Post by Big Blue on Sept 15, 2022 13:36:21 GMT
Well that’s not really flown by, but Eva still feels like “our new car”. In reality until July rolled around it still smelled of “new car” because I’m not the most prolific user of it. But after a couple of long UK journeys and then an intercontinental crush it is now time to reflect on what long term private ownership looks and feels like.
Ownership
Let’s start with that private ownership bit. I initially thought about buying a PHEV and putting it through the company and taking some tax advantages; did all the maths for that over a three year lease with the tax rises etc. and was awaiting a quote for a 530e Touring, which was not available when I did all this. Then I got offered a perm role which had enough benefits to sway me in a world of IR35 contracts (full disclosure: I get 27 days annual leave PLUS the whole Christmas week off. I don’t care about the remuneration as it was never going to be bad; the clients I’m working for are the same; flexibility reigns and somehow I remain in demand as an individual: ergo my own time is more important so holidays are the key) so I bought the car as an individual PCP user. That’s important because in reality it would make no odds to me if I had bought a 550i (although 540i Touring is the biggest wagon) but the under 8mpg was grating a bit for my day to day use plus I had made my mind up to have a PHEV after the Volvo rental in 2020 and I’m fairly single minded when it comes to this kind of thing.
The ownership proposition itself is as expected of a 5-series. I struggle to fault anything realistically – the main gripe being the Adaptive mode always defaulting to ‘Hybrid’ from any engine off – even if I stop for petrol. The default I use is ‘Adaptive’ after experimenting with ‘Sport’, which is fine if you want to save the electric charge or are genuinely pressing on (more on that in a bit), and ‘Adaptive’ is a hybrid mode so why I can’t set it as default is a frustrating question. So I won’t bore you with all the kit, options and colour as I did that when I bought it. I’d struggle to justify a 7 series on footprint regardless of how much more special it felt.
Hybrid stuff.
The real proposition of a PHEV over a petrol or diesel is the consumption, range, costs etc. So what does that mean? Well if I were a company car user the tax would be a whole lot less than a diesel or a petrol based on the sub-40kg CO2 output but as a private user the lease cost is similar, the insurance is similar and therefore only fuel consumption makes any financial difference. Having come from a 4.4litre twin turbo with over 500 BHP that has made a difference (huge in fact) and the downgrade in performance is off-set by a different mind-set when driving it. The 45 litre fuel tank is rather small and if I was coming from a 530d / 520d/ 535d I’d be fuming at the range but compared to the Gorilla the range is nigh on identical for its 70litre tank. My longest tank has been 355.7 miles, with around 65 miles to spare which is pretty much what the Gorilla could do (I never actually saw a 400 mile tank in that either). So in terms of range it’s horses for courses: I’ve been happy because of what I had come from but I can see why some company car users that don’t do home charging would be miserable.
So on to consumption. Let’s consider petrol only vs petrol only between Eva and the Gorilla. Luckily I am anal enough to have a spreadsheet that deals with the petrol-only element of any tank and the average over 7,000 miles has been 30.23mpg. This compares with an average of 19mpg over 21,000 miles in the `gorilla and 24.9mpg in the Mini (which only does short journeys apart from two: one on collection and one visit to a Spa for W2.1 and her sister and cousin). For a big five seater estate with a 2-litre engine and a load of batteries that’s great, but that’s again coming from where I was and not from a diesel or a reasonable petrol engine (the straight 6 like Racing has).
That was petrol vs petrol so let’s consider overall mpg. It’s 36.09mpg when you include hybrid running and when you discount the fact that a lot of my charging is free it would only be 33.96mpg if I paid for the charges I do and amortise the cost to petrol. With accounting for the electricity I do pay for it becomes 35.36mpg (I said I was a bit anal about tracking this) but that’s not the real picture. On any hybrid runs the car obviously charges itself where it can. For these charges I have not accounted for any cost as they are consumed into the petrol-running figure. This means that on the long runs across Europe there were some tanks that ran 30, 40, 50 and in one case 80 miles without any charge from a plug. That made my electric mpg equivalent infinite (I had to put a nominal figure in to get millions of mpg and tens of thousands of miles per kWh for that element) and also gave some interesting figures for mpg overall. An extract of the summer holiday element of the spreadsheet:
So what is the gain for this hybrid nonsense? Well shorter runs and charging is great: I can get over 70mpg for a run into the West End office and home again like that and there’s less stress sitting in traffic jams about needless fuel use. So I can feel pious – but that’s really about it if you weren’t coming from a B5.
