BMW has performed a small act of comedy with the new X5 price list. The fully electric iX5 starts at £85,375. The diesel costs £85,885. For the price of a nice dinner, the old default has become the more expensive choice.
That does not make the iX5 cheap, obviously. Eighty-five grand still buys an enormous amount of car, or a modest house if you point the configurator towards certain bits of northern England. But it reveals how thoroughly BMW has changed the X5 without making a song and dance about abandoning anyone. Diesel, plug-in hybrid and battery power all arrive in Britain in spring 2027, wearing broadly the same body and sitting in the same rarefied part of the market.
It is a refreshingly pragmatic approach. Pick the way you travel, then choose the engine. The awkward bit for the combustion faithful is that the electric version now looks like the headline act rather than the worthy experiment parked beside it.
The battery is enormous because the promise is enormous
The iX5 60 xDrive uses a 141kWh usable battery and BMW’s sixth-generation electric hardware. Its provisional WLTP range reaches 525 miles, while the 800-volt system can accept up to 460kW from a suitably potent DC charger. Those figures are ambitious enough to make range anxiety feel like an antique worry. The more immediate question may be finding a public charger capable of feeding it at full speed.
Two motors produce a provisional 578hp and 805Nm, giving the iX5 a claimed 0-62mph time of 4.6 seconds. That is spectacular and faintly unnecessary, as tradition demands. A family SUV that can out-accelerate yesterday’s sports cars has become normal; an electric one that also claims 525 miles between charges is the more useful achievement.
There is cleverness beyond the large battery. Bidirectional charging is built in, so the car can eventually do more than drink from the grid. BMW’s Heart of Joy controller manages the electric powertrain, braking and chassis systems together. The name sounds like a particularly earnest self-help podcast, but the idea is sound: one fast brain should make the heavy machinery feel coordinated rather than merely powerful.
BMW has kept the escape routes open
Not every X5 buyer can charge at home, and some regularly tow or cross countries on a timetable. For them, the 40d xDrive remains a wonderfully unfashionable six-cylinder diesel. It produces 313hp, makes 670Nm with help from a 48-volt hybrid system and costs from £85,885. BMW quotes up to 40.4mpg, although the UK version will be retested to the newer EU7 standard before launch.
The middle path is the X5 50e xDrive plug-in hybrid at £86,870. It combines a six-cylinder petrol engine with an electric motor, stores 26.5kWh of usable energy and claims up to 63 electric miles. That is enough to make local driving genuinely electric for owners who plug it in. Buyers who do not charge it will simply have purchased an expensive method of carrying a flat battery around.
There is also an X5 M60e with 612hp, because somebody at BMW correctly recognised that restraint is not why people order an M Performance SUV. It starts at £101,775. A battery-electric M Performance version will follow, while a hydrogen X5 is planned for the wider global family. The X5 has effectively become BMW’s powertrain buffet.
The design is less brave than the engineering
The fifth-generation X5 adopts BMW’s Neue Klasse language, complete with illuminated kidney grille, switchable double-X daytime-running-light graphics and small Winglet door handles. Optional powered doors can close themselves, which feels appropriately lavish on a car that costs this much. Inside, Panoramic iDrive spreads information across the base of the windscreen, and a passenger screen is available for anyone who believes one central display creates unacceptable hardship.
BMW also offers slate as an interior decorative surface. Actual slate. That may be the most X5 detail imaginable: take something associated with roofs and cheeseboards, polish it, illuminate it and put it in an SUV.
Beneath the theatre, adaptive suspension is standard and every UK version will be built at Spartanburg in the United States, where X5 production began in 1999. The iX5 will be the factory’s first all-electric BMW, with its batteries made locally at a new plant.
The cheapest X5 makes the strongest case
BMW has avoided preaching about one correct powertrain. That is sensible, because £85,000 buyers tend to dislike being told what they must want. Yet the pricing quietly nudges them towards the iX5 anyway. It is cheaper than the diesel, barely separated from the plug-in hybrid and promises the longest electric legs in its class.
Provisional numbers still have to survive production and official testing, and Britain needs more chargers capable of exploiting that 460kW peak. Even so, the new X5 range has already delivered its verdict. Diesel remains available; electricity has become the tempting option. BMW did not close the old door. It simply made the new one £510 cheaper.
Sources
- Auto Express: new BMW X5 and iX5 UK pricing
- BMW Group PressClub UK: The new BMW X5
- BMW Group PressClub UK legal notices
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