BMW’s best-selling luxury car, the 5 Series, has finally been replaced, and this time BMW rarely chose to launch both oil and electricity at the same time.
On November 17th, BMW’s eighth generation BMW 5 Series was officially unveiled at Guangzhou Auto Show, including the world’s first BMW 5 Series long wheelbase version and pure electric model i5.
The 5 Series is one of the few luxury cars in the global market with a production capacity of more than 10 million vehicles, and has long held the top position in the luxury car market in China.
Since entering the China market, the sales volume of the 5 Series has exceeded 2 million, and the seventh-generation 5 Series has sold 530,000 vehicles in the past three years.
Gao Xiang, President and CEO of BMW Group Greater China, praised the BMW 5 Series as "the most successful model of BMW Group in China" in Chinese at the Guangzhou Auto Show.
Leifeng. com’s "New Smart Drive" understands that BMW attaches great importance to the release of the new 5 Series this time, because it is not only related to BMW’s re-declaration of its market position in domestic medium and large luxury cars, but also the key battle for BMW to define pure electric luxury cars.
How do traditional luxury brands, led by BMW, choose between "replacement" products?
Family-style design is not a simple doll, but a "fine decoration" on the premise of retaining recognizable elements.
On the eighth generation BMW 5 Series, you can see BMW’s most recognizable kidney grille, angel eye headlights and Hough’s corner.
However, the kidney grille on the front face of BMW’s new 5 Series is wider and almost vertical than the previous generation, and the design of angel eye headlights is also simpler. At the corner of Huo’s corner, BMW also designed a bright logo with the number "5", which will also produce a blue breathing effect when charging the pure electric model i5.
In terms of body size, the eighth generation BMW 5 Series is divided into standard wheelbase version and long wheelbase version. Among them, the long-wheelbase version has a car length of 5175mm and a wheelbase of 3105mm, which is the ceiling of similar models.
In terms of interior, BMW has delegated many configurations unique to the flagship 7 Series to the 5 Series, such as the embracing interactive light strip in the car, the two-row suspended giant screen and the crystal-textured components.
When domestic car companies roll refrigerators, color TVs and big sofas, the domestic long-wheelbase version of the new 5 Series directly upgraded the "color TV" to a "cinema", equipped with a 31-inch, 8K resolution floating giant screen of the same model as the 7 Series.
It is worth mentioning that this configuration of suspended giant screen was specially customized by BMW for users in China, and it was not installed on the overseas version of the 5 Series.
In terms of intelligence, BBA was often complained by consumers that its ability was far less than that of domestic independent brands. However, this time BMW officially got on the L2+ intelligent driver assistance system on the new 5 Series, and introduced an automatic lane change function with line-of-sight confirmation.
This function is based on capturing the driver’s eyes and head movements. When the lane change conditions are met, the driver only needs to look at the left/right rearview mirror to realize the lane change in the corresponding direction.
Of course, there are restrictions on driving range and speed, and the restrictions must be met on high-speed and closed roads, and the driving speed is 60 km/h and 180 km/h.
BMW team members told Leifeng. com’s "New Smart Driving" that the styles of intelligent assisted driving systems of different car companies may be different, some emphasizing convenience and some emphasizing safety. In contrast, BMW’s style is really conservative, because in their eyes, "safety" has a higher priority.
It is reported that BMW China’s R&D team is carrying out localization research and development of L3-class autonomous driving, and the new 5-Series long wheelbase version actually has L3 capability in technology.
In addition to the improvement in appearance, interior and intelligence, the biggest highlight of this generation of 5 Series is the introduction of both fuel and pure electric vehicles in the China market.
The fuel version of BMW 5 Series is equipped with an in-line four-cylinder turbocharged engine and adopts 48V light mixing technology, with a maximum power of 190 kW and a peak torque of 400 Nm, which makes this model have a stronger and more efficient power output.
Pure electric vehicle-BMW i5 adopts the fifth-generation BMW eDrive electric drive technology and BMW’s latest charging technology, and its long wheelbase version has a cruising range of more than 700 kilometers.
In terms of handling experience, speeding up faster than fuel vehicles has always been one of the skills of electric vehicles.
In order to enable drivers to have the driving experience of a sports car while driving a medium and large car, BMW introduced the M model (the highest-end performance model in BMW) into the pure electric i5 for the first time. Press the Sport Boost button and step on the accelerator, and the output torque of the dual motors can reach 820 Nm, achieving zero acceleration in 3.8 seconds.
Although this model is not the best in the industry, it is the first among the products sold by BMW.
