BMW has an all-new electric 5 Series, and we’ve driven it: The 2024 BMW i5 | Hacker News Reader

BMW has an all-new electric 5 Series, and we’ve driven it: The 2024 BMW i5

arstechnica.com

12 pointsrbanffy12 comments

I wonder when it will become more commonplace for reviews (or advertorials, like this one) to offer efficiency figures for EVs? After all, it's common for ICE cars to have MPG or L/100km figures quoted by manufacturers (as unrealistic as those figures might be.)

For example, if the figures in the article are to be believed, this BMW offers 81200/475 = ~171Wh/km efficiency, which is some way from the very best that EVs can offer, but is in the region of sime simiilarly-sized EVs (e.g. Polestar 2, Mercedes EQE) and better than many.

Like this? https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Miles_per_gallon_gasoline_eq...

I was not able to find the information on the US website, but on the German one[0] you get:

> BMW i5 eDrive40 Limousine: Stromverbrauch kombiniert in kWh/100 km: - (NEFZ) / 16,3 (WLTP); Elektrische Reichweite (WLTP) in km: 571 / Spitzenleistung: 250 kW (340 PS)

So, your back of the envelope calculations are good! 16,3 kWh/100 km = 163Wh/km.

Edit as comparison: Tesla Model 3, EPA calculations give 147 Wh/km. It is considered the most efficient car at the moment.

[0]: https://www.bmw.de/de/neufahrzeuge/bmw-i/i5/bmw-i5-ueberblic...

I believe the Lucid Air has the most efficient technology overall, but it doesn’t yet have a smaller version to rival the lighter Model 3 in absolute numbers.

Will Lucid ever be able to build enough cars for it to make a difference?

https://ev-database.org allows sorting but not filtering by efficiency. For me the range + efficiency are the 2 most important EV technical specs, it should always be there. I don’t care about the battery’s capacity if I know the range and efficiency

OTOH, consumers care far more about an EV's range than most ever did about fuel efficiency in a gasoline car. The best way to increase range is to increase efficiency, so manufacturers appear to spend far more effort optimizing the efficiency of EV's than they ever did on the efficiency of gasoline cars.

When most EVs have ranges comparable their ICE counterparts then people will start worrying about efficiency. For the moment the marginal cost per unit distance for EVs is so much higher than ICE that it isn't something that anyone need consider. When the alternative is another EV instead of an ICE car then people will start caring about efficiency.

> BMW says that the i5 is delivered to customers with a carbon footprint of 17 tons of CO2 equivalent.

I’m glad to see this kind of information. But the figure is meaningless without comparison to other ICE and EVs and it’s hard to trust without an independent (and impartial) verification.

This is literally a car review/ad? Why is this noteworthy?

When new things come out, people talk about them. It literally happens everyday here. This is just a thing you don't care about.

You can paint an elephant pink all you want. This is an ad and is being pushed for clicks.

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