.
Speaker 1 (28:06):
Bet you were more involved too. I mean, anytime you're shifting,
even if it's through the paddles of an automatic, you're
still taking control of the car.
Speaker 2 (28:16):
And that's ultimately what a sports dance about. Feedback sensitivity.
Speaker 1 (28:22):
Joy. Although I gotta say I'll take the steering of
this one every day of the week. It's really sweet. Fair.
Speaker 2 (28:30):
They gotta do something to keep you involved.
Speaker 1 (28:32):
Yeah, what do these things cost? Oh? Yeah, that's a
good question. I think this one starts around in the
high eighties for the electric and there aren't too many options.
And the five forty is I think it's in the
sixty six thousand dollars range base price, but this one
has at least ten thousand dollars worth of options on
it to make it basically the same spec as the
(28:55):
I'm sixty. Okay, what do you like better? Like the
five forty. I think I'd buy the five forty. How
about you? Eddie? You always want to buy one.
Speaker 2 (29:05):
I always want one to buy one. It's a five
forty for me, Doug. I just love that straight six.
Speaker 1 (29:10):
Yeah, I don't really care that this is quicker. Four
seconds of sixty is quick enough, and even in the
rolling start the real world number five seconds is still
plenty quick, still quick, and it's a really enjoyable five
seconds because the car is straining, you're going through the gears,
you're hearing it. It's special and it works for me.
That's the one i'd buy. Yeah, I agree, Well, that
(29:32):
was fun. I know which car we would choose. But
who are these cars? Four? I mean, they're very different cars.
Who's each one? Four? Yeah?
Speaker 2 (29:40):
And I think the EV world is sort of separated
into the halfs and have knots, right, those people who
have a garage or or regular place to charge it
in those who don't. For car like this, a performance
EV that's draining the battery at a pretty alarming rate,
you need a place to plug in, if not every night,
(30:00):
than every other night.
Speaker 1 (30:01):
It totally has to work for you, and that's such
a big element of it. And it also depends on
the tire size and the wheel size. The nineteens get
two hundred and fifty six miles of range in the
EPA testing. If you go to twenty inches you get
the best range of two hundred and seventy eight miles.
But if you do what we did and have the
twenty one inch wheels with the summer tires, your range
goes all the way down to two hundred and forty miles. Yeah.
Speaker 2 (30:23):
It's not just the size, it's also the compound, right, Yeah, totally.
To answer the question of who would buy the EV
over the Straight six, it's someone who welcomes our robot
overlords because that thing is dead eyed. It's insanely quick,
it's impressive as hell, but it's soulless.
Speaker 1 (30:44):
Yeah. Yeah, the soul's gone.
Speaker 2 (30:45):
Yeah, and BMWs should be about souls definitely.
Speaker 1 (30:51):
When we return, we're speaking with product planner John Kelly,
who works in BMW's US Product and Strategy department.
Speaker 2 (30:56):
Stay Tuned, Welcome back to Car and Drivers into Cars.
Product planner John Kelly works in BMW's US Product and
Strategy department, and he's responsible for both the electric and
gas versions of the BMW five series. Welcome to in
(31:20):
the cars, John, We've driven both of these cars back
to back and we have some thoughts and questions.
Speaker 1 (31:25):
Can you talk about the strategy of building an electric
and GASCAR off the same platform. The cluster platform allows
you to do that. What are some of the benefits
and what are some of the compromises.
Speaker 3 (31:36):
Yes, So, as you mentioned, the current architecture that the
five series is built on is referred to as our
cluster architecture. It's actually a very very flexible architecture. It
allows us to build many different drive trains on the
same chassis. So in the US we have the combustion
engine cars, and it's not just combustion engine PEV or
full BEV, but even within those there's a lot of
(31:58):
complexity and a lot of variation, and this is really
important to us for us to be able to offer
the customers exactly what they want. And in this case,
we have one architecture where we have combustion engines. In
the US, we have a four cylinder and a traditional
BMWN nine six, which is really fantastic. We have the
plug in hybrid, so this is a six cylinder plug
in hybrid that comes out this summer. This car makes
(32:21):
over four hundred and eighty horse power. But then we
also have the fully electric variant, and even there we
have we actually have three different models, but two of
them are quite similar. So we have the forties in
re real drive with one E machine. We have the
X drive forty two E machines, one front, one rear,
and then we have our performance variant with nearly six
hundred horsepower. That's the one I drive every day and
(32:41):
the car is awesome.
Speaker 2 (32:42):
That's what we drove too. So how do you achieve
that platform flexibility? I mean, short wave of answer asking
that question is where do all the batteries go?
Speaker 3 (32:53):
Yeah, and it's pretty straightforward, and actually it's something that
I hope you recognize when you were driving the car
is the batteries are below the floor, so they're between
the wheelbase, between the track below the floor. Despite the
battery being quite heavy, it gives you a nice low
center of gravity and the carstial handles like you would
expect to a mid size BMW sports sedan to handle.
