BMW 225e Active Tourer M Sport xDrive in-depth review – see why it’s very versatile #phev #mpv
You’re watching car Babble I’m Yan and I’m back with another Courtesy car review this time of the BMW 225e active tutor and it’s m Sports spec with X drive and that’s another way of saying it’s a plug-in hybrid love child of an MPV and a Hatchback so as I said before I put my hundi Santa Fe in for IT service and I got given a hundi i 10 in the basic spec you can check out a link to that at the end of this video but this time around
My BMW 3 Series went in for a recall and I got given a slightly better car the BMW 225e active Tor and I didn’t have very much time with it but I had just enough to do a good test drive around the city didn’t really get to take out
An the open road got to park up quickly take some pictures play with the interior and take some notes on it so the plan is to make a review about that car from this car now I don’t like to talk too much about Luke’s cars because Luke’s are subjective and what I think
About them is relevant to what you might think about them so let me know in the comments for me it looks like a really lanky hatchback from the outside with a big snout at the front because BMW grills are getting a little bit big for my liking but I certainly think it’s got
A bit of charm particularly with the 18-in rims this color of Paine M sport styling it does look quite nice and a little bit sort of nippy looking so really it’s not an ugly car but it’s not one I’m looking like going so you do get quite a few different powertrains with
This car you get a diesel you get two petrols with Miles hybrid technology and then you get two plug-in hybrids of which this one was the I’m looking down as if I’m in it was the lower power of the two but it was certainly no slou and
For considering we’re in the world of electrification I was kind of glad that they gave me an electrified version to tell you about because I think that’s maybe one of the ones that more people might actually buy particularly for company car buyers so for the focus of
The video I’m going to talk mainly about the experience I had with the one I drove now I’m going to put some info up on the screen about the other powertrains but the car I had had a 1.5 turbocharged three-cylinder petrol engine made to an electric motor producing 242 combined brake horsepower
477 newm of torque and it do 06 6 and 1 12 seconds that’s no slouch and the best part is it had a 16.3 Kow battery which they say on paper will do up to 50 miles of all EV range in the real world unless you live in Siberia and really cold
Climates you’ll get over 40 mil of real world range I never got to try that but I’m pretty certain that will be the case and that is still quite a bit more than other plug-in hybrids but the important thing is what is your daily commute
Likely to be and how often are you you going to be doing round trips before plugging back in that are over 40 Mi I would imagine they’re probably the vast minority of people and so I think that size of battery for a plugger hybrid is probably about The Sweet Spot you can
Get bigger ones but they’re going to add weight to the car as well and yeah realistically are you really going to need much more than that before you’re going to be able to plug it in in a lot of cases I mean if you need that kind of
Range more then you maybe want to start thinking about an EV but when I think back to my scod Octavia vs IV battery that would barely do 20 M of EV range if you can go over 40 miles out of this thing that is good so I didn’t really
Get to blast this on a country road to really see how fast it is but it definitely felt like it had plenty of pool particularly in the mid-range the torque felt really nice and for a really small petrol engine the motor contributing to that really does make a
Big difference to the overall horsepower and yeah it had loads of torque and bottom line is if your car is loaded up with your family and you need to get past a funeral procession could you do it in that car yes you absolutely could it really did feel like I had plenty of
Performance and so from that point of view happy is Larry but certainly it’s not the sort of car you’re going to be like guys I’m taking the long way home so I can go on a country road cuz I really want to just fling this around
Some bends it’s just not that kind of car but if you were to do it I don’t think it would be really unpleasant I tried to exaggerate throwing around a few roundabouts and stuff cuz I didn’t get a chance to go on a country road but
Ultimately I wasn’t like oh this is this is awful this is all over the place it was totally competent there wasn’t a huge amount of body roll but there was a little bit but it’s also so got quite a high center of gravity being the style
Of the body so yeah it’s not something I would say is going to be fun but it’s definitely no slouch but if you go for the M sport you do get adaptive M sport suspension standard and I really wish you bloody got that in my f30 it make a
Real difference but if you have that you can have your cake and eat it really because it’s going to help with setting up the car for a stiffer ride in terms of suspension but also body control as well and I didn’t get a chance to really play about with that cuz actually
Realize at the time I had it but certainly I think that will make impact on the ride quality and the body roll and certainly I found the suspension setting that was in which was in Comfort I think when I had it was firm but not
Really like all over the place so on the whole I think if you go for the M sport you’ve got a pretty versatile car in that regard the steering though was quite light which is great around town and I think that’s probably the type of driving this car is mostly designed for
