If you have £99,995 burning a hole in your pocket and fancy the latest hot electric BMW…

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Car Reviewed: BMW i5 M60 Touring

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You’ll need a keen eye to see the difference between the M60 and a regular i5 M Sport, but the M60 does get a different front ‘grille’ and larger 20” alloy wheels. Around the back, things are very similar to the M Sport car, with the exception being slightly different rear lights and a grooved rear bumper for extra aero.

Hop inside and you’ll see that BMW has made a great effort at adding delight, and an element of surprise to the cabin. The days of BMW reusing interiors are long gone, so it would seem. A sea of ambient lighting illuminates the oddball wavey dashboard plastics, something that will be quite marmite. If you own a large pooch or find yourself regularly raiding the Lidl middle aisle, then the 570-litre boot should be plenty. If you need more, this extends to 1,700 litres with the seats folded flat.

It’s packed with tech such as Assisted Driving Plus, which is only currently functional in Germany and the US. This allows the driver to take their hands off the wheel, while BMW’s glance-at-a-side mirror allows for automatically changing lanes. You’ll get an audio prompt to say the function is available and you simply glance at the relevant mirror to confirm you’re happy to change lanes – scary, but cool stuff.

BMW claims that the 81.2kWh (usable) battery is good for 310 miles and will charge from 10-80% in just 30 minutes at 205kW. AC also gets 22kW charging capability, which means the empty to full charge (100%) takes just 4hr 15min. It would be interesting to see how true this is in the real world.

Moving swiftly on to the way that this car performs. It’s frighteningly quick and not just for an estate car, but by any means. The twin-motor set-up produces 601bhp when sport mode is engaged, otherwise, power sits at 517bhp. Likewise, the maximum torque is 605lb-ft, but in normal mode, this is restricted to 586lb-ft. Even with the lower power and torque, the M60 still feels lighter and quicker than the M550i.

In the corners, it injects excitement and encourages you to take the next quicker; it feels well composed, even on the limit, thanks to the all-wheel drive. Sure, there are quicker cars, and this is certainly not the fastest EV, but this is an estate car – 15 years ago, you bought these to carry dogs and wood, not show a clean pair of heels to a modern supercar at the traffic lights. Still, despite the power and composure, it doesn’t quite grip you like a Porsche Taycan.

While this is a go-fast BMW, it’s not quite the ultimate driving machine. There’s much more to driving than just outright speed and like most EVs, the range will drop rapidly in the colder months to circa 220 miles (temperature-dependent).

Considering the hefty price tag of nearly £100,000, I couldn’t help but compare the i5 M60 Touring with other options. While it’s a high-performance BMW, I found myself leaning towards the 330e plug-in hybrid, which I recently had the chance to test. Its performance was more than sufficient for everyday use, and it delivered an impressive 81.4mpg and 4.4mi/kWh when running on electricity.