Six months, split three in each. It’s enough time, just, to understand what real life is like with a car. In that time you’ll likely do decent distances in weather fair and foul, by day and by night. On motorways, great country lanes, choked town centres, slow suburban streets and everything betwixt and between. And in no time at all you’ll know pretty quickly how fast they go, how quickly you can adapt to their HMIs (Human Machine Interface if you were wondering) and whether the car has any fundamental flaws.
But the little stuff, like the way both cars are almost impossible to control with any accuracy at less than 0.3mph in reverse under battery power while six inches off a granite wall, the true speed at which you can build the requisite muscle memory to disable the lane keep and speed limit ‘assistance’ without looking, exactly where on your usual routes the digital radio signal cuts out, in precisely which circumstances it will refuse to boot CarPlay however hard you try, the sub menus on the app that are unexpectedly useful, and those that look cool but turn out to be needless gimmicks, just how worthwhile is four-wheel steering in a tight corner which the i5 had and the 530e did not (very), and just how accurate are their range predictions anyway? That takes time.
One point to make is that this comparison has only been made possible (or at least meaningful) by BMW taking the unusual but what now seems to be unusually smart decision to build one platform that can take petrol, diesel, plug-in hybrid or pure EV powertrains. It’s not without its disadvantages and you’ll have read as we railed against the excessive weight of cars like the M5, but for BMW it provided insurance against precisely what has happened, meaning it has been protected from the consequences of anticipated EV demand simply not showing up: it just sends more petrols and hybrids down the line instead. For the customer on a three-year deal, it also provides a nice gentle ladder, easing their way into EV ownership via introduction by alternative, more conventional powertrains.