So that’s really a plus point but certainly you can change the settings a bit to stiffen up and it will make a little bit of difference to try it a little bit I was like you a little bit but if you’re on a country road might be a bit artificial but it will
Make a difference and stiffen things up but it’s not a car where you’re going oh my God this is the most responsive car ever but it’s also not one where you’re going to be wondering where the hell the front wheels are refinement was all right but not like amazing I did think
Oh if you’re in EV mode it felt really quiet obviously but when you revved out the petrol engine you definitely could hear it coming in the cabin and there was a little bit of tire noise as well but nothing really from the wing mirrors I could note but I wasn’t going that
Fast but I did find the gearbox a little bit annoying so the the petrol to Electric transition back and forth was really seamless as they usually are plug in hybrids these days but the seven-speed Dual clutch gearbox which is standard in all models you don’t get a
Manual was really a bit jerky at low speeds and I actually read about this somewhere else as well people saying that and so yeah I totally agree I was going off roundabouts and I was like a couple of times I just found the whole thing just quite a jerky experience and
It’s just a reminder of why I don’t really ever buy cars with dual clutch gearboxes Because unless you’re buying them as sporty cars where they really come into their own and they’re Snappy gear changes when it comes to Everyday driving and like around town and stuff
They can be really quite jerky and I don’t like that visibility though I thought was pretty good all around there’s a fairly funny angle to the wind screen and the front a pillars just a little bit like that but other than that you can see around the car pretty good
You got a frameless interior mirror as well and you get front and rear parking sensors as standard and a rear view camera so you’re not going to have any problems parking this thing for sure now if you follow my channel you’ll know that I get fairly excited about adaptive
LED headlights and Matrix LED headlight technology and anything that essentially whatever you call it you can drive in full beam and it will split the beams and dip the beams automatically around oncoming traffic not Dazzle them and you can see ahead really well never have to manually dip your Beams I absolutely
Love that feature where I live it’s such a great feature to have in a car country road driving at night amazing and in the M sport spec you get that standard Matrix LED headlights and that is a reason alone probably to get that spec because those are fantastic they will
Probably work almost flawlessly and it will make driving at night so much more relaxing but the interior is definitely the star of the show for me with this car it feels really quite big inside and I think they’ve got the packaging really well and it just like you go around
You’re like okay this is not a hatchback it definitely felt like a much bigger car than that it looked really modern techy futuristic and everything felt really well built and I was just like wowzers the seats were interesting though I’ve been quite critical of BMW seats particularly the ones in this car
Uh because yeah my f30s ones are just just a a little bit lacking support in some areas and yeah i’ talked about that in the previous video but I did think the seats felt quite firm in the two series but it’s obviously the top specs so they’re the M sport seats so lower
Specs might be better or worse in some ways but they had definitely good thigh extensions good support for under your thighs better shoulder support than I’ve seen good side support so they would hug you in pretty well for all that sporty driving you’re going to be doing but
Generally I just thought yeah these are these are good for short Journeys for sure but long Journeys with they be too firm let me know in the comments if you’ve had this car for a long journey but you do set up quite high in this car
And that’s good from the point of view of again not feeling like a hatchback it had more of an SUV kind of I can see quite far ahead Vibe but I did think the driving position as much as it was pretty Square on like I like my elbow
Points to be soft that’s another one of these points that should be soft and I didn’t really feel they were all that soft in the car you could hold the ceiling wheel at the same time whilst holding them putting your elbows on them so that was good but I did just think
Yeah they’re not that soft but back to what I was saying about the car feeling quite well spec for a courtesy car it had the Comfort pack which I realized afterwards because it had electric memory seat for the driver and four-way Lumber support no Lumber support still
For the passenger they don’t get that even when you buy that pack but what is absolutely amazing is you don’t get Lumber support standard even manually across the range and I just think BMW are taking the piss a little bit with that one that is just something that
Should be standard in a premium car period And the fact that you have to pay for that as an option is just ridiculous thankfully this car had it but honestly like what are they doing but you have to control the heat seat from inside the touchcreen however you get hot and very
Hot settings and wowzers it was very hot I actually felt like I’d wet myself so that was good and you also had a heated steering wheel on this car as well and that was really warm too so they definitely got the quality of the things really well but yeah you just have to
