BMW G31 530e Xdrive | Reivew – Would I Buy it?
Hey guys welcome back to the channel today I’ve got a family lugger behind me in the form of a 5 series g31 touring and in this Rd I’m going to go through how this car performs as a family lugger now this one is a 530e it’s the first
Time I’ve actually got a hybrid on the channel and for me it’s probably the first time I’ve spent so long driving a hybrid as well so it’s going to be a fullon Impressions and a review with on this 530e so first of all let’s go on a quick walk around on this Car The g31 530e X Drive in M sport spec it’s quite a basic M sport it doesn’t have many any packs on it so hence why you’ve got the chrome grills it does have the 18in alloy wheels and I must say that from this angle here it does
Look like it’s got quite a bit of a presence it is quite a large car but yeah we’re going to talk about the whole spec on this car in itself this is a hybrid hence why we have electrified by I but overall I think this being the LCI
It has got some real nice sort of touches around the car as well and the side profile here typical BMW you know you’ve got like a long bonnny on the front you got short overhangs on the front as well and it’s got a real nice kind of profile being a five series
Touring I do like the rear end of this 5 series touring because you’ve got these nice LCI reare lights which kind of go into like the the boot nice roof spoiler not too aggressive there and BMW keeping it real with some real exhaust trims now
I’m going to try and open up the boot of this car just to kind of show you how big this thing is and yeah I mean this being a hybrid it is a little bit compromised but you still got probably about 560 L of space here as well underneath here you’ve got
Some electric gobbins wipes but there you go I think you can also lower the reare seats from there as well the push of a button that’s quite a nice touch they don’t lie completely flat so you have got a bit of a ledge there but
I suppose that’s not too bad at all and if you look at it from here it is quite a a big size boot if we move into the back area of the car you got the back seats looking at this you don’t have much sort of leg room for instance I
Mean that’s in my driving position I’m about 5′ 7 so not the tallest guy but that doesn’t look like there’s a lot of space there that seat there has been pushed all the way back so yeah I mean it is a 5 series it’s based on a saloon and I’m just
Surprised like there doesn’t seem to be much space there I did used to have a F10 5 series probably about 10 years ago that seemed to have a bit more space I don’t know why but that to me just doesn’t look like there’s a lot anyway let’s move into the driver’s
Area so on the interior of the 5 Series this interior has been lifted slightly for the AL CI I think there’s probably a little bit more gloss work that’s going on here you’ve got a bigger screen this isn’t the latest I drive I think this is
The same as what you had in like a G20 3 Series pre- LCI so you’ve got like a smaller driers display here but it does that kind of work quite well I mean some of you guys might be preferring this compared to like the massive screens on
The later cars that I had on the G23 series as well as the m240i this bit here does look quite dated because there’s a lot of physical buttons some ways it’s probably a good thing other ways it just looks a bit busy whereas now they’re all kind of you know
Integrated into like the whole iDrive system this not being like a highs speec 5 series you do have like a bit of a tray here where you got cup holders you don’t have any wireless charging and that tray there is actually quite small I mean my phone doesn’t even fit in
There so it’s kind of pointless having that you have got an eight-speed Z of gearbox in here you’ve got the rotary controller for the main screen over there and obviously being a hybrid you’ve got some bespoke hybrid buttons here so electric hybrid and Sport and some battery buttons here now for me
This is like I said like a firsthand experience driving a hybrid I’ve been in like hybrid taxis and stuff like that obviously I don’t drive any of them but actually driving a hybrid is going to be my first kind of like firstand experience and hopefully I’ll portray
That across to you guys I think one thing that I do notice in this car is that the seats for example they are quite nice they’re not actual leather so this is like a manmade type of leather it does feel quite kind of coarse as well in a way it’s
Certainly not as nice as let’s say my A7 was with that leather that was volcon leather and that was far better in terms of quality so point to not on these seats they are electrically operated but they’re partial you got quite a few adjustments here like you got the ball
String you got the lumbar you’ve got the back wrist you’ve got the seat itself that you can raise but you can’t pull it forward for that you’ve got some manual adjustment which I just find really odd in something like this the overall kind of Dash design here now is looking a bit
Dated you have got kind of soft touch materials on the dash here which is quite nice and squidgy and on the door Toops but this doesn’t feel as nice as it did in the A7 so I think that the interior of this car is now beginning to
Look a bit dated but the new 5 series is already out and I think that’s kind of pushed the bar quite high in terms of the way car looks from inside now one thing that this car I think should have had as a bare minimum as even as a
