BMW X5 45e - Best Hybrid on sale today? | 4K

[Applause] hey guys welcome back to my channel and welcome to my first drive video on bmw's x5 45e over the past 12 months or so i've been asked a lot about this particular car is it any good does it make more sense than say their brilliant x5 30d which is definitely my favorite x5 in their current lineup also here in the uk from 2030 we're potentially only going to be able to buy evs and hybrids so this sort of car has got a lot of attention around it at the moment people are really keen to know what it's all about also when you factor in company car tax benefit in kind hybrids and evs make a lot of sense for that sort of customer the base 45e starts at just over 65 000 pounds here in the uk this m sport trim version costs about 70 000 pounds on the road this particular press car has about an extra 5 000 pounds worth of spec on it so not too crazy it has things like the technology pack the m sport pro pack i think it's called which probably consists of these bigger 21 inch wheels and a few other bits and pieces it also has the crafted clarity gear stick knob that's about 550 pounds on its own completely pointless option but if you want your x5 to look like a mercedes then i guess that's for you we've essentially got a detuned b-58 engine so it's a three-liter inline-six turbocharged petrol engine producing just under 290 horsepower it also has some electric motors that produce just under 115 horsepower so when you combine those two you're looking at a car or an suv that has roughly 400 horsepower and 600 newton meters of torque that gives this a claimed not to 62 figure of just 5.6 seconds and a top speed just shy of 150 miles an hour i think that's definitely quick enough for your large suv bmw also claim that this will do 217 miles to the gallon well we'll talk about that a bit more once we get in the car but i can tell you that it has a 24 kilowatt battery that again they claim that will do about 50 miles on a single charge and it has a 69 liter fuel tank so slightly reduced from the 80 liter fuel tank that you get in a regular x5 i think that's not too bad they've had to reduce the fuel tank i'm guessing to save a bit of space for batteries and hybrid technology but 69 liters is still a nice sized fuel tank even for a big two and a half ton suv right let's jump inside it's cold out here and i'm beginning to lose the feeling in my fingers before we go any further i just want to say a massive shout out to the last coat who are sponsoring this video the last coat of very established american detailing products company as most of you know i'm not the best at detailing and maintaining my car i tend to do it three to four times a year if it's lucky but i'm sure you agree it looks a lot better now than it did a bit earlier on i actually cleaned it using the last soap but the product i'm most excited about is the tlc ii this keeps surfaces cleaner and drier for longer it's hydrophobic it also protects it from things like salt and ultraviolet rays from the sunshine not that we're getting too much sunshine over here in the uk at the moment as you've just seen seconds before the heavens opened the difference between the left-hand side of the bonnet where the tlc2 had been applied and the right hand side the bonnet which had nothing on it but had been clean like the rest of the car the little quattro could not grip at all on the left it didn't matter which angle or where i put it it would just naturally slip off the bonnet whereas on the right that hadn't been treated well it would grip because there's still a lot of contamination and rubbish effectively on the paint and what that equates to over the next couple of days or a couple of weeks or even couple of months is when i'm using this car in all sorts of weather the rain the water the salt the grime from other cars is not going to stick to the paintwork it should just wash straight off especially after another random downfall of rain so if you want to get yourself some of this amazing the last coke products please use the discount code achilles20 and get yourself 20 off there'll be a link to their website in the description below and also in the pinned comment i'm going to go around the car dry it off and then apply this to the entire paintwork and hopefully that'll mean that i don't need to clean this car for a while longer what i was most intrigued about with this x5 hybrid is would it feel much different behind the wheel compared to one of its combustion engine only siblings like the x5 30d because this does weigh an extra 250 kilos so i wasn't sure whether that would ruin the brilliant ride or the handling so we're coming into a nice little section here i'm in individual we'll talk about those modes in a minute let's whack it into sports over into sports or zomatic gearbox i've even got paddles because fundamentally they're controlling the zf8 speed and i'm now using the combustion engine and the electric power should i need it and coming into here let's remember a regular x5 a combustion engine x5 is about 2.2 2.3 tonnes this is 2.5 tonnes you can feel that there is a lot of weight there but it manages its weight really well just like so many of these big modern suvs they somehow disguise their weight and