Sedan experience (BMW i5)
Two years of midsize electric sedan experience
This February (2026) marks a full 10 years since I started working for BMW, and a key employment bonus is the ability to drive a company car on special two-year leasing terms. Just before the new year 2026 started, I said goodbye to my latest company car. After driving the BMW i4, I switched to the BMW i5. In terms of power, it was a downgrade as I switched from the maximum power i4 M50 xDrive (all-wheel drive, 600 hp) to the i5 eDrive40 (rear-wheel drive, 340 hp). Did I regret that? Not for a single second! After driving 60,000 km in the last two years with the BMW i5, I was really sad to let it go -- it was the best car I have ever driven. Simple as that.
Comparing i5 sDrive40 to i4 M50 xDrive
First, about the drivetrain. Technically, these two cars had the same generation of the BMW electrical drivetrain and very similar driving and charging characteristics. One had two electric motors (one on the rear axle and one on the front axle) and the other had just one motor on the rear axle. This also causes the difference in motor power -- basically, the power of the front motor is added on top of the power that the rear motor provides. There are motors with different power outputs, but the difference between one motor and two motors is the most pronounced.
So, is the extra money for a dual-motor version worth it in reality? I would argue that it is not. But not because it is bad. The key reason is that electric motors are so good that even just one of them is fully enough in almost all cases.
There are two situations where you'll notice a difference: very rapid acceleration (at either very low or very high speeds) and traction in very slippery situations, like driving uphill on a snow- or ice-covered road.
When accelerating, the dual-motor configurations ... just teleport to the new location and new speed. The feeling is just crazy. If you stab the accelerator pedal in such a car, you better have very good reflexes. I have out-accelerated ICE cars worth over a million euros, leaving their owners literally speechless. The single-motor version, in comparison, is "just" a very fast car. Like a Porsche. The acceleration is still very fast, but the car is not just "teleporting" and is accelerating over a time that a human brain can still comprehend. The only downside (and that is only relevant in Germany) is the top speed -- the single-motor variants are typically locked to 180-190 km/h instead of the 225-230 km/h that dual-motor variants are allowed to reach. And to be fair, BMW cars -- especially the i5 M60 -- feel extremely stable and safe at speeds over 200 km/h, so for some people in Germany, that could be a real argument for an M-Performance car. It also does not consume all that much more energy at high speeds, unlike its gasoline siblings.
When driving in a slippery situation (I have driven both in snow, ice, and mud), the dual-drive version is just magical in its ability to just keep driving without spinning the wheels in any conditions. But on all normal roads (including climbing an uphill road during a blizzard), I was also able to slowly drive forward with the single-motor i5 as well. The much better traction control that an electric motor allows makes a BEV RWD car drive almost as easily in bad road conditions as an AWD ICE car can. The key is that a BEV has maximum torque available from zero RPM. That means you do not need to press the accelerator pedal more to have enough torque to move the car up the hill and thus risk the wheels spinning out. A BEV can roll the car uphill even at the lowest speed.
Cargo area
One big difference between the i4 and i5 is the rear cargo area -- the i4 has a huge hatch opening and the whole rear window goes up. You can basically put anything in there. The i4 also does not have a fixed crossbar behind the rear seats, so with the seats down you get a fully open cargo area from the floor to the roof. Very practical. The i5, in contrast, is more conservative -- it is a classical sedan with a narrower opening. The rear window stays fixed and there is also a fixed, non-removable crossbrace and shelf behind the rear seats. On the other hand, the length of the cargo area is much deeper; you can basically fit a couple of extra crates of beer in the i5. Also, the underfloor compartment in the rear of the i5 is more usable than in the i4, as in the i4 that is also where they put the subwoofer of the high-end sound system. In the i5, it is hidden deeper in the car and does not take up any cargo space.
Seats
The rear seat of the i5 is also far more usable for adult passengers. One can go as far as to say that the rear seats in the i5 are as comfortable as normal front seats in other cars. But the i5 goes a step further as there is an option for comfort seats in the front, and I enjoyed that a lot. Three years ago, I had a very painful (but necessary) surgery on the bones in my chest. This made me much more sensitive to back, neck, and shoulder pain. In all other cars (including the i4), I was getting back pain after 3-4 hours of driving and needed to spend all the charging stops exercising during day-long drives. After we got the i5 with comfort seats, one of the first things we did was a long weekend trip from Ulm to... Barcelona. That was basically three full days of driving across a four-day period. I felt as fresh and pain-free when we came back from that trip as when we left. Sadly, there was no massage seat option for the i5 -- a rare miss, I think. But the ventilated seats were quite nice during the hot summer months.