Driving
The most remarkable thing has been a change of approach to driving by me. I now think about how many miles I could do on electric running, where I need to do it to get the best fuel consumption and when do I turn the hybrid bit off. Surely the car does all that for me? Well, yes and no. If I run into London with a full charge it will assume I want to be in electric running from the off, whereas I want it to wait until West Hill when I’m in London proper (admitting that whilst we are in a London borough a Londoner wouldn’t consider it London as we have a KT post code). The one time I noticed it deciding to take control of fuel / electric use was on a run back from the M11 when it decided to charge the battery. I was happily pootling along expecting 37-38mpg when I saw 33 and the battery charging itself ready for the North Circular. Fair enough it was a journey of 44mpg at the end of it so it knows what its doing. And there you are: I now measure journeys on efficiency as opposed to any other criteria.
It handles like any other 2 tonne estate car with a BMW badge. You don’t notice the battery adding anything or taking anything away and it’s not really the car you look to get sideways for fun – neither was the Gorilla. The steering is very accurate and the Sport setting makes it very BMW-ish. The relaxed nature of other settings and the impeccable behaviour of the Adaptive setting means that anyone that hasn’t got Adaptive option is missing out big time on the all-rounder aspect of the 5er, be it a hybrid or not.
I’ve not really done TLGP stuff in it but on the occasions where I’ve had to give it a full shovel of coal it hasn’t felt underpowered at all. The electric bit makes sure you have some instant shove (there is always some in reserve) then the engine isn’t really wanting at all, apart from the engine note. It’s very muted and that’s good because in recharge mode its gruffer than an Axel Scheffler cartoon character. This power output is at odds with an owner review I saw from a Belgian who had the X-drive 530e touring and complained about the car being a bit sluggish when the battery was run to zero. I didn’t want X-drive because I reckoned even more mechanical kit to drag about was a bit OTT and his review seemed to verify this.
Comfort
Eva is supremely comfortable which is presumably why Adolf was with her in the first instance…… and has more cabin space than the F11. The boot area is smaller due to the battery pack. This is largely immaterial except for the summer trip when I had to put the OGIO luggage in the “wrong way round” so that the soft end would squeeze under the rail for the luggage net. The luggage net is one area of interior design that has improved. It’s now a split unit so you can remove the boot cover bit (and store it under the floor) but keep the net unit in place. If that means nothing to anyone then bad luck but BMW estate aficionados will understand what I mean.
The new comfort seats are again a cut above those in the F11 and the massage function is more comprehensive. Like the Gorilla the trip across Europe was no problem and I could have just done it again after a trip to the loo.
Overall
I said before that I don’t miss its predecessor and that remains true after the family holiday and 3,762 miles in 40 days that is more than the rest of the year’s mileage added together. I remain concerned as to how good / bad the next 5er touring will be as I don’t really want anything else as the family car.
Ownership
Let’s start with that private ownership bit. I initially thought about buying a PHEV and putting it through the company and taking some tax advantages; did all the maths for that over a three year lease with the tax rises etc. and was awaiting a quote for a 530e Touring, which was not available when I did all this. Then I got offered a perm role which had enough benefits to sway me in a world of IR35 contracts (full disclosure: I get 27 days annual leave PLUS the whole Christmas week off. I don’t care about the remuneration as it was never going to be bad; the clients I’m working for are the same; flexibility reigns and somehow I remain in demand as an individual: ergo my own time is more important so holidays are the key) so I bought the car as an individual PCP user. That’s important because in reality it would make no odds to me if I had bought a 550i (although 540i Touring is the biggest wagon) but the under 8mpg was grating a bit for my day to day use plus I had made my mind up to have a PHEV after the Volvo rental in 2020 and I’m fairly single minded when it comes to this kind of thing.
The ownership proposition itself is as expected of a 5-series. I struggle to fault anything realistically – the main gripe being the Adaptive mode always defaulting to ‘Hybrid’ from any engine off – even if I stop for petrol. The default I use is ‘Adaptive’ after experimenting with ‘Sport’, which is fine if you want to save the electric charge or are genuinely pressing on (more on that in a bit), and ‘Adaptive’ is a hybrid mode so why I can’t set it as default is a frustrating question. So I won’t bore you with all the kit, options and colour as I did that when I bought it. I’d struggle to justify a 7 series on footprint regardless of how much more special it felt.
Hybrid stuff.
The real proposition of a PHEV over a petrol or diesel is the consumption, range, costs etc. So what does that mean? Well if I were a company car user the tax would be a whole lot less than a diesel or a petrol based on the sub-40kg CO2 output but as a private user the lease cost is similar, the insurance is similar and therefore only fuel consumption makes any financial difference. Having come from a 4.4litre twin turbo with over 500 BHP that has made a difference (huge in fact) and the downgrade in performance is off-set by a different mind-set when driving it. The 45 litre fuel tank is rather small and if I was coming from a 530d / 520d/ 535d I’d be fuming at the range but compared to the Gorilla the range is nigh on identical for its 70litre tank. My longest tank has been 355.7 miles, with around 65 miles to spare which is pretty much what the Gorilla could do (I never actually saw a 400 mile tank in that either). So in terms of range it’s horses for courses: I’ve been happy because of what I had come from but I can see why some company car users that don’t do home charging would be miserable.
