BMW 530e Touring long-term test: German estate proves there’s life in PHEVs yet

I've immersed myself in the BMW [1] 530e's usefulness over the past few weeks. Since the car was delivered less than a month ago, I've done the best part of 1,200 miles over a mix of motorway, urban and rural routes. I've plugged it in whenever possible, but still had days where I've done 200 miles or more, and had to rely almost exclusively on the four-cylinder petrol engine.

Yet despite all of this, I'm returning a very respectable 67mpg, and almost 60 per cent 'eDrive' share. Of course, those EV miles aren't free, but on an off-peak electricity tariff you'll get 40-odd miles for not far shy of GBP1.50. At the UK's current average domestic electricity price of 24.8p/kWh, it's more like a fiver.

That's a little more punchy, but (by my maths) roughly the same as a combustion car doing 45mpg. Powertrain aside, this Touring fits that age-old cliche of 'all the car you'll ever need' almost as well as any model I've run over the past 15 years; the boot's massive, the seats are comfortable and there are just enough luxuries to keep my better half happy. That said, I think you'd expect electric front seats and adaptive cruise control to be standard on a GBP65k car, and yet they aren't here.

That said, M Sport Pro trim certainly looks the part, especially with Oxide Grey paint and the gorgeous espresso leather - a feature I'll touch on in a future report. The widescreen infotainment system is fantastic, too, although by defaulting to Apple CarPlay [2] and its user-friendly touch layout, I'm finding fewer opportunities to use the otherwise intuitive iDrive clickwheel. In all honesty,

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References

^ BMW (www.autoexpress.co.uk)
^ Apple CarPlay (www.autoexpress.co.uk)