The 2024 BMW i5 — Edmunds Top Rated Electric Car — Joins Our Long-Term Fleet

• We've added a 2024 BMW i5 M60 to our long-term test fleet.
• The i5 was named the Edmunds Top Rated Electric Car for 2024.
• Our Cape York Green tester is fully loaded, with a sticker price of $95,745 including destination.

What we got

BMW currently offers the i5 in single-motor eDrive40 and dual-motor M60 guise, though a new xDrive40 variant will join the lineup in mid-2024. We like the base eDrive40 plenty — in fact, it exceeded its EPA-estimated driving range by 51 miles in our Edmunds EV Range Test. But for our long-termer, we opted to get the hotter i5 M60. Who knows, there might be a U-Drags race in the car's future.

The i5 M60 has a lithium-ion battery pack with 81.2 kWh of usable capacity, which powers a pair of electric motors — one at each axle. Output is quoted at a whopping 593 horsepower and 586 lb-ft of torque, making this sedan a serious powerhouse.

Because this specific i5 M60 came from BMW, we didn't get to spec it ourselves, but you know, we're really jazzed about the one we got. Cape York Green looks awesome on the new i5, especially with the two-tone 21-inch wheels. Our test vehicle also has the brown Veganza faux-leather upholstery. Would we have ordered the carbon-fiber trim? Probably not. Do we hate it? Nah, it's fine.

The i5 M60 already comes pretty loaded, but our test car has a few optional extras. The $2,000 Driving Assistance Pro package adds BMW's Highway Assistant that takes over steering, throttle and braking controls on premapped sections of highway, and the $3,350 Executive pack gives us niceties like a heated steering wheel, glass roof and the extremely cool glass controls.

To that, our car adds the $1,500 M Carbon Exterior kit, $1,050 M Sport Professional package, $1,800 21-inch bicolor wheels and the aforementioned $300 carbon-fiber trim. That brings our total as-tested price to $95,745, which includes a $995 destination charge. That's pretty much as expensive as a new i5 gets.

Track tested

We put our long-term i5 M60 through our usual instrumented testing regimen, and the results are solid. We recorded a 0-to-60-mph time of 3.6 seconds, which bests BMW's estimate by one-tenth of a second. Our i5 ran the quarter mile in 11.5 seconds with a trap speed of 122.1 mph. And as for stopping distance, the M60's larger brakes definitely help matters; the i5 comes to a halt from 60 mph in just 104 feet.

On our skidpad, we recorded lateral g-forces of 0.95, which puts the i5 M60 in good company with other sporty midsize sedans, though it trails its key rival, the Mercedes-AMG EQE sedan, which ripped off a full 1.0 g. The AMG EQE is slightly quieter than the i5 M60 on the highway, too, with the Merc measuring an ambient decibel level of 62.4 at 70 mph, compared to the i5's 65.5 decibels at the same speed.

We've yet to run the i5 M60 on our official Edmunds EV Range Test, but according to the EPA, the 2024 i5 M60 has a driving range of anywhere between 240 and 256 miles, depending on wheel size. Our test car has the largest 21-inch wheel option, so we should expect 240 miles of range. But again, the i5 eDrive40 we tested previously far exceeded its EPA rating, so we're excited to see how our long-termer does on our formalized range test.

Early impressions

Admittedly, we're very much in the honeymoon phase with our new i5; it has fewer than 2,000 miles on the odometer as of this writing. But many of our team's initial impressions are that the i5 is a quiet, comfortable luxury sedan that's genuinely enjoyable to drive. It's also packed with power. Seriously, goose the throttle and this i5 M60 scoots.

A lot of the controls are familiar; we did just give back our long-term iX, after all. BMW's updated iDrive 8 — we'll call it iDrive 8.5 — has a few small quality-of-life improvements like an easier-to-use home screen and a fixed row of widgets along the bottom of the display. The i5's glass controls are an option we're glad was fitted to our test car, as they look the absolute business, especially against wood trim.

If there's a single nit to pick, it's that the slider for the glass roof's sunshade is backward. We're so used to the reflex of pushing the controller toward the windshield to close the shade, and toward the back to open it. But because the i5's shade rolls up into the front of the cabin, BMW programmed the slider to match this action. It takes some getting used to compared to just about every other power sunroof shade available today.

Edmunds says

Small, non-deal-breaking quibbles are all we have with the i5 right now, but it's still a relative newcomer to our test fleet, so it'll be interesting to see if new ones pop up — or if current annoyances fade away.

Overall, we're excited to have the Edmunds Top Rated Electric Car in our test fleet for the next 12 months. We've been big fans of BMW's past EV efforts, and we're hoping to have a similar experience with the i5.