2025 BMW M5 Touring Review: Daily Driving, Canyon Roads, and PHEV Benefits

At 5,400 pounds, the 2025 BMW M5 Touring is the heaviest M car ever built. On paper, that sounds like a disaster — too heavy, too compromised, too far from the M5’s roots. Critics have already dismissed it as a mistake. But after spending time with it, I can tell you: they’re wrong. Yes, it’s heavy. But it’s also one of the best daily drivers BMW has ever made, and the plug-in hybrid system is what makes it work.

What Is an M5 Supposed to Be?

I wanted to take a trip down memory lane about the history of the M5. The M Division started with the 3.0 CSL “Batmobile” to compete in the European Touring Car Championship in 1973 and even won the Nürburgring Six Hours race that same year. The first full-fledged M car would come in 1978 with the legendary M1 mid-engine supercar that was supposed to be a collaboration with Lamborghini for the Procar series but ended up being entirely a BMW M production car for the racing series. Then in 1985, BMW produced the E28 M5.

The mad men at BMW’s new M Division took the M88/3 motor of the M1 mid-engine supercar and put it in the E28 generation of midsized luxury sedan. At 286 hp, it’s not much by today’s standards, but it was a car built for the autobahn. This car wasn’t built to race in any series; it was designed as an incredibly potent road car that showed the world what the M Division was capable of and how BMW focused on performance and driving dynamics over luxury.

Is the 2025 BMW M5 Touring Better as a Plug-in Hybrid?

The reason I bring this up is to highlight that the M5 has never been intended to be a dedicated track car. It is a highly capable luxury sedan with the ability to drive fast on track if it found itself there, but the real purpose of this car is to be one of the fastest ways on the planet with four seats and a steering wheel to get from point A to point B. Period.

The last-generation F90 M5 fit this role just perfectly. The 4.4L V8 S63 motor was capable of putting down over 617 hp (a very underrated figure) through all four wheels with ruthless efficiency. Though this was a comfortable luxury sedan to drive every day, it had the capability of embarrassing many mid-engine supercars at stoplights and laid down lap times that were at the very least competitive. This was just about the best car you could hope to find yourself in on the German autobahn. Need to get from Munich to Stuttgart in an hour? Take an M5. Here in America, the M5 has been legendary when it comes to setting records.

Alex Roy and David Maher set the Cannonball Run record in 2006, driving an E39 M5 from New York City to Los Angeles — 2,804 miles coast to coast — in 31 hours and 4 minutes. Then in 2020, an F90 M5 Competition did the same transcontinental run in 25 hours and 57 minutes. The crazy part? They were on pace to cross the country in under 24 hours, but a hostage situation shut down the major pass on I-15 coming into Los Angeles, forcing them to take a 60-mile detour off the highway.

Yes, the M5 is a very, very fast highway and road trip car.

Real-World Daily Driving in Los Angeles

If you don’t want to read any more: yes. As we’ve discussed before, the M5 isn’t a track car. It’s an extremely capable street car. The F90 and F10 generations of M5 with the S63 engine were powerful, but it wasn’t uncommon to be stopping for gas every 200 miles or sometimes even less. The introduction of a plug-in hybrid doesn’t just add even more performance to the car; it makes it a much better car to live with. What people don’t realize is that for whatever top-end dynamic performance might have been perceived to have been lost compared to the F90 M5, BMW now gives you a free i5 Touring with your M5 without much compromise.

Fuel economy on a $140,000 car may not be something buyers care about from a financial perspective, but it is really nice for convenience. The 14.8 kWh usable battery in the G99 M5 Touring is allegedly good for 27 miles of EV range. However, I found that I was able to far exceed this. In daily driving for my 45–90 miles of commuting I typically do around Los Angeles, I was easily able to get between 35 and 47 miles of pure electric range. While this may not be important to some, slugging it out going 40 miles per hour in the freeway traffic I’m used to isn’t conducive to big V8s. The ability to cruise around in electric silence when the traffic picks up so I can save my gas for when I want to have fun is a really nice added benefit to the M5’s PHEV system.

Life with a plug-in hybrid carries with it a lot of hidden benefits you might not think of. If you can charge the car each night in your garage, you basically get free miles to drive on the next day. The average American drives less than 40 miles per day. The fact this M5 can handle most daily driving without using a single drop of gas gives you the flexibility to choose when to go to the gas station. You get the benefits of parking at EV charging spots found at many shopping centers and destinations, and you can even use this with an HOV exemption sticker to drive in the HOV lane on California highways because it is a plug-in hybrid. The plug-in hybrid life is like getting a premium subscription service to driving. The hybrid system does come with some downsides though that can’t be overlooked.

