Buying a wagon is much harder than it used to be. There simply aren’t as many new ones on the market, even in Europe, where availability is much better than it is in North America.
If you try buying an electric wagon right now in the U.S. you’re pretty much limited to the Porsche Taycan Cross Turismo, which starts at $101,900, while in Europe you can also get the Sport Turismo, which is the same car without the cladding, or, for rather less money, the bargain basement Chinese-built MG5.
But the electric estate car market is hotting up. This year Peugeot will start delivering the e-308 SW it revealed last September, and Europeans will also get the chance to buy the Opel/Vauxhall Astra Sport Tourer, which shares its platform and electric running gear with the 308. Also expected during 2023 is the production version of VW’s ID.Space Vizzion concept, which is likely to be badged ID.7 Tourer, the Audi A6 Avant e-tron and the car you see here, the BMW i5 Touring.
The i5 is the electric version of the upcoming 5-Series, and both cars will be launched before the end of this year. BMW has already released official photos and videos of the i5 sedan busting some moves on a frozen lake in Sweden to ram home the message that a 5-Series can still be fun to drive even if it no longer has an internal combustion engine under the hood, but it’s staying quiet about the availability of a Touring version for now.
Related: Watch BMW’s New i5 Electric Sedan Tackle Brutal Winter Tests
These latest spy shots, however, prove that an i5 Touring is definitely part of BMW’s new 5-Series product plan, though it probably won’t make an official appearance until the first half of 2024, and it’s still not certain whether it will come to the U.S., where the 5-Series Touring is currently unavailable. Stickers on the side stating ‘Electrified Vehicle’ plus the blanked-off grille and absence of exhaust pipes make it clear we’re looking at the i5 rather than the plain 5-Series. In terms of body panels, the two cars will be identical, and the same goes for the interior.
BMW will offer the i5 in a few different flavors, the range likely to kick off with a single-motor i5 40, but this one looks like an M60, which will get a version of the 610 hp (619 PS) bi-motor, all-wheel drive powertrain fitted to the iX SUV. That output would make the electric M-lite i5 as powerful as the current M5, but BMW has an answer to that: the next M5 will feature a hybrid-assisted V8 with over 700 hp (710PS).