Pay for them but it pretty much passed the quality checks I did indicator stocks they felt good and everything just felt built to last and solid and good clickiness in a lot of places door closed was all right I’ve had better but I’ve had worse but I didn’t really go oh
Yeah that’s an amazing thk but the steering wheel buttons were a bit plasticky and that was one area I thought other BMWs have not felt like that but something I did think might divide opinion would be the steering wheel thickness and I love BMW steering wheels they’re so soft and pliable and
The hands I absolutely love them they’re the best in the business in my opinion but I wonder if they were going a little bit too far with this one particularly in the 10 two position position and I thought this is a car that potentially more ladies than anything are going to
Buy don’t mean s sexist but I just think this is kind of car that might appeal to to women a bit more and I thought yeah you’ve got small hands like trying to get them round the 10 to two position or above it it was just like oh it’s really
Thick and so I do wonder if that might annoy some people and yeah in other specs you might get a different type of steering wheel but the M sport spec it was like this is really soft and squidy but it’s thick so the Cubbies in the
Front of the two series active tour were in fact really pretty good the center console was an interesting design and mainly just had this floating console with this massive area underneath which really looked an awful lot like you could maybe get your golf clubs in there
So that was excellent but you also had a pretty decent sized glove box I’ve seen bigger but it was big enough the door bins were not felt line so stuff could Ratt about but in a compartment you could put a ball in a big area at the
Back so they were reasonably good and then you had two cup holders which were not adaptive I felt like they cheaped out a little bit there but they were a decent depth and width however obviously if you don’t have the right size of baller cup they might rattle about a
Little bit so that’s not brilliant but something that was really cool but also kind of made me think did they rip that off of Tesla is they had two pads you could set two phones on for wireless charging which is a great solution but yeah I was kind of thinking that looks a
Little bit almost like plagiarism so the BMW gets BMW’s latest iDrive system and they put that into the active tourer so you’ve got a very futuristic modern looking system with two massive touchscreens and they’re curved facing towards the driver none of this oh look it’s the right hand Market we’ll subtly
Make it face away from the driver and hope nobody knows this Porche but yeah I really really was like wow you know when you go to Costco and it’s like the first thing they’ve got is their newest highres TVs and you’re like wow that’s high res I kind of felt like that with
Their infotainment it’s so high res 10.7 in infotainment 10.5 in cockpit facing you all really driver Centric absolutely lovely and if you like touch screens it’s Ace but that’s really what the problem is is that if you don’t like touch screens your only other way of controlling this is through voice
Control and no matter how good voice control is and I’ve read cuz I never had time to play with it in this car that it’s actually quite a good voice control but they still crap themselves sometimes and get it wrong and therefore you’re going to be forced to use the touchcreen
On the move at times and that is distracting and I do think just a little bit dangerous at times no matter how responsive and how big the buttons are and that system in the two series was very responsive no lag really good for swiping about fantastic system very
Intuitively laid out as well so you can’t really say anything bad about it but it’s still a touchscreen to use in the move and so you really want a rotary controller and do you get one in the two series no it’s gone and that’s a real shame because BMW always got so much
Respect for the fact that they give you all the options for how to control it and we’re just talking about a we disc down here you know that you can just scroll about why get rid of that well I think we all know why cuz it saves money
But I really think that’s a shame it’s just a we disc and they should have kept that and it would have been a perfect infotainment even the climate controls are buried in a touchcreen it’s like yeah guys that’s great name me one person that’s ever been surveyed about
Climate controls and said hey do you want your climate controls to be in a touchcreen or a nice Easy Button below and they’ve gone ah I’d much rather flick a few times stab away a touch screen to get anywhere near my climate controls nobody’s ever said that because
Everybody wants to just flick a switch to turn up the heat and you can’t do that in a car like that and it’s just like guys just just give us some controls and they don’t do it the cockpit is good though and it’s definitely a big step forward in terms
Of like graphics and customization and it just looks a lot better than older digital cockpits from BMWs and you get your satav in there really good but you also get head- up display standard across the range which is great but you get that is standard but not Lumber
Support but as always with BMWs the options lists are pretty large and that’s where a lot of the really good stuff stuff’s going to be like adaptive cruise control and the upgraded sound system obviously but keyless entry is also on the options list and thankfully