The 5,400-Pound Problem

Make no mistake about it: this car is heavy, and you can’t ignore the weight. You do feel how heavy this car is. But how did this generation M5 become so heavy? And why? This is where we need to talk about how hard it is to build cars in 2025 and some interesting choices made by BMW to give customers what they think they want.

The current automotive market is in a very uncertain transition period. Governments across the world, and customers alike, are demanding more efficient cars to reduce CO2 emissions. Governmental bodies, in particular the EU, have passed strict requirements for future vehicles on manufacturers. These Euro 7 emissions standards and UK emissions regulations that make certain cities zero-emissions zones (London) have essentially required cars to become either all electric or plug-in hybrid. With the cost of vehicle development and production so astronomically expensive, only one M5 could be made for all markets worldwide — unless we wanted an already expensive car to be even more unattainable. The fact of the matter is this car competes with the Porsche Panamera Turbo S E-Hybrid, a car that starts at $239,000 (before the infamous Porsche options). Suddenly, the $130–140k price tag on the M5 Touring is a bargain and makes the car available to a different demographic of buyer.

Why the M5 Touring Weighs So Much

When it comes down to it, there are two big reasons why the M5 weighs so much. The first is the plug-in hybrid system. The total system weight, including the addition of an electric motor in the transmission housing, the wiring harness, cooling, and the 14.8 kWh battery pack, comes in at nearly 800 lbs. That’s on top of the V8 and traditional ICE powertrain with the V8 and all of the cooling associated with it. Then there is the overall size. As we’ve said before, this car is now in 7 Series territory. Even without the PHEV powertrain, this would likely still have been a 4,600–4,700 lbs car.

Then there are the decisions made on the car’s options and trim to further add to the weight. The M5 comes with just about every modern automotive technical option to help it achieve its capability. Rather than Colin Chapman’s “simplify and add lightness” approach, BMW has decided on a “complicate and add weight” approach. In addition to the PHEV powertrain, there is four-wheel steering, a complex AWD system that can run in RWD-only mode if you like, a brake regeneration system, and enough cooling for all of its systems to run hard for track sessions.

Then there are the luxury and trim choices that can add a substantial amount of weight. You may not realize it, but four-zone climate control adds more weight and complexity than you might expect. They chose to only offer a full glass roof (that doesn’t even open, it just lets the sun bake you on hot days). The interior is incredibly well insulated from the outside world, but that much insulation adds weight. The luxuriously appointed interior, heated and ventilated sport seats, and the premium audio system all add even more weight to the car.

The carbon bucket seats from other M models are not offered in this generation M5. From the balance between luxury and sportiness, they chose luxury. The wheels are cast, not forged, like in some other M models. There are many different ways they could have cut hundreds of pounds out of the car without even considering the PHEV system. I hope they expand the options on this car to allow for the weight to drop significantly.

Interior Quality: Better or Worse Than the F90?

The new M5 has been claimed to have seen a drop in interior quality. The F90 was a high bar for automotive interiors. While there are some places where costs had to be cut, overall, I found the interior to be a wonderful place to be. The ambient lighting is fantastic and plentiful without being overwhelming. iDrive 8.5 on the curved display is bright and snappy. The seats are incredibly comfortable for long road trips. There are certain material choices on the lower door panels and the lower trim on the center console. The air vents use BMW’s new design, which uses thin air vents and adjustments below them. This new design is counterintuitive and does not seem to solve any problems that typical air vent controls had before.

However, for those material choice flaws, the reality is the rest of the interior is great. I think car fans forget what BMW interiors looked like 20 years ago. The brand was never known for luxurious interiors, but for spartan, simple, and pragmatic interior designs. If the sacrifices on the interior helped keep the cost relatively affordable while shoving an advanced PHEV powertrain under the sheet metal to keep the car emissions-compliant while also allowing for incredible performance, I can take that compromise.

Final Verdict: Why the M5 Touring Still Matters

In 2025, as the automotive world becomes a boring mass of EV crossovers, BMW found a way to give us an M5. Not just any M5 — they gave us a 730 hp wagon with a twin-turbo V8 under the hood that is still faster than the last one while hitting the emissions targets it had to hit to even exist. While I wish it could be a pure ICE car, the fact we can even get a machine as incredible as this, in this automotive market, is a miracle. I don’t think people realize just how lucky we are. Sure, the car is heavier, but it’s a wonderful M5 we are lucky to have.