Superbly comfortable
Reclining rear seats should be available
What makes a great luxury car? Make a list and the requirements are actually rather simple. It should be quiet. It should be large. It should have a genuinely good rear seat. It should be beautifully made, have enough performance to feel special and, ideally, still be exciting enough to drive when you decide to relieve the chauffeur of his duties. The difficult bit is getting all of those things in the same car without spending well over a crore.
Traditionally, the Mercedes-Benz E-Class and BMW 5 Series have managed that rather well in India. But what if you want the same basic recipe without an internal combustion engine? BMW already had an answer to that question with the i5 M60, except that was less luxury limousine and more electric intercontinental ballistic missile.
The M60 had 601bhp, 795Nm and could do 0-100kph in 3.8 seconds. Hilarious, certainly, but perhaps not entirely necessary when the person in the back is trying to answer emails on the way to the airport.
This new, more sensible i5 takes a very different approach. Less power, more space and, crucially, local assembly. Think of it not as the slower i5, but as the electric equivalent of the regular 5 Series Long Wheelbase. And immediately, that makes it a considerably more relevant car for India.
The regular i5 isn't exactly a small car to begin with. At 5,060mm long, it already occupies a considerable amount of road. The Long Wheelbase stretches that to 5,175mm, while the distance between the axles grows from 2,995mm to a fairly enormous 3,105mm. It is also 15mm taller and 35mm wider than the regular car.
In other words, BMW hasn't simply added an L to the badge and liberated another inch of knee room. This is a 5 Series that's beginning to behave suspiciously like a 7 Series.
And that's obvious the moment you get into the back. There is an enormous amount of space here. Legroom is excellent, knee room is almost comical and there's enough room to properly stretch out. The huge Sky Lounge panoramic glass roof only adds to the sense of space, while the seats themselves are beautifully cushioned and finished.
The upholstery is vegan too, which has become an increasingly important consideration for luxury-car buyers. Whether you're avoiding animal leather for religious, ethical or environmental reasons, there is no compromise required here. More importantly, it doesn't feel like a cheap alternative to leather. The materials and general cabin quality are absolutely where you'd expect them to be in a BMW costing this sort of money.
There is, however, a rather irritating problem. Actually, two. The rear seats don't recline and there are no rear sun blinds. These were two of our biggest complaints with the 5 Series Long Wheelbase and somehow they've carried straight across to the i5. It's particularly strange because BMW has clearly designed this car around people spending significant amounts of time in the back. You've given me 3.1 metres of wheelbase and enough legroom to practise yoga, but I can't recline my seat or block out the afternoon sun.
It's like checking into an enormous hotel suite and discovering the curtains don't close. Neither ruins the rear-seat experience, but both feel like unnecessary omissions in a car whose whole reason to exist is rear-seat luxury.
Outside, the i5 remains refreshingly conventional by modern EV standards. It doesn't look like it has landed from a distant planet to inform humanity about sustainable mobility. It looks like a big BMW saloon.
You still get the illuminated kidney grille (which btw you can’t show off if you park the car), adaptive headlights, 20-inch wheels and a fair amount of aluminium detailing. And I rather like the latter. In an era when absolutely everything has to be blacked out, murdered out and de-chromed until it resembles an aftermarket tuning catalogue, there's something refreshingly luxurious about a little brightwork.
Inside, it's familiar modern BMW territory. The large curved display dominates the dashboard, there are crystal glass elements dotted around the cabin and the general quality is excellent.
And that's perhaps one of the most convincing things about the i5. You don't get into it and think you've bought the electric version of a luxury car. You simply feel like you've bought a luxury car that happens to be electric. There is an important distinction between the two.
Underneath, the differences between this and the M60 become considerably more dramatic. Battery capacity drops slightly from 83.9kWh in the M60 to 81.6kWh here. But the really enormous number is the amount of performance that has disappeared. Instead of 601bhp and 795Nm, you now have 268bhp and 410Nm. Consequently, the 0-100kph time has gone from 3.8 seconds to 6.7.
On paper, losing more than 300 horsepower sounds catastrophic. In reality, ask yourself a simple question: does a chauffeur-driven luxury saloon actually need 600bhp? Because 6.7 seconds to 100kph is hardly slow. There's plenty of performance for overtaking and the immediate response of an electric motor means it should never feel lethargic in normal driving. More importantly, the character of this powertrain arguably suits the purpose of an i5 better than the lunatic M60 ever did.
The M60 was the i5 demonstrating what an electric 5 Series could do. This is the i5 doing what most owners actually need it to do. And it does it so well. It is smooth, it is effortless and unlike some luxury cars that love packing a punch, this just does things smooth and steady. And in a world where a luxury EV is getting more and more popular, this really makes all the difference.
It is also superbly comfortable. It runs on a set of 20-inch wheels as compared to the standard 5 Series and their horrible looking 18s but still, feels as comfortable. And for India, the ground clearance has gone up by 18mm too. Mainly this is so we can clear speed breakers - because in our country, a country where there are people who exist that have powers to make speed breakers that defy the concept of an automobile, this is important. Frankly, anything that helps me NOT take a speedbreaker at 2kmph and at a 45 degree angle, while passerby scooter and bike riders mention my mother and sister in shouty breaths, is a good thing. Sadly, there is a downside to this. The sleekness of the i5 M60 is gone and like all luxury cars in India, this now has the same SUV like stance. Sigh, the things we do to be able to drive good cars here…..
The other crucial part of this i5's story is that it's assembled in India. BMW has already gone down this route with the iX1 Long Wheelbase, and local assembly allows the i5 to be positioned far more aggressively than the fully imported M60 at a price point of ₹79.60 lakhs (ex-showroom, India).
And that changes its entire purpose. The M60 was always going to be niche. Spectacularly fast, enormously entertaining and a fantastic demonstration of what BMW M Performance could do with an electric 5 Series, but niche nonetheless.
This isn't supposed to be. This is supposed to be the electric 5 Series you actually buy. And perhaps that's what makes it more interesting than its much more powerful sibling. BMW isn't trying to sell electric performance here. It's selling electric luxury.
Think about that original luxury-car checklist again. Quiet? Well, it's electric. Large? At 5.17 metres long with more than 3.1 metres between its wheels, emphatically so. Rear-seat space? Acres of it. Quality? Absolutely. Performance? 268bhp might look pedestrian, but 0-100kph in 6.7 seconds is more than adequate for what this car needs to do.
There are still those frustrating omissions in the back. At this level, reclining rear seats should be available, and in India the lack of sun blinds is even harder to understand. But the overall recipe suddenly makes enormous sense.
It's huge, quiet, luxurious, quick enough, locally assembled and designed around the way a large number of Indian luxury-car buyers actually use their cars. The M60 was the i5 you bought because you wanted an electric BMW that could scare you. This is the i5 you buy because you want an electric BMW that can spoil you.
And by giving the i5 less power, more wheelbase and more ground clearance, BMW may have inadvertently created the i5 India actually needed.