their mass and they control it all very well i wouldn't say it feels sporty i mean now i'm in sports i can feel the suspension's a lot stiffer it's not uncomfortable but it's a lot stiffer than if i knock it back into hybrid everything softens off and obviously down here there's lots of different calibrations so you can have your individual settings so when you're in sports you can have the softer dampers etcetera just like you can in the majority of bmws so i think if you jumped in an x5 30d now or you just jumped out of one and into this you wouldn't notice the difference but in isolation this car doesn't feel it's two and a half tons in weight something else i was concerned about was whether i'd notice the hybrid drivetrain i would i be aware of the combustion engine cutting in and cutting out because that's what effectively it does when i'm in hybrid it's being switched on and off all the time and again the short answer to that is no it does it so seamlessly in fact half the time i have to put on the energy flow diagram down here so that i know when the combustion engine is on or off because it's just so seamless it's on now and it's off and it's on and it's off so there really is no way of at least hearing you can maybe feel it engaged just slightly but it's pretty much seamless and i think that is incredible it's very similar to what i've talked about recently with bmw's very latest mild hybrid system that controls the stop start functionality it really doesn't surprise me too much that bmw have got this so right in there let's call it second generation of hybrids they're very very good with software their zf gearboxes always tend to be better than anyone else that uses them on the market so yeah i'm really really impressed with the way this drives and handles considering it's a hybrid and that shouldn't be a compromise but in reality it is [Applause] 400 horsepower and 600 newton meters of combined torque does sound impressive but when you factor in the 2510 kilos at this weighs and that's before you throw me and my camera gear in it you're not going to expect performance figures acceleration figures to be too mind-blowing but bmw do quote that this will do not to 62 miles now in 5.6 seconds a couple of days ago when it was a bit drier outside i actually tested those figures with my race racebox gps so let's jump back to that and see what i managed to achieve launch control in bmw's x5 45e it has a claimed naught 62 figure of just 5.6 seconds let's see if this two and a half ton hybrid can get close to that i'm in sports i'm in sports gearbox so this is going to give me all of the combustion engine and all of the electric power launch control active here we go well that's really powerful off the line and there we go 4.97 seconds and it's in the green [Applause] i'm sure you agree just under five seconds on gps for a large suv that weighs two and a half tons is massively impressive and would definitely give the majority of sports cars a run for their money at least off the line or in a straight line really really impressive i wasn't expecting it to be well much under what the manufacturer bmw claimed but five seconds is just unbelievable performance figures these days especially in the straight line are just getting quite ridiculous and i know this has got all-wheel drive traction but still you can't argue with the sub five seconds to 62 miles an hour in something so big [Applause] let's talk about what this car's like an electric only so down here there's an electric button i press that that will disengage and shut down the combustion engine now we're running on the 24 kilowatt batteries and electric motors in this mode it will happily keep up with normal traffic especially in town anything below 40 miles an hour it really deals with it very very well bmw quote or claim that it will do 51 miles to a full charge now i've found that to be more like about 42 miles so 20 down on what they claim but that's 42 realistic miles you know in town on a or b roads bit of motorway and i think 40 odd miles is long enough for the majority of your daily journeys it's very rare that you're going to be dailying something like this more than 40 or 50 miles a day where hybrids get very confusing is their claimed miles to the gallon figure an x530d has a claimed 40 miles to the gallon on the combined cycle this has a claim 217 miles the gallon on the combined cycle 217 i mean when you read that it just sounds ridiculous and it kind of is and it's not strictly true when they test these cars on the wltp cycle they must be much shorter journeys because if you had a full charge in this car and you did a 40 mile journey like i just talked about then obviously the miles the gallon are going to be through the roof because i'm massively unlikely to use the combustion engine so if you push out a 50 mile journey then i'm going to use the combustion engine for bits and pieces of that journey but still the combined mpg is going to be astronomical where that figure really starts to look a little bit off is on longer journeys for instance the other day i was on the motorway for about 150 miles and when i started my journey i had about eight miles of electric range so that soon disappeared and i was left with a detuned b-58 engine now