The car I had had it but I really wish that was a standard feature but what is standard that I think is so important is that you get those two massive infotainment and cockpit displays as standard and that will make you feel a bit less like you’re getting Short
Change because you’ve got that from the start of the range but if you’re not that into your tunes I probably wouldn’t bother upgrading to the Harmon and Cardon upgrade sound system which will no doubt sound great in the two series just like it does in every other BMW
However the standard six speaker system that was in the car I had sounded fairly decent so if you’re more of a podcasty kind of person that will probably do the job so one of the reasons why this car also is no hatchback is because the back
Seat Space is really quite good and it’s so versatile because you can actually Slide the back seats in 6040 configuration back and forth therefore you can prioritize your boot space or your passenger space and that makes it much more versatile for different circumstances it’s not a very wide car
So the middle passenger for three in the back isn’t going to have that great a time but the outer two seats leg room is fantastic tow room is good and head room is exceptional so a couple of six Footers will be absolutely fine back there for long Journeys and just
Generally it’s very comfortable back there you’ve got a center armrest which will come down give you an armr but also two cup holders and they’re also adaptive so why didn’t they do that in the front you’ve also got door bins that were decent sized not felt lined you’ve
Got two USBC ports there also two in the front and just generally it felt like it was well cared for a couple of big kids there and so overall really pleased with that oh one other thing as well it had ISO fix not just there two seats which
Are easy to get to but you also had it in the front passenger seat and that again is a really versatile feature to have if one of your kids wants to ride shotgun so I definitely think they were on it when they were thinking about the practicality so this car’s got quite a
Lot of competitors including the Volkswagen Turan and the Mercedes b class and the Dasia jogger and the mini Countryman maybe and the Ford s Max quite a few of them out there but I definitely think that the Mercedes bclass is probably quite a good Benchmark and that has a slightly bigger
Boot than in the two series active Tor but given the first utility of the back seats you’re not really going to notice that in plugin hybrid mode it is only 406 lers to the parcel shelf which is barely bigger than some hatchbacks but if you go for the petrols you get a
Slightly bigger Boot and then if you go for the Diesels it’s way bigger like 470 lers so that starts to make a bit more sense in that regard but the fact that you’ve got that versatility with the back seats makes a big difference and really if you’re a family that goes on
Massive long country halls and needs to fill it to the guns this maybe isn’t going to be the car but for sort of average daily use and putting some stuff in the boot you’re shopping maybe a couple of souit cases this car will do that just fine now let’s briefly talk
About pricing because at the time of filming it doesn’t feel like this is a very cheap car um £3 34,40 for the Basse 220i sport petrol and if you go for the top spec plug-in hybrid M sport 230e 46680 before you add on any options oui
Waah that is quite a lot of money so really yeah if you want to have all the toys as well you’re going to be well over 50k and that is a lot of money so what do I think about the two series active tutor well I think it’s
Going to appeal in different powertrains to different people possibly and certainly for company car buyers the plug and hybrids are going to make the most sense and certainly the one I had had more than enough poke so you don’t really need the 230e but the diesel
Which I’m not even sure 100% is still actually available to buy now that’s obviously got a much bigger Boot and therefore that could be important if you do a lot of long Journeys but really the petrols are much cheaper to buy and they’re still going to be reasonably
Fuel efficient but I think you need to figure out whether or not the extra cost of the pluging hybrids really is going to be seen back on your energy bills and whether or not it’s worth doing it for those reasons but certainly the range you get the back battery is really
Encouraging so that is great but the toys inside are fantastic certainly in the M Sports back you’re getting quite a lot of good stuff thrown in there so that’s definitely worth bearing in mind but it’s quite a thinking man’s or person’s car because really it’s versatile inside and it’s quite
Practical actually and the Tech’s great so it does a lot of things really well in quite a tidy we package so those are my thoughts I’d love to know yours so please do leave me a comment below if you enjoyed the video please give it a like and don’t forget to subscribe
Thanks for watching I’ll see you in the next one
Back with another courtesy car review…! This time I’ve got the 2022 BMW 2 Series MPV thing and it was a much more interesting car than I was expecting so here I’ll give you all the info you need if considering this as a new car.
If you enjoy this video, please LIKE, SUBSCRIBE and drop me comment with your thoughts.
Thanks also to www bensound.com for the royalty free music and www.artlist.io for more great backing tracks.
Time chapters:
00:00 – Introduction
00:50 – Looks & Design
01:19 – Powertrain & range
03:01 – Out on the road
06:06 – Visibility
07:03 – Interior quality & comfort
10:24 – Cubbies
11:17 – Infotainment & Cockpit
13:53 – Spec & Options
14:39 – Back seats & boot
16:46 – Pricing
17:17 – Summary