So on to consumption. Let’s consider petrol only vs petrol only between Eva and the Gorilla. Luckily I am anal enough to have a spreadsheet that deals with the petrol-only element of any tank and the average over 7,000 miles has been 30.23mpg. This compares with an average of 19mpg over 21,000 miles in the `gorilla and 24.9mpg in the Mini (which only does short journeys apart from two: one on collection and one visit to a Spa for W2.1 and her sister and cousin). For a big five seater estate with a 2-litre engine and a load of batteries that’s great, but that’s again coming from where I was and not from a diesel or a reasonable petrol engine (the straight 6 like Racing has).
That was petrol vs petrol so let’s consider overall mpg. It’s 36.09mpg when you include hybrid running and when you discount the fact that a lot of my charging is free it would only be 33.96mpg if I paid for the charges I do and amortise the cost to petrol. With accounting for the electricity I do pay for it becomes 35.36mpg (I said I was a bit anal about tracking this) but that’s not the real picture. On any hybrid runs the car obviously charges itself where it can. For these charges I have not accounted for any cost as they are consumed into the petrol-running figure. This means that on the long runs across Europe there were some tanks that ran 30, 40, 50 and in one case 80 miles without any charge from a plug. That made my electric mpg equivalent infinite (I had to put a nominal figure in to get millions of mpg and tens of thousands of miles per kWh for that element) and also gave some interesting figures for mpg overall. An extract of the summer holiday element of the spreadsheet:
So what is the gain for this hybrid nonsense? Well shorter runs and charging is great: I can get over 70mpg for a run into the West End office and home again like that and there’s less stress sitting in traffic jams about needless fuel use. So I can feel pious – but that’s really about it if you weren’t coming from a B5.
Driving
The most remarkable thing has been a change of approach to driving by me. I now think about how many miles I could do on electric running, where I need to do it to get the best fuel consumption and when do I turn the hybrid bit off. Surely the car does all that for me? Well, yes and no. If I run into London with a full charge it will assume I want to be in electric running from the off, whereas I want it to wait until West Hill when I’m in London proper (admitting that whilst we are in a London borough a Londoner wouldn’t consider it London as we have a KT post code). The one time I noticed it deciding to take control of fuel / electric use was on a run back from the M11 when it decided to charge the battery. I was happily pootling along expecting 37-38mpg when I saw 33 and the battery charging itself ready for the North Circular. Fair enough it was a journey of 44mpg at the end of it so it knows what its doing. And there you are: I now measure journeys on efficiency as opposed to any other criteria.
It handles like any other 2 tonne estate car with a BMW badge. You don’t notice the battery adding anything or taking anything away and it’s not really the car you look to get sideways for fun – neither was the Gorilla. The steering is very accurate and the Sport setting makes it very BMW-ish. The relaxed nature of other settings and the impeccable behaviour of the Adaptive setting means that anyone that hasn’t got Adaptive option is missing out big time on the all-rounder aspect of the 5er, be it a hybrid or not.
I’ve not really done TLGP stuff in it but on the occasions where I’ve had to give it a full shovel of coal it hasn’t felt underpowered at all. The electric bit makes sure you have some instant shove (there is always some in reserve) then the engine isn’t really wanting at all, apart from the engine note. It’s very muted and that’s good because in recharge mode its gruffer than an Axel Scheffler cartoon character. This power output is at odds with an owner review I saw from a Belgian who had the X-drive 530e touring and complained about the car being a bit sluggish when the battery was run to zero. I didn’t want X-drive because I reckoned even more mechanical kit to drag about was a bit OTT and his review seemed to verify this.
Comfort
Eva is supremely comfortable which is presumably why Adolf was with her in the first instance…… and has more cabin space than the F11. The boot area is smaller due to the battery pack. This is largely immaterial except for the summer trip when I had to put the OGIO luggage in the “wrong way round” so that the soft end would squeeze under the rail for the luggage net. The luggage net is one area of interior design that has improved. It’s now a split unit so you can remove the boot cover bit (and store it under the floor) but keep the net unit in place. If that means nothing to anyone then bad luck but BMW estate aficionados will understand what I mean.
The new comfort seats are again a cut above those in the F11 and the massage function is more comprehensive. Like the Gorilla the trip across Europe was no problem and I could have just done it again after a trip to the loo.
Overall
I said before that I don’t miss its predecessor and that remains true after the family holiday and 3,762 miles in 40 days that is more than the rest of the year’s mileage added together. I remain concerned as to how good / bad the next 5er touring will be as I don’t really want anything else as the family car.