Standard feature or even as an option is a panoramic glass roof because this car has got quite a dark headlining and it’s quite dark in here even though you’ve got some brushed aluminium type of like materials used it does feel quite dark in here the windows are not tinted which
Is probably a good thing so that you are getting quite a bit of light in there but if the windows were tinted I think it’d be really like dark in here which would have just support the ambience in this car so from what I can see this M
Sport isn’t a highly spec one there’s not many optional packs on it like for example there’s no HK sound there’s no head up display there’s no adaptive suspension it’s a bare basic 530e X Drive M sport it does have some blue calipers which do look quite nice give
It a bit of Road cred so what I’m going to do now is talk to you guys about like say the engine the battery the transmission the performance and all of that stuff and then and I’m going to head out onto those country lanes so the
Engine on this 530e is a 2 L 4-cylinder petrol Engine with an electric motor combined power and torque are 290 yard horsepower and 420 new M of torque which I think is plentiful for this it’s fitted with the 8-speed ZF automatic gearbox and four-wheel drive n to 16
This is something in the region of about 6.1 seconds and it’ll go on to do like a top speed of about 140 M an hour so guys one thing to know is don’t be fooled by the official m PG figures for this car officially this car will do
157 m per gallon but you’re not going to get anywhere near that because to get that figure you got to be driving this car mainly in electric mode this car will do like about 30 Mi of electric range only and that’s based on you keeping that 20 Kow battery topped up
Most of the time you’re going to run out of that battery you’re going to be running on petrol and you’re probably going to get anything up to about 40 m per gallon really so that’s the true thing about these kind of plug-in hybrids unless you are actually plugging
In the car regularly and driving on electric power your actual range and your MPG is going to be far less than what the official stats say so let’s give it a startup got a button there and essentially That’s What You Get There is no engine sound because
It’s just start up on the battery now interestingly here I’ve got zero range of battery but I can still drive the car in hybrid mode because it will self charge the battery to a bare minimum and along the way the engine will kick in when I accelerate a little bit harder
But I’m actually now although I’m not in any gear I’m in park I can actually drive away from from here and it’s bizarre cuz the car’s not actually making any noise whatsoever so hybrids and electric cars have were primarily introduced for company car drivers I mean most company car drivers would
Probably spec an electric car now or a hybrid of some sort and the reason for that is because of the benefi in coin tax so for example if this was a 520d your benefit in coin tax on that would be probably about double what you’d pay
On this so it makes perfect sense for those type of drivers having said that you can only now get like the new ones in like petrol or electric form anyway you might even be able to get like an odd diesel somewhere but I’m not too
Sure about that but what I do like about a 5 Series in this touring form is you can actually use this to quite a lot of capacities like in that what I mean is you have got a decent Siz boot in here you have got you know like quite a bit
Of space in the back so if you got like sort of young kids and whatnot they’d be absolutely fine in this and this thing actually drives like a 5 series rather than an SUV I mean do you really need an SUV you know I’d rather have a tour ring
To be honest cuz CU it just looks a bit more like carlike as well and you don’t need to go down the hole kind of having an SUV for the sake of having an SUV so the 53e what is it like then so I’ve had
This car now for a couple of days and I’ve been driving around in this and I must say that I haven’t really seen my range drop as much in the way I would expect it to drop let’s say if this was a full-on petrol derivative I mean the
Engine is like off a 520i it’s got an electric motor to it it’s got 190 horsepower and 420 new M of torque and that’s quite a lot on like a day-to-day basis it go around it’s you know kind of usual Business Without much effort I haven’t really even seen the range drop
By much because of the hybrid system and the way it works I haven’t plugged it in because I don’t have a plug-in charger at home and I can’t be bothered to go and get it plugged in and wait I don’t know 2 3 hours for a full charge so from
That point I’ve just been running it in the way it’s been run that’s the thing unless you are actually going to be plugging this car in all the time you know you are not going to benefit from let’s say the full uh potential benefits of having a hybrid
System one thing I have noticed is that when I’m just driving around you don’t have to like break as much because there’s a lot of brake region that it does itself you just take your foot off the accelerator and you can feel the motor in revers and regenerating the
Battery and that probably helps keeping that battery charged for the electrified drive it is quite seemingless when like say the petrol engine kicks in and takes over right now I’m driving in petrol power only and it actually feels quite a nippy car and although this is 170 y kg