Abandoning fuel vehicles and all in pure electricity is not only a matter of cutting off the left hand or the right hand, whether for high-end brands like BMW and Mercedes-Benz or for global brands like Volkswagen and Toyota.
Most car companies choose both fuel and pure electric vehicles, trying to use this product matrix to smoothly transition from the fuel era to the pure electric era.
Of the BBA three, BMW was the first to choose "self-revolution" and made a military order. In 2021, BMW set a more detailed goal of turning to the pure electric market:
In 2023, 12 pure electric vehicles will be provided in 90% market segments.
It is estimated that by 2025, the annual sales of pure electric vehicles of the Group will be more than 10 times that of 2020.
It is estimated that the delivery of the world’s 2 millionth pure electric vehicle will be completed by the end of 2025.
At the earnings conference call in 2022, Qi Puce, chairman of BMW Group, once again stressed that in 2023, it will go all out to electrify, with the goal of increasing the sales of pure electric vehicles to 15% of the total sales of the Group.
How about BMW’s electric progress bar in China market?
In November, 2022, BMW launched five pure electric vehicles in China: innovative BMW i7, brand-new BMW i3, BMW i4, BMW iX and BMW iX3.
Let’s look at the sales data of a group of BMW pure electric vehicles in China market in 2022: the sales volume of pure electric vehicles in 2022 was 41,886, up 91.6% year-on-year. In the global market, the total sales volume of BMW in 2022 was about 2,399,900 units, of which the sales volume of pure electric vehicles reached about 215,700 units, up by 107.7% year-on-year.
In other words, the China market contributed about 20% of pure electricity sales.
Take BMW’s best-selling entry-level model 3 Series as an example. From January to September, 2023, the domestic sales volume of fuel-powered BMW 3 Series reached 110,258, while that of pure electric BMW i3 reached 35,693. The total sales volume of the two models was 145,951, with i3 accounting for about 24%.
With the success of the i3, it is not difficult to understand BMW’s ambition to make the i5 a benchmark model for all-electric luxury cars in the world.
A person close to BMW said that BMW regards the 3 Series, 7 Series and 5 Series as the main models in China market.
At least in the China market, the 5 Series has occupied the top spot of luxury cars with a price of 400,000-500,000 for a long time.
According to the data of the Association, in 2022, with the annual sales volume of 171,142, BMW 5 Series became the first in the domestic sales list of high-end cars with a price of over 300,000 yuan, and also the first in the domestic market segment of medium and large luxury cars with a price of over 300,000 yuan.
In the fuel vehicle market, the direct competitors of BMW’s new 5 Series are Audi A6 Series and Mercedes-Benz E-Class. In the pure electric vehicle market, only the ET7 of Weilai can be compared with BMW’s new 5 Series.
Before BMW i5 entered the market, ET7 could be said to monopolize the market of more than 400,000 domestic medium and large electric cars.
The price of Weilai ET7 is 458-536,000 yuan. It comes standard with front and rear double motors, with a maximum total power of 653 horsepower and a maximum torque of 850 Nm. The fastest speed increase of zero hundred is only 3.8 seconds. In terms of intelligent hardware, ET7 adopts Qualcomm 8155 chip, and in terms of intelligent driving, it adopts four NVIDIA Orin X chips, finally reaching 1024TOPS.
At present, BMW has not announced the price range of the i5, and it will not have an official price until the model is officially launched in January 2024.
Therefore, at this stage, it is difficult to compare BMW i5 and Weilai ET7 who are more cost-effective, and who is the one who defines the pure electric luxury car.
From the details such as the new 5 Series with long wheelbase, the Chinese character "Five" designed on the front seat and the suspended giant screen specially introduced by BMW for China users, it can be seen that BMW has really made some efforts to compete for the pure tram market segment in China.
Not only that, BMW has also accelerated the laying of charging infrastructure like its own domestic brands.
In August 2023, BMW officially launched the super charging station project. High-power charging piles can support up to 600 kilowatts of charging power, and the network of super charging stations is open to all brands of electric vehicles. Within three months, the network of super charging stations will cover nine major cities including Guangzhou, and it is estimated that about 50 stations will be completed by the end of 2023.
By the end of October 2023, BMW had connected more than 580,000 public charging piles (including 320,000 DC charging piles) across the country, covering more than 320 cities.
Now everything is ready for BMW i5, except for its official listing.
(Leifeng. com(WeChat official account: Leifeng. com)Continue to pay attention to the topics related to self-research and intelligent driving of car companies. Welcome to add the author WeChat WLX_Charlene_0905 and the editor Gru1993.
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