The 2024 BMW X5 xDrive50e Is Three Very Different SUVs At Once

I recently had the chance to drive the new 2024 BMW X5 xDrive50e, which is a plug-in hybrid with a better-than-most 39 miles of pure electric range. This is a vehicle you can use as a not-so-slow EV for around-town chores and a stonkingly fast SUV everywhere else. Technically, you can use it as a fast SUV for running errands in your local town if you’d like to draw the ire of your neighbors and the attention of the law.

It’s also a hybrid, albeit one with a ton of power. What’s curious here is that this car performs like three different vehicles and I’m quite enamored with two out of three of them and a little unenthused by the third.

Is a car that gives you one good extra optional mode a car that’s 50% better or, if you only like 2/3rds are you getting 33% less car? I guess it depends on how you look at it.

The Basics

This specific BMW X5 is the much-revised plug-in hybrid with an inline-six.

• As-tested price: $86,695
• Powertrain: 3.0-liter turbocharged inline-six.
• Transmission: Eight-speed automatic with integral AC motor.
• Combined power: 483 hp/516 lb.-ft. of torque
• Battery: 19.2 kWh lithium-ion
• PHEV Range: 39 miles of EV-only range
• MPG: 58 MPGe/22 MPG gas only
• Craziest Option: $900 for an illuminated grille
• Best Option: $950 for the 21-inch M Wheels

It’s A Surprisingly Good Electric SUV

If you want an electric SUV all the time you should buy an electric SUV like the BMW iX or, if you plan to spend a little less, a Kia EV9 or MachE. Perhaps you don’t want an electric SUV all the time? May I suggest that what you want is an electric car that’s good for the environment 60% of the time and a big fast SUV that feels like it single-handedly could bring about the apocalypse for that other 40%.

It’s a good idea for a certain kind of person. Too many PHEVs lack range and are, therefore, the wrong kind of compromise. I think there are definitely people who want to plug in something every 20 miles and I also think I am not one of those people.

With an upgraded battery pack, the new X5 xDrive50e (I don’t get why BMW names its cars this way, either) is now creeping towards the magic 40 miles of range, which is about what I think a car needs, at minimum, to be competitive. This is close to the RAV4 PHEV, which is the gold standard in those vehicles in the North American market.

Even better, the motor in the X5 is way more potent, producing 194 horsepower, or about 83 horsepower more than the outgoing PHEV X5. With that much power, the X5 feels more like a normal electric car in regular suburban driving than a RAV4 Prime or Volvo S60 Recharge. It’s even more juice than the Mazda CX-70 PHEV and will carry the BMW X5 above 80 mph if you want to drain the battery as fast as you can.

You won’t win any stoplight races against a Model Y Performance, but you also won’t feel like the car is holding anything back. If you can plug your X5 in at home or at work you’ll probably never even think about it as it’s the rare PHEV these days that doesn’t pay much of a penalty in EV-only mode.

It’s An Outrageously Fast SUV

This isn’t even the fastest BMW X5 you can buy as there are numerous faster versions, stretching from the twin-turbo V8-powered M60i xDrive up to, eventually, the BMW X5M Competition. All luxury automakers seem to love making ever more monstrously powerful SUVs, almost all of which are big gas guzzlers.

The thing is… the PHEV is almost as fast as the V8 version. According to BMW, the xDrive50e will get to 60 mph from a standstill in just 4.6 seconds. Compare that to the X5 m60i, which will get to 60 mph in 4.2 seconds. These are big heavy vehicles and anything faster than about 5 seconds feels more than fast enough.

I also love the way the motor provides torque, deploying it in a way that the company calls “a pre-gearing stage,” which it describes as:

A pre-gearing stage is used to increase the effective torque produced by the electric motor to a maximum 331 lb-ft at the transmission input for the motor. In this way, the compact electric motor is able to provide the sort of torque boost that could normally only be achieved using a far larger and heavier unit.

In ‘Sport’ mode you get the benefit of both the electric motor and the twin-turbo inline-six with a system tuned towards always giving you as much power as you need, then adding 15 percent. Do you want to go fast from 0-100 mph? 50-70 mph? 17.984 mph to 56.980 mph? There’s no legal speed where you’ll ever find the X5 in this trim panting.

Obviously, Sport mode brings it with the usual more aggressive shifting, tighter steering, and stiffened suspension. While all of this feels much better than the car in slow, EV mode, it’s not the sharpest-handling SUV BMW has ever produced. Blame the lack of active dampers, I suppose, though if you want a corner-carver I don’t know why you buy an SUV in the first place.

It’s A Totally Average Hybrid

Here’s the funny thing: I own a hybrid and I own an old BMW. Is this the ideal combination of both? Not quite. My hybrid doesn’t have an EV-only mode so, in that way, the BMW X5 is a superior electric car. I’d even argue that, though being a couple of miles short, the X5 makes a better EV than everyone’s favorite RAV4 Prime.

Obviously, the X5 in this trim is faster than just about any five-door PHEV currently for sale. Certainly, no RAV4 or even a Volvo XC60 Recharge are going to come close to keeping up with an X5 driver if an X5 driver has made the conscious decision to quickly be anywhere else.

What I found most strange in driving this car is that it didn’t feel all that great as a hybrid. The ideal way to drive this car if you’re not going to plug it in all the time is in HYBRID ECO mode, which allows the SUV to determine when it’s most efficient to be an EV and when it’s better to provide assistance from the inline-six.

In Sport mode the X5 is also a hybrid, it’s just one that wants to have fun. In HYBRID ECO it’s not as good at being a hybrid as my CR-V. It’s a little too noticeable when it shifts between modes, which it does often, and throttle response/performance is a little unpredictable. I’m sure after 1,000 miles you’ll get used to it, but given how good the vehicle is in other modes it was a surprise to me that the mode most likely to be used was the one that I liked the least.

How Does It Compare To My BMW?

This BMW is just a hair over 20 years newer than the BMW I own, which is a 2003 BMW 530i Sport. I spent $3,000 on my very high-mileage car and even that, I think, was a steal. I love it, though some of that love might be due to the fact that nothing serious has broken on it and I haven’t had to make any real hard decisions yet.

A new car brings great ease and, while the X5 and 5-Series aren’t precisely competitive, the price differential is interesting to me and I like to think about what a sporting luxury car has become in the ensuing years.

You’re immediately struck by how much stuff there is in the newer BMW when you sit in them back-to-back. My 530i Sport was quite well-optioned at the time and the list of things the new BMW can do is longer than my entire options list. The E39 cannot control itself in highway traffic (Active Driving Assistance Pro), the grille doesn’t light up, it only has two zones of climate control as opposed to four, there’s no air suspension, its all-EV range is 0 miles, and there’s no HUD.

Both feel like BMWs and, for all the whinging about the outside of Munich’s latest creations, the interiors are some of the best in the world. The $750 for the multi-contour seats means you can adjust the support in roughly 9,000 different ways in the new car achieving a level of comfort typically reserved for Tsars. My old BMW has something broken in the seat so only the right half reclines, meaning that hitting the button causes your whole body to twist like the passenger just said something super interesting and you’re desperate to hear.

Would I trade my BMW for this one? Not necessarily.

For the extra $86,000 you get a safer, faster, more comfortable, and bigger car. You get all that but you don’t get a five-speed manual transmission. You get brutal speed, but you don’t get spryness. You get a lot of screens to distract you from driving, but you don’t get the feeling that the drive is exactly the distraction you need to survive another day.

I’d trade it for my CR-V, though, because I’m not crazy.

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