BMW’s upcoming 5 Series and 5 Series Touring will be both EV and ICE powered

By jaytee, 16 March 2023

BMW’s upcoming 5 Series and 5 Series Touring will be both EV and ICE powered

Yes, your eyes aren’t playing tricks on you. Yes, you read that right. The upcoming BMW 5 series will come with a slew of powertrain options including mild hybrid petrol and diesel engines, plug-in hybrids and crucially, all-electric powertrains as well.

Now, an electric 5 Series isn’t surprising news. BMW have done their whole electrification schtick to great effect with the iX3, the i4 Gran Coupe as well as the i7 xDrive60 and Chinese-only i3 eDrive35L sedan. So electrifying their best-selling executive sedan isn’t exactly illogical.

The BMW i5 should arrive sometime later this year alongside the ICE-powered 5er, while the PHEV 5 Series will only arrive in 2024. However, the i5 isn’t going to be a sedan-only model. There will be a BMW EV wagon coming in the form of the i5 Touring, which we’re told should arrive come spring 2024.

Clearly, BMW is doing well for itself in the pursuit of electrification. The upcoming 5er was announced during the BMW Group Annual Conference 2023, where Chairman of the Board of Management of BMW AG, Oliver Zipse, announced that BMW sold more than 215,000 battery electric vehicles (BEVs) in 2022 alone. Double what they’ve managed in 2021.

All told, BMW has put over half a million BEVs on the road since the BMW i3 was launched in 2013, and the company foresees that EVs will account for 15% of global sales this year.

In line with that, BMW will also be launching a new X2 and all-electric iX2 in due time. The latter of which will be the brand’s second BEV offering in the high-volume compact segment alongside the iX1. Like the U11-generation X1 and iX1, the new X2 and iX2 will be made at BMW’s Regensburg plant. The projected launch date of the new compact SUV would be somewhere around the end of 2023.

To top it off, BMW M GmbH (the progenitors of cars like the M3, M4 & M5) reported a record year to mark its 50th anniversary, and the best-selling model within the M lineup was the i4 M50.

According to Oliver Zipse, “The all-electric BMW i4 M50 shows how BMW blends dynamic performance and electric mobility to perfection. It was the best-selling BMW M model worldwide in 2022.”

As such, the i5 BEV will also be made available as a BMW M Performance model. The question remains, will there be an electric performance wagon in the works? A BMW i5 M Touring perhaps?

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