But you mentioned what does it take to be able
(33:14):
to do this in one platform and the answer is
it's not that simple. It's not as easy as just
let's say, taking out the combustion engine. It's really quite
complex because you need to start with a platform that's
flexible enough to allow you to do this without significant downsides.
So if you were to just, let's say, take out
the combustion engine, you're going to have major inefficiencies in
terms of packaging and weight and so forth. But by
(33:37):
using our cluster architecture, which is very flexible, it allows
us to package these components in a very intelligent way,
such as having the battery below the floor. We have
what we call a heat unit, so it's a highly
integrated drive train unit, so has your electric motor, transmission
and power electronics all in one housing. And fitting that
in the front where you can fit a rather long
(33:58):
inline six engine not terribly difficult. But in the rear
it is where in the rear typically you have a
differential and not much else. So by using an architecture
that is adaptable and can fit these components quite easily,
you end up being able to fit them without many
downsides in terms of packaging.
Speaker 1 (34:16):
I have a question about the BMWi three and sort
of how that relates to the cluster architecture in the
current five series. The I three was a pretty radical
ev carbon fiber structure. It was pretty exotic vehicle and
now it seems like you've shifted over to a conventional sedan.
Is that sort of a reaction to how the I
three did in the marketplace or was it an expense thing?
(34:38):
How does the I three fit into the strategy today?
Speaker 3 (34:41):
Yeah, that's a really good question, and to be honest,
that's one that I love talking about because I've been
with the company for twenty years, and prior to the
ten years i'm in product management, I was in product engineering.
I had the pleasure of, while I was in product
engineering of working on the I three and I eight
and launching those products, so I know them in a
very detailed technical way, and the cars were very much
(35:02):
ahead of their times in many ways. That carbon fiber
passenger cell was spectacular, lightweight, very strong, and so forth.
A little challenging to produce, of course, but that was
I would say, a very unique example basically a two
door hatch which has a relatively small or limited market
in the US, and it used technology that was perfect
(35:23):
for a low volume kind of niche product like the
I three was, but it doesn't scale as well to
big volume products like what we have today with I four,
I five, I seven.
Speaker 1 (35:33):
Yeah, I three was really an exotic car.
Speaker 3 (35:36):
It was, and you look at the construction, the fact
that had the range extender, it had a heat pump,
which at the time was not very common in electro vehicles.
So it really had a lot of fantastic technology which
we learned a lot from and we learned a lot
about how customers use the cars and what they expect,
and all that transfers into the future products that we're planning.
(35:56):
But of course it didn't make sense to continue with
that particular car when we want to scale up into
larger volume vehicles and we have such a great tradition
and fan base when it comes to our sports sedans
that that's the perfect opportunity to expand the BEV offerings
is with sports sedans, they have much more potential, and
so to do that in a way that looks similar
(36:17):
to the combustion engines was a great opportunity, but still
utilizing some of those learnings from the I three.
Speaker 2 (36:24):
Yeah, and it strikes us as really a smart strategy.
So you can throttle volume on the ice cars versus
the evs with the same model line, the same sort
of marketing behind it. Effectively, the EV becomes another powertrain
option for the five series, and so what has the
model mix been so far.
Speaker 3 (36:44):
It's fairly evenly split between ICE and BEV. I think
the ICE actually is a little bit higher, but not
too much, which is also, I have to say, a
pretty big testament to how good the car is and
how well it's being received, because if you look at
our overall growth with electric vehicles last quarter, we were
up sixty two percent from the same quart of the
(37:05):
year before, so there's a lot of growth there. But
even still, that was a twelve percent overall BEV mix
in the portfolio twelve percent we're in the five series.
It's far far higher than that, So it just shows
I mean, granted, we don't have electric vehicles in every
segment just yet, but it just shows that there is
a lot of demand there if you have the right product.
Speaker 2 (37:23):
One of our favorite three Slash four series cars is
the I four and that has a lot of the
BMW hallmarks in that package. It just feels like a BMW.
And BMW's known for that driving soul, that driving you know, engagement,
and a huge part of that has been its internal
(37:44):
combustion engines, specifically straight sixes. So how do you get
that soul. I think you've done it with the I four.
How do you get that soul into a big car
like the five series.
Speaker 3 (37:58):
Yeah, so, a number of good points, and the first one,
as you mentioned, the inline six, it's iconic. It's got
sol interesting to note the current five series generation, the
five traditional six cylinder, is only for the US. When
we talked about what we're planning and why we plan it,
we look at what do we need in the market,
and of course a five forty I with a traditional
(38:19):
inline six traditional sports today and proportions traditional sports today
and BMW lateral dynamics and so forth is super super important,
and this was something we fought very hard for to
ensure we got it in the US. There's no question
from my side, fantastic car, the acoustics that come along
with an inline six, the smooth running characteristics of an
(38:39):
inline six, I mean, they're undoubted. When it comes to
combustion engines, with an electric, of course, things are different,
and our engineers have worked incredibly hard on developing the
electric drive train as well as the chassis and the
dynamics and the steering and the brakes and so forth
to ensure that you still have the best overall package.