Driving assistance
The i5 has the same kind of driving assistance as the i4 had -- rock-solid adaptive cruise control and rock-solid lane keeping. It features great adjustment of driving speed in anticipation of conditions, such as slowing down before tight corners, before intersections where navigation expects a turn to happen, and before roundabouts. It also slows down in advance of known upcoming lower speed limit signs so that the car crosses the speed limit sign line already driving the new speed limit, as required by most traffic laws. This is in contrast to other systems that only recognize the new speed limit and only start to slow down a couple of seconds after passing the speed limit sign.
Naturally, something extra was also developed in the couple of years between those models, like the Highway Assistant that allows fully legal hands-free (but still eyes-on-the-road) operation up to the legally limited 135 km/h. I initially dismissed this as a pure gimmick, but after using it on a few longer drives, I can tell that the difference in stress in my arms and shoulders is profound. Just being able to keep both arms down in my lap or on handrests does wonders for having a more relaxed driving experience. The system monitors the driver's gaze even more strictly in this mode -- you have to watch the road. As a benefit of that, the system also can detect when you are checking the side mirrors, so when the system detects that it would be beneficial to change the lane, you can confirm this lane change by simply checking the right or left side mirror. Or you can ask the car to do the lane change by activating the turn indicators. If anything, that is a great way to get BMW drivers to use those things :D
Parking assistance is also improved, including a function to park the car "remotely" by using the phone as a dead-man's switch for a pre-selected parking maneuver. This worked reliably, including underground, with zero signal. I also got a lot of use out of the pre-programmed parking routes function -- you can show the car a parking maneuver once and it will then be able to repeat it at the same location, even if the situation is a bit different every time. This works for routes up to ~40 meters long. So I can basically make a route from the entrance of the parking garage of my apartment complex all the way to my parking spot. I only need to drive it well once; after that, I can just let the car take over at any point in the path. This also works if the parking garage gets no cellular (or WiFi) signal and no GPS either. If there is a new, unavoidable obstacle in the pre-programmed way, the car will see it with ultrasonics and will just stop safely. And you can slow down or stop the automatic motion at any moment with the brake pedal.
BMW retains the concept of cooperative driver assistance here -- the car is not taking over the full driving from you; it is cooperating with you. So, for example, while driving on the highway with full cruise control and lane keeping enabled, I can still lightly tug on the steering wheel left to make the car drive in the left side of the lane instead of the middle to avoid a pothole or give a bit more distance to someone stopped on the shoulder.
Software
The BMW i5 is built on the MGU22 platform, which is an evolution of the MGU21 (and MGU18) platform that was in my previous BMW i4 car and that I described in my Debconf talk back in Montreal.
It is still based on a custom Linux build compiled with Yocto with GENIVI protocols like DLT and SomeIP connecting all the components. The UI is still running on Wayland. The screens are a bit larger than before, the resolution is higher, the responsiveness is better, and there are more apps doing different things. But as a user, it would be hard for me to find noticeable differences between these specific product generations. Part of it is on purpose -- to help users retain their user experience as they upgrade from one BMW to the next one.
Automatic migration of preferences and saved navigation locations from car to car via the BMW account login also helps that process. It can be amazing for people in corporate fleets or large (and well-off) families where one can expect to periodically drive different BMW cars (of the same model) and enjoy the seamless transfer of all their preferences (including things like seat positions) to the new car. This could have been more useful if a cross-brand standard for user in-car preferences ever existed. Maybe that will happen in the future, when cars become more of a shared commodity.
One big development that happened while I was using the i5, which also applies to all other BMW cars, is the rapid and impressive development of the MyBMW app. The team behind that has been doing great work over the past couple of years and delivered a lot of features and enhancements to user experience. For example, the automatic suggestion of destinations based on the location of events in your calendar happens (if you opt-in to this) via the MyBMW app.
Another thing that often stays unremarked is that BMW is managing the largest fleet of cars with automatic, remote software update capability in the world. ALL of the BMW models have this capability (not just BEVs) and BMW has been manufacturing ~2.5 million such cars every year since about 2018. The total remote software update capable fleet is more than twice as large as that of Tesla, for example. And it is also more complex as it has to update software on nearly 60 different models across nearly all countries in the world. This system does not just update the infotainment ECU in the car -- it updates ALL the ECUs in the car (if needed). And that is also a huge and very challenging task. The fact that it just works, with failures measured in single digits per millions of updates (mostly related to damaged hardware), is remarkable, but often stays unremarked.
Charging
Basically, everything that I said about the i4 before also applies to the i5. The charging is a bit better -- the charging curve is flatter, so it matters even less to "manage" the charging perfectly. The consumption is a bit better -- likely due to the single-motor configuration. High-speed consumption is astonishingly good -- I was routinely cruising long distances at 190 km/h and never had a feeling that this high speed impacted my range much.