that engine that produces just under 290 horsepower pushing this two and a half tons of hybrid x5 around is almost a little bit underpowered and it didn't struggle but all of a sudden i'm doing 25 26 miles to the gallon on that 150 mile journey how is 25 or 26 miles of the gallon anywhere near 217 i don't know but that's what you've got to understand that unless you're doing a sub 50 mile journey and you've got a full electric range you're not going to get anywhere close to their claimed figures an x530d would probably do 650 to 700 miles on a full tank of diesel whereas this if you drove it in the same manner i reckon you'd be lucky to get 500 miles out of a full charge and a full tank of unleavened like so many hybrids out there this x5 can't utilize the fast charging network in fact its battery will only charge at a maximum of seven kilowatt hours which is kind of equivalent to you having a fast charger at home and that means that the battery 24 kilowatt battery will charge from zero to full in about five hours if you've only got your regular mains at homework work that same charge will take roughly nine hours that doesn't sound ideal or great especially when you compare it to let's say any tesla out there but because you've got the combustion engine and you've got a 69 liter fuel tank you're not always depending on that electric battery and also the majority journeys that are done let's say in the day when you get the car home if you can plug it in overnight well it's always going to be full in the morning so it's not the end of the world but it would be nice if you could charge it up at a fast charger at fuel station for instance or on your journey this car does its best to keep power in the battery and in fact there's a really handy button down here that looks like a battery when you press that you've got battery control and then you can set your target value so i can tell the car to try and keep let's say 60 of battery power in the cells so that when i get to the end of my journey let's say it's london and i want to drive around london for 15 20 miles i'll be able to do that on fully electric so it's always going to try and keep the electric power there the negative side of that is to do that obviously the car is constantly having to fire up the engine combustion engine to feed power into the batteries it's kind of a false economy but it is a way of making sure you've always got electric energy available [Applause] in terms of value well 70 grand isn't cheap and this one sits at about 75 with a few toys and that doesn't include my beloved panoramic glass sunroof but when you compare it to other large luxury suvs that are on the market it actually sits really well let's look at range rover's p 400 hybrid i think that's what it's called they start at 91 000 pounds that's a massive chunk of money and i know there will be people out there that will still put a range rover over an x5 but in my opinion this is more reliable better built better tech it's every bit as good as a range rover if not better and at 20 000 pounds less well it's kind of a no-brainer and watching harry's garage he's actually tried both of them and he much prefers the x5 45e thinks it's yeah a much much better more rounded package and without driving the range over i can't really comment but i can't imagine it's any better executed than this 45e i'm going to end with the few negatives that i have found with this car because well it's only fair the first one being if you want a seven seat option x5 you can't get it in this 45e so you'd have to get a combustion engine car two rows of seats only the next one is boot space a regular x5 has 650 liters which is fairly massive this car only has 500 liters so you lose a fair amount of boot space due to all of the batteries and the hybrid tech that's stuff back there and my third and final negative is the charging or lack of charging capabilities as we talked about the fact that you can only charge it at seven kilowatt hours it will get most people out of trouble but it would be nice if that was two or three or four times bigger and i'm sure the next generation of hybrids would allow you to do that but otherwise yeah really impressed with this car i'm gonna miss it it's been fantastic in the week that i've had it the ride quality and stuff compared to let's say that x6m competition that i had a couple of weeks ago well it's chalk and cheese this is an absolute joy to live with that just wanted to rattle my fillings out all the time so really good job bmw i've enjoyed this i've enjoyed this car and i think it does represent very good value guys thanks so much for watching and thank you for the support that i've had so far in 2021 really really appreciate it if you want to see more content on this x5 45e please head over to yes auto using the link in the description below i filmed a unique video on this car talking about five reasons that i think it is the best hybrid on sale today i'll see you at the next video you

Channel: Joe Achilles

Views: 340,067

Keywords: BMW, New BMW, BMW X5, BMW X5 45e, X5 45e, New BMW X5, New BMW X5 45e, New X5 45e, Joe Achilles, Joe Achilles BMW, 2021 BMW, 2021 BMW X5, 2021 BMW X5 45e

Id: sZW-HN5vdkU

Length: 20min 0sec (1200 seconds)

Published: Sat Jan 30 2021