It doesn't sound like an and as it shouldn't, but
(39:02):
the engineers have done a great job of giving it
its own character and its own sound, and so it
does have what we call iconic sounds. And this you
can switch on or off depending on what you prefer,
and it does give you some acoustics that, let's say,
are aligned with the power demand and the power output
of the vehicle. I've been driving an I five M
sixty every single day for the last six months or so,
(39:25):
and one of the things that I realized when I'm
driving this is I'm a gearhead. I always have been
since I was a little kid. I've owned many M
cars and I still have you know, ones on the
side and so forth. And despite that, I absolutely love
driving the I five M sixty. And what you mentioned
about the soul and that character, one thing I noticed
was that the other attributes tend to take over a
(39:47):
little bit.
Speaker 1 (39:48):
And I actually drive.
Speaker 3 (39:49):
The car despite somebody that likes, you know, loud exhausts
and so forth, I actually drive the car in silent mode,
and I actually spend more time honing in and paying
attention to the characteristics and the steering characteristics and maybe
exploiting them a little more than I have in the
past as well. So I think it's not that it's
a downside. I would just say it's different, right, The
(40:11):
soul is different, the characteristics are different, but you still
have all of those dynamic characteristics.
Speaker 1 (40:17):
Well.
Speaker 2 (40:17):
With that in mind, and because of the performance of
the I five, especially the M sixty that we drove
is so staggering, where does that leave the M five.
Speaker 3 (40:28):
So I am super excited about the M five. I
hope my smile says it all. I can't wait for
this car. Unfortunately I can't get into all the details.
It's a little bit too early, but overall it leaves
plenty of room because here we have we have a
V eight. It's a plug in hybrid. The power is
far beyond what we've seen on the previous M five.
(40:50):
Performance is absolutely fantastic. And with an electric vehicle versus
a combustion engine or plug in hybrid, it's not just
about power output. It's about the overall package, the overall
feeling and the emotion that it gives you. And as
much as I love my I five sixty, it's not
an M five. It's different. It's an M performance vehicle,
not a full high performance vehicle like DM five is.
(41:12):
So it's something that we're really excited about and it
really is a fantastic package.
Speaker 1 (41:18):
Yeah, you can't wait for that as a former E
thirty nine five forty six speed owner. And that's the
car for people who don't know the internal product codes.
That was built the five series built from nineteen ninety
seven to two thousand and three. I'm curious if you've
been influenced on some of those classic BMWs, if you've
driven those classic five series and M fives.
Speaker 3 (41:37):
So it's funny you mentioned that I love talking about
older BMW's and my experiences, and like I said, I'm
a gearhead. Even from the time I was a little kid,
I would always ask for automotive publications for Christmas, not
a new baseball bat or whatever, and read them cover
to cover. That was just that was my thing, and
that's what led me through engineering and into the auto industry,
and throughout all of that. I've always loved driving some
(41:59):
of the old cars and being inspired by them in
many senses. It's funny you mentioned the E thirty nine
because I actually just sold my E thirty nine M
five and this car was fantastic.
Speaker 1 (42:09):
I loved it.
Speaker 3 (42:10):
And one thing we see is that every generation the
cars change, and not just about being better or worse,
it's that they're different. So the E thirty nine you
had the V eight naturally aspirated. Then you had E
sixty V ten a V ten with it. You could
have it with a manual transmission and it revs to
over eight thousand rpm and the sounds it makes at
those speeds is absolutely spectacular. And then we went to
(42:33):
a twin turbo V eight and so on and so on.
So things have evolved quite a lot. And having been
in the company for a while and in the industry
for a while, you learn a lot from these in
terms of what makes people, what gets them excited, what
makes them want to buy these cars, and things evolve. Right,
So the days of having the naturally aspirated V ten,
that's behind us. But we have many other great things
(42:55):
coming forward, such as now with the new M five
with a V eight twin turbo with electricis cation to
support it and just enhance the overall experience. So the
short answer is yes. Absolutely. Being a fan of the
older cars, we always use them as inspiration as.
Speaker 1 (43:08):
We move forward, what was your first car?
Speaker 3 (43:12):
My first BMW was an E thirty before I worked
for BMW. This car was really a lot of fun.
I ended up turning it into an autocross car and
then took it to the track and so forth. So
that was my first BMW. My first ever car was
a Volkswagen Karado VR six.
Speaker 1 (43:27):
Oh my god, yeah, this car.
