The seventh-generation BMW 5 Series will bow out after seven years in 2023, and the German car maker has now confirmed that the model’s all-electric counterpart will also go on sale this year.
Set to radically transform the model both technologically and stylistically, the new BMW i5 forms a major part of BMW’s transition to a maker of electric cars. In the firm’s 2023 sales report released this week, BMW said it hoped 15% of its sales in 2023 would come from electric vehicles.
“The clear focus will be on continuing to ramp up electromobility. The next milestone for 2023 is for 15% of our total sales to come from fully electric vehicles,” said BMW sales chief Pieter Nota. “With the launch of the BMW i5 later this year, we are taking another important step on the road to electrifying our model line-up.
BMW’s 5 Series, which was first launched back in 1973, has been on sale in its current, seventh-generation guise since 2017. The latest car follows the arrival of the latest BMW X3 and BMW 4 Series, and will be offered with a choice of pure-combustion, hybrid and full-electric powertrains in line with BMW’s ambition to sell seven million plug-in hybrid and pure-electric vehicles by the end of 2030.
The i5, though, will be marked out from the 5 Series in the usual BMW EV style, featuring a blanked-off grille, bespoke wheel designs and, based on subtle differences between two recently spotted prototypes, a bespoke rear-end design.
The EV is highly likely to mirror the line-up of the new BMW i4, which means potentially a choice of rear- and four-wheel drive, with outputs ranging from 335bhp in an entry-level i5 eDrive40 to 536bhp in a twin-motor M50 xDrive model. The i4’s 80.7kWh battery pack, said to be 30% more power dense than the smaller i3’s 42.2kWh item, is also likely to feature, providing a WLTP range of around 350 miles at the top end.
BMW Group will offer 12 fully electric vehicles globally by the time the new 5 Series goes on sale this year, including EV versions of the BMW X1 crossover and BMW 7 Series. An all-electric version of the BMW 3 Series is also in development as a sibling model to the BMW i4.