A Bimmer with a battery: The 2018 BMW 530e hybrid

BMW has been one of the better automakers when it comes to weaning itself off fossil fuels. That’s in large part thanks to its i sub-brand, which includes the excellent i8 coupe and the good-but-expensive i3 city car. Both cars were designed from the ground up to be electric vehicles, and both make extensive use of composites and carbon fiber. But they aren’t for everyone, and neither are they your only options if you want a plug-in hybrid EV that wears the famous blue and white propellor badge.

Meet the most recent addition to BMW’s PHEV line: the 2018 BMW 530e iPerformance.

The 530e is the most recent mainstream BMW model to get the company’s eDrive powertrain, which first showed up in the X5 SUV that we tested back in 2016, then in the 3 and 7 Series sedans. But the 5 Series had to wait until the arrival of the seventh-generation model, which is known to BMW nerds as the G30. That hit the streets in 2017. We tried out the conventionally powered G30 5 Series early last year and came away relatively impressed.

So how does the addition of an electric motor and 9kWh worth of lithium-ion batteries change the equation?

eDrive

As with the other iPerformance BMWs, the 530e uses a 2.0L four-cylinder gasoline engine, almost identical to the one used in the non-hybrid 530i. It’s turbocharged and uses direct-injection, and it brings 181hp (135kW) and 214ft-lbs (290Nm) to the party. You’ll find the synchronous electric motor integrated into the eight-speed automatic transmission, while the 9.2kWh lithium-ion battery pack is underneath the rear seats. The electric motor provides an additional 83kW (111hp) and 250Nm (184ft-lbs), giving the 530e a combined 248hp/185kW and 310ft-lbs/420Nm. Rear- and all-wheel drive options are available—in this case, BMW sent us the 530e xDrive, which is the latter.

Befitting a 21st-century BMW, there is a dizzying combination of drive modes one can opt for. As with its conventionally powered siblings, the “Driving Experience Control” switch lets you toggle among Sport, Comfort, Eco Pro, and Adaptive modes; these remap the accelerator pedal, suspension, steering, and transmission shift-points, as well as altering when and how the car deploys or regenerates electric power.

Then, you have the eDrive button, which gives you another three settings: Auto eDrive, Max eDrive, and Battery Control. Auto is the default and pretty self-explanatory—the car’s electronic brains will decide how and when to combine the internal combustion engine with the electric motor. In this setting, the 530e can reach 56mph (90km/h) under electric power alone. (Top speed with both units working together is 146mph/235km/h.)

Max eDrive is available as long as you have juice in the battery. In this setting, the car will only use the electric motor, although the internal combustion engine will fire up if you push the accelerator hard enough to cause the transmission to kick down. In Max eDrive while using nothing but electric power, the 530e is capable of 87mph (140km/h). Don’t expect to get that far in this mode, though; 9.2kWh isn’t that much, and while BMW quotes the 530e as having an electric-only range of 28.5 miles (46km), the EPA rating is much lower: just 15 miles (24km).

Finally, there’s Battery Control, which allows you to specify a state of charge percentage that you want the battery to maintain—anywhere from 30 to 100 percent. In this mode, the 530e will run on internal combustion alone if the battery is below the specified level, and it will use the electric motor as a generator to charge the battery. This is useful if you’re going to be cruising at freeway speeds; I found the 530e was able to fully recharge the battery in the time it took to drive from downtown Washington, DC, to Dulles airport and back again (a roughly 60 mile round-trip at 55-60mph).

iDrive

The 530e also comes with BMW’s latest infotainment OS, iDrive 6. If—like Lee Hutchinson—you still hold a prejudice toward iDrive based on the original incarnation of this infotainment system, the time has come to get over it. While it might not be quite as good as Audi’s latest MMI or Volvo’s latest Sensus systems, iDrive is really only a hair behind, losing points mainly because of the lack of Android Auto and the fact that (wireless) Apple CarPlay is a $300 add-on. (However, I do give iDrive extra credit for calling DCA “National Airport” and not “Reagan.”)

You can interact with iDrive in a number of ways. The 10.25-inch display is a touchscreen, but I found the iDrive controller much easier to use via a jogwheel located on the center console. The top of the jogwheel is also a touchpad, which lets you enter text by drawing the letters rather than scrolling through them with the controller. Additionally, you can use voice commands. In most cars I wouldn’t recommend this as an option, but BMW currently uses Nuance’s Dragon Drive system, and it’s damn good. For one thing, Dragon easily understands my British accent, something that’s still barely true of Siri. Plus, Dragon lets you interrupt it, which is essential for a system you’re going to live with and get used to. No one needs to waste time listening to a menu prompt they’ve heard umpteen times before.