Heavier than like a equivalent petrol 520i let’s say for example in touring form it doesn’t feel that heavy because youve actually got more power on the electric motor you’ve got the instant torque on that so it does feel quite nimble as well I am a bit disappointed
The fact that the boot on this thing can be bigger than what it actually is cuz obviously you got a battery pack under the boot floor and that eats away into like say the the boot area so the Comfort levels in this car are pretty good I mean these seats for example I’m
Not too happy about the kind of material that they’re using on there it does feel like leather it just feels a bit ODOT but there’s quite a nice amount of cushioning within the seats cuz I think you do feel like they’re not as f and The Dumping I think even though this
Is running on like say steel Springs it does a good job about you know anticipating potholes and undulations in the road and stuff and that’s probably because you have got smaller Alloys on there you’ve got 18in wheels and those with like say the steel damping it’s a
It’s a decent let’s say trading rather than having like say big wheels and like having a crashy ride so I think from that point it’s pretty good it’s quite a refined car as well uh from where I can tell from behind the wheel here it’s I’m probably running in electric mode right
Now so it’s uh yeah it’s not making any noise and just like you get a bit of road noise from the tires maybe and that’s about it so since I’ve been driving this car I’ve not really felt like the need to drive this thing fast I think one thing
When you are driving a hybrid and maybe this is just me is playing with my head here I’m trying to maximize the amount of miles I can get out of like the electric range so it becomes like quite a different type of I don’t know multi driving like an electric or a hybrid
Because you’re trying to maximize how much range you can get from the electric motor and not use the fuel because essentially you’ve got acqu a small fuel tank in this thing as well you’ve got like a tank that’s under 50 l in a five series I mean usually these things come
With like a 70 L or a 75 L tank and this has this has got something like a 46 L tank or something like that so you don’t want to constantly just be at the petrol station filling up you want to maximize the whole range using the electric as
Well it’s a very different way of driving right I’m going to just put my foot down a little bit here petrol engine did kick in you got that boost from the electric motor and before you know it I went from from like doing 12 M an hour to like just over 40
In a 50 zone so yeah it picks up really well so I have notice that when you do plant your foot and the engine kicks in this is obviously a four-cylinder engine so you are going to get quite a bit off like a four pot grunt give you like a
Little example of that now but again you know like before you know know it you’re up to speed really quick in this and it does feel really refined as well and I think that’s what I like about the 5 series it is quite a refined car you know like the whole
Insulation around it and you know the way it’s all damped and this in like a A5 series touring I think it’s a perfect family lugger so I’m going to conclude now on my thoughts around this 530e I think it does make sense like say from a company car Point definitely private buy
Would you go out and buy these it’ll be interesting to see what the used markets like right now because there are going to be quite a few let’s say hybrids now on the market as opposed to let’s say fullon petrol and diesel cars so this is
Probably going to be up there you might even get a better deal buying one of these things because I think like dealerships are struggling to actually flog like electric cars or hybrids or whatever so you know this might even be cheaper to buy I don’t know that’s my
Kind of take on it from what I can see what’s going on at the moment it does make sense cuz you have still got a petrol engine you’re not going full electric and you can get decent economy and performance out of something like this would I go and buy this I’d
Probably buy this over let’s say an SUV for the sake of just having an SUV because everyone’s got one I rather have like a tour ring it’s just as practical as an SUV you don’t get the lofty driving position but you get a car that actually drives like a car rather than
Something that you know is a bit of a bus I’m still on the fence about the systems kind of thing whether you know how long they’re going to last or the longevity of like the electric motors and all of that and the battery pack but if til is something to go by they’ve
Been doing like you know hybrids for many many years and and decades and I think the reliability is there so yeah I mean this is something that I might even consider in the future alongside like say my performance car or something like that just to bring more fuel bills down
But hey I hope you have found this informative if you have given a like share subscribe to the channel if you haven’t done so already cuz that helps me do more vids like this as well and hopefully guys I’ll see you on the next one take care bye
In this vid I get my hands on a BMW 530e Xdrive Touring and I try and see if I can gel with a hybrid.
Enjoy the vid folks and let me know what you think.
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