The much-touted BMW i5 Touring will arrive in spring next year, the German firm has confirmed this morning, as the first all-electric estate on the market.
Marking the fifth generation since the full-size estate was launched in 1991, the EV will also get a hotter M Performance variant, BMW chairman Oliver Zipse said during the car maker’s annual conference this morning.
It will be launched after the saloon BMW 5 Series and i5 variants, which will arrive in October this year.
The estate, like its saloon siblings, will – along with a pure-electric powertrain – be launched with petrol, diesel and plug-in hybrid variants, the latter coming for both bodystyles later in 2024.
“This is our unique selling point in this segment,” said Zipse.
BMW confirmed more details would be released soon, but the new Touring is expected to be available with the usual levels of practicality we’ve come to expect from such a competitive market. While BMW did not comment on boot space and leg room, we suspect the new estate will improve slightly on the current car’s 560 litres (with the seats raised) and trump the 480 litres on offer in the Mercedes E-Class Estate.
BMW has still to confirm if the 5 Series Touring will share its underpinnings with other models – however, the current car shares the same CLAR architecture that underpins the new BMW 4 Series, so its larger sibling could offer a similar powertrain line-up if it uses the same platform.
As such, the standard i5 Touring could be offered in rear- and four-wheel-drive guise with outputs ranging from 335bhp to 536bhp, the latter essentially creating an all-electric BMW M5 Touring. If it follows the same nomenclature as the BMW i4, we expect e40 and M50 nameplates to be reprised for both the 5 Series saloon and Touring editions.
The i4 makes use of an 80.7kWh battery pack, charging at up to 210kW. This allows for a maximum official range of between 255 and 367 miles.