Speaker 3 (43:32):
This car was cool. I really enjoyed the car, but
as much as I enjoyed it being a front wheel
drive car, once I started driving real, real drive cars,
I really started to not just appreciate them, but just
enjoy driving re real drive cars more. And that's when
I started driving BMW's. But yeah, Karado VR six, it
was a cool car.
Speaker 1 (43:51):
Not the nerd out a little, but the M twenty
in line six, the two point five liter is so
characteristically similar to that BR six engine. It's amazing, and
even the power everything is so similar to them. So
it seems like a natural that you then went into
a three twenty five. Yeah.
Speaker 3 (44:06):
Actually they did make around the same amount of power.
They sounded different, but they both sounded excellent.
Speaker 1 (44:11):
They're super smooth, yeah.
Speaker 3 (44:12):
Super smooth, fun to drive.
Speaker 1 (44:14):
That's such a cool first car.
Speaker 3 (44:15):
Yeah, it was really cool. It's one of those cars,
you know. I think people say this very often about
their first car, like you never should have sold it,
just even if you don't drive it anymore, just put
it away somewhere. And I feel that way about my
first BMW as well. I probably shouldn't have sold it,
but I did.
Speaker 1 (44:29):
Well.
Speaker 2 (44:29):
This is great, John. Thank you so much for your
insight and your passion. And keep cranking them out man, Yeah,
thank you. That interview was brought to you by eBay Motors.
Visit ebaymotors dot com for more.
Speaker 1 (44:47):
Car friends. Today, we examined and drove two cars that
are very similar but also incredibly different. We asked ourselves
the question electric or gas. Although the I five is
quicker and more efficient, the sound of an engine straining
and the serial nature of combustion still captivates and delights us.
Speaker 2 (45:03):
Yeah, I guess I'm old school. I'll take the five
forty every day. And that's what we came here to
find out. Which is the better sports seed in The
five point forty is just more rewarding. It gives you
more feedback, It's more visceral.
Speaker 1 (45:16):
For more on the BMW five forty, I X Drive
and I five M sixty. Visit carent driver dot com
and be sure to pick up the latest issue of
carent Driver magazine.
Speaker 2 (45:25):
Tune in next week where we take you on an
insider's tour of Cadillac House in Warren, Michigan. We'll sit
down with the team behind the all new Cadillacs Celestic
to learn more about its design and engineering.
Speaker 1 (45:37):
And then the center tunnel. We turned the pouches that
are about half the width of the car. We turn
them ninety degrees and there's two stacks of twelve down
the meddown the mount under the center console. Here like
a Fiera gas tank. I can't think of a more
elegant reference, but yes, I like a Hiera guess. Thank guest.
Speaker 2 (45:59):
Thank you for joining us on Car and Drivers into Cars.
If you enjoyed the show, join us every week for
new episodes, and don't forget to rate and review wherever
you listen to podcasts.
Speaker 1 (46:09):
Car Drivers into Cars is produced by Ruby Studio from
iHeartMedia in partnership with Car and Driver and hosted by
me Tony Kiroga and Eddie Alterman. And visit Carndriver dot
com for the latest car reviews and news.
Speaker 2 (46:20):
Our executive producer is Matt Romano. Our EP of Post
production is Matt Stillo, along with supervising producer Sierra Kaiser.
Speaker 1 (46:28):
This show was edited by Sierra Spreen special thanks to
our location sound recordist Matthew Sisco. Thanks for listening. We'll
see you next time.
Hosts And Creators
Eddie Alterman
Tony Quiroga
Popular Podcasts
Las Culturistas with Matt Rogers and Bowen Yang
Ding dong! Join your culture consultants, Matt Rogers and Bowen Yang, on an unforgettable journey into the beating heart of CULTURE. Alongside sizzling special guests, they GET INTO the hottest pop-culture moments of the day and the formative cultural experiences that turned them into Culturistas. Produced by the Big Money Players Network and iHeartRadio.
40s and Free Agents: NFL Draft Season
Daniel Jeremiah of Move the Sticks and Gregg Rosenthal of NFL Daily join forces to break down every team's needs this offseason.
Crime Junkie
Does hearing about a true crime case always leave you scouring the internet for the truth behind the story? Dive into your next mystery with Crime Junkie. Every Monday, join your host Ashley Flowers as she unravels all the details of infamous and underreported true crime cases with her best friend Brit Prawat. From cold cases to missing persons and heroes in our community who seek justice, Crime Junkie is your destination for theories and stories you won’t hear anywhere else. Whether you're a seasoned true crime enthusiast or new to the genre, you'll find yourself on the edge of your seat awaiting a new episode every Monday. If you can never get enough true crime... Congratulations, you’ve found your people. Follow to join a community of Crime Junkies! Crime Junkie is presented by audiochuck Media Company.