In the end, I don't even talk about charging speeds or consumption anymore. Instead, in real life, I think about charging and consumption in terms of time, and then it sounds like this:
- In Germany (speeds around 180 km/h): from full charge, drive ~3 hours, charge for 20 minutes, drive another ~2 hours
- On highways outside Germany (~140 km/h): from full charge, drive ~4 hours, charge for 20 minutes, drive another ~3 hours
- On regional roads (90–100 km/h): from full charge, drive ~6 hours, charge for 15 minutes, and drive another ~4 hours
All I do normally is:
- On any longer drive, just enter all destinations for today into the BMW navigation system, then it will automatically plan for the best charging location. If at the end of the day I will not get to a place with an overnight charger and I will need to keep driving further, then I also add tomorrow's first stop into the navigation.
- In everyday usage, I simply prefer to park in locations that have a charger (any charger).
If I go downtown to a cinema, there is a parking garage there that has 11 kW chargers that will pump 20–30% of battery capacity into the car while I am watching the movie. If I go shopping, I choose a shop that has a 50–150 kW charger nearby -- then in the half an hour that I usually spend in the shop, the car will usually be up to 80–90% capacity. Even going to a shopping mall that has 11 kW chargers is worth it. Even if I just charge up 10% of the battery while in the shop, I still get home with more battery than I left with. This way, even without a charger at home, I can easily maintain or increase the charge level of my car's battery without having to explicitly go somewhere just to charge.
Charging works best when it happens incidentally -- where and when your car is parked anyway.
I hope to get a charging station at home this year; then I will only be charging outside of the home when I drive more than ~4 hours on the Autobahn on the same day. Just driving from Ulm to Munich and back would then not be enough to make me have to charge outside of home.
There is a negative nuance in charging an electric car in Europe, and Germany specifically. The costs have increased a lot and flexibility has decreased a lot in the past few years. The cost of electricity shot up a lot after the attack on Ukraine started, and the cost of public charging soon followed. And while the retail electricity cost has decreased again, the cost of charging is still high. Especially for corporate roaming cards that company car users are using. It is not unusual to see costs of 1 €/kWh and blocking fees of 17 €/hour after as little as 30 minutes from the start of charging. The EU needs to pay more attention to this as such costs are a real blocker for electromobility. Luckily, it is still quite easy to find chargers costing as little as 0.35–0.49 €/kWh and having much more reasonable blocking fees that only start after 1 hour on fast chargers and 4 hours (during the day) on slow chargers.
What's next?
So my BMW i5 is back in the dealership, so what is next for me? Unusually, I will be spending the next few months without a car and reliant on the great public transport and the amazing Deutschlandticket that, for a low price (just over 40 €/month after employer discount), gives me access to all regional and city public transport across the entire Germany. It does not include long-distance high-speed trains (like ICE), but all local transport is there. And that will also save me some money on the taxable benefit side as well from not having a company car.
I would not do that voluntarily, so why? Well, I am waiting for the new car -- the BMW iX3 Neue Klasse.
This is going to be the first car on the Neue Klasse platform, also known as the Service Pack 25 architecture. The previous cars were on the SP21 architecture. This is going to be a BIG deal. In this generation, everything is new and redesigned from scratch. The whole concept of what a car is and what a BMW is was recreated from a blank slate. And all of that was done with BEV design as basically the only design choice. The NK design can include range-extending gasoline or hydrogen engines, but the main driving force in NK always is the big battery and the strong electrical motor. Or two. Or three. Or four.
It is a whole new world, let me tell you. This car, compared to all previous BMW cars, feels like a generation was skipped. It is two generations ahead of everything BMW has done before. In electromobility, in what a car is, in traction and stability, in software, in user experience. I've been working on this for, basically, the last 5 years. A lot has been invested into this.
And it is not just one car. All BMW cars in the future will transition to Neue Klasse designs. This is a clean, architectural break. This is what "a BMW" will mean for the next decades. It is really hard to overstate the importance of this particular car model. And that is why I am happy to wait a few months without a car for it. I am hoping for delivery in April, but demand is so high that I am not certain when I'll get it, even if I ordered the car the very first day that a configurator was available. The whole planned production capacity for Europe for 2026 is supposedly already sold out.
What can I tell about the software there? Not much more than is already published. It is still a Linux-based operating system, but now you will notice that it is also based on Android, specifically on the AOSP software stack. It still remains a 100% in-house developed OS and software stack with full control over all integrations. As shown just last week at CES, there is a local LLM for an in-car voice assistant and an integration to off-car Alexa+ expansion to cover wider services, like rich location search and hands-free booking of a table at a restaurant, for example. Naturally, each part of these services needs to meet strict privacy requirements, and the user needs to be able to agree or disagree to use them. And all of that needs to be tested.
I hope that I can talk a bit more about this in one of the future Debconfs again.