Additionally, the 530e uses the same gesture control that we first saw in the 7 Series at CES a couple of years back. BMW gesture control still feels like a gimmick to me—you can use it to change the volume and answer or reject an incoming call. But, in practice, it’s hit or miss. Like CarPlay, gesture control is an optional extra. At $190, I think you can save some coin.

BMW also offers a few other digital services for the 530e. There’s the ability to securely connect to an Office 365 server so that Microsoft Exchange users can cross “I’m in the car” off the list of places they can’t respond to emails. There’s ParkNow integration—BMW is the majority shareholder in Parkmobile—so you can pay for parking without using your smartphone. And there are all manner of other connected services that we weren’t able to test because they need to be activated by the vehicle owner, and this wasn’t done for the press fleet car.

Yeah, but what’s it like to drive?

When we drove the 540i M Sport last year, we were impressed with the handling and sporty nature of the car. The 530e is an altogether different kettle of fish, though—in fact, it’s very laid back. I spent most of the week with the car set in Adaptive and Auto eDrive, figuring it probably knew enough about the relevant systems to figure out which was best. When the beast is so configured, you get lots of torque and no engine noise or vibration at low speeds, which makes driving in the city absolutely serene. When the gas engine kicks in, it’s not particularly obtrusive, though.

In Sport mode, the 530e sharpens up a bit and will hit 62mph (100km/h) in six seconds. Given that this is a hybrid, driving like a hooligan instead of cruising around trying to use as little gas as possible seems irresponsible. And the 530e is competent at being abstemious; over the course of a few hundred miles and only two full battery charges, I averaged just under 31mpg. That’s significantly better than I managed in the X5 eDrive, although that may be in large part due to the 530e’s much lighter curb weight—at 4,385lbs (1,989kg), it is almost 1,000lbs (454kg) lighter than the SUV. Charging times are just under three hours (if connected to a 3.7kW charger) and a little under five hours (when plugged into a 110v outlet).

The relaxing nature of the 530e might be due, in part, to the design of the car’s interior. The inside is spacious and airy, particularly when specced with light-colored seats (and with the car’s interior mood lighting set to blue). The ergonomics are good, with little offset to the steering wheel or pedals, and the materials you can touch all feel high quality (although I find BMW’s steering wheel rim to be a little thicker than I like). The rear has plenty of room for two adults—I used the 530e to ferry my visiting parents around for a week, and they both awarded it high marks for a comfortable ride. The 14.5-cubic feet (410L) trunk also has plenty of room for luggage. However, I should note that, while the trunk is big, it is more shallow than I’d prefer.

Does it help me drive?

Our test 530e featured BMW’s latest complement of advanced driver assists—like iDrive, these are satisfactory, if not quite class-leading. The adaptive cruise control works flawlessly, but I continue to find the presence of both Lane Change Warning and Lane Keeping Assistant to be somewhat confusing. The former simply alerts you if you veer out of your lane, whereas the latter actively maintains your position between the lines; it took some time for me to figure out which one was which, as they are activated with different physical buttons. The lane-keeping function could use some tweaking to keep you better centered in the lane; right now, it ping-pongs you between them too much for my liking.

Other electronic safety nets include Frontal Collision Warning, City Collision Mitigation, and Pedestrian Protection. Unfortunately, getting this suite of driver assists isn’t cheap. It requires not one but two $1,700 packages. They are the Driver Assistance Package (which includes a heads-up display, front and rear parking cameras, parking sensors, and an enhanced instrument display) and the Driver Assistance Plus Package (side cameras for 360-degree parking plus the various driver aids mentioned above).

Interestingly, though, the 530e’s base price starts at exactly the same as the non-hybrid 530i: $52,650 for the rear-drive car, with all-wheel drive (xDrive in BMW-speak) adding another $2,300. In fact, the hybrid actually works out slightly cheaper since—as a plug-in hybrid—it qualifies for a $4,668 federal tax credit. (The size of the credit is based upon battery capacity.) Total cost of ownership ought to also be slightly cheaper than the conventionally powered 530i, as it offers better fuel efficiency, particularly if you plug it in every night. But the options can quickly add up, and our test car tipped the scales at $68,760.

That’s not chump-change, but it is good to see that BMW isn’t making us pay more for a hybrid, and you do get a very competent luxury car for the money.

Listing image by Elle Cayabyab Gitlin

https://arstechnica.com/?p=1238885