BMW 530E vs Lexus IS

What's the difference?

The G30 5 Series is an excellent car and unless you're looking for the serious punch of the V8 M550i, or want to run with the cops in the diesel, the 530e is a great option. No slower than the 530i, well-equipped and that rarest of things, a truly elegant BMW. Nobody buys a BMW with an eye on the budget, so at this level, the $3000 gap is nothing to worry too much about. For EV-sceptics, the range anxious or just for someone who just can't take the full EV plunge now, a PHEV is a great bridge between the two worlds.

And if nothing else, it's not a giant SUV.

Smooth, cosy, quiet, the IS looks and feels better than ever, but without a doubt this hybrid version is a car best suited to cruising the dense metropolis of Chiba at midnight more than it is carving up a bunch of S-bends in the Australian countryside on the weekend.

While that might still limit its appeal for fans of German sports luxury sedans and place it further from the original IS’s ambitions, it does offer an intriguing efficiency and luxury focused alternative, without the compromises brought by rivals with more sporting intent. In a way then, the IS 300h perhaps inadvertently best embodies what Lexus is as a brand.

The G30 5 Series dates back to a time when people thought the grille on this was A Bit Much. How wrong they were. The 5, like the 3, used to be part of a clutch of executive sedans that formed the backbone of the company's expansion and success from the 1980s onwards. That means the styling is never too adventurous and even Chris Bangle's E60 5 Series, while striking, was not particularly controversial.

The only problem with the G30 is that it's hard to distinguish from its predecessor, but that's not a real issue when you see how elegant this car is. Easy on the chrome, proportional grille, big wheels, it's a proper smooth operator, visually speaking.

The cabin is holding up nicely and fits with the rest of the BMW range. It's impeccably well built, full of nice materials and even the wood trim is all right. The black Nappa leather is quite lovely but I can't tell you what the standard stuff is like, so you'll have to work that one out for yourself. It's very calm in here, with a good balance of buttons and screens with which to operate the car and while it doesn't have the you-beaut wow of its E Class rival, with its two massive slabs of screen in front of you, it has plenty to offer.

Look closely and quite a lot has changed. This is really a story of doing a facelift right. Lexus has kept all the great-looking bits of the car that launched in 2013, like its striking side profile and angular accents, while dumping most of its least popular elements like the spidery front light-clusters and busy front splitter, in favour of something more refined and conservative.

It even adds some new flair in the rear three-quarter, with dramatic LED light-clusters working their way into a trendy highlight strip across the boot lid.

These changes all add up for a much tougher, sportier, and nuanced design compared to the outgoing car. One that manages to make an eight-year old design look as contemporary as ever.

I even liked our test car in its plain black shade, although I'm less sure about those conservative-to-a-fault, almost Camry-esque alloy wheels.

On the inside, sadly not a whole lot has changed. The busy design looked dated when this generation of IS launched in 2013, and it still looks dated now.

The visual assault of buttons, toggles, displays, textures, and trims is a lot to take in, and makes the cabin feel smaller than it is.

It probably didn’t help the sensory overload of this car’s interior as I hopped out of the stripped-back interior in the Tesla Model 3 I had the week before.

My less-than-impressed brother, a student of design, described the IS’s interior best when he told me “It’s a bit maximalist, don’t you think?”

If nothing else, at least Lexus hasn’t blatantly imitated anyone else when it comes to its interior, but the brand remains firm on dorky design items like the laptop touchpad, redundant drive-select dial, and odd vacant panels under the climate unit which do it no favours.

A welcome upgrade for the 2021 model year is the new media screen, a highlight piece perched atop the dash. It’s bright, has excellent contrast, and doesn’t seem to fall victim to glare.

The Apple CarPlay support I used was seamless and sharp and made the most of the available real-estate in its widescreen layout.

I somehow didn’t mind that the instrument cluster in this base car is analog. It almost suits the IS’s character better than a digital set-up would. Also offered is a small information display between the dials which I used for monitoring the hybrid drive.

A final note on the IS’s design. The fit and finish is quality, inside and out. It leaves you with an impression that this is an immaculately built vehicle, one that should be a must for all luxury cars, and always a strong point for Lexus.

The 5 is almost five metres long, so as you might expect, it's big inside. Back-seat passengers have a ton of space to play with and even three across back there is doable for a distance. The outboard seats have some nice shapes to them, too, so they hold rear passengers in if the driver gets a bit ambitious. Loads of legroom, good headroom and very importantly, a good view out through the big side windows. Properly comfortable, then.

Front and rear passengers each score a pair of cupholders for a total of four as well as the same number of bottle holders. The centre-console bin is long and shallow, but does feature a USB-C port. The wireless-charging pad also has a USB-A port for those without the functionality and/or a phone too big to fit. Both the cupholders and charging pad have a sliding cover.

The boot is smaller than the standard car's as there is a lithium-ion battery hidden underneath the now-sloping floor. With 410 litres, it's smaller than a 3 Series' but it doesn't look that small. There is also a spot for the charging cable and its bag behind the left wheel arch.

Well, the IS is a sedan, so it doesn’t quite have that high-riding appeal of an SUV, and for this update it has even leaned further into its low-slung proportions with a roofline that descends a further 15mm and a boot lid which is 31mm lower overall.

As with the previous car, the interior is quite closed-in thanks to that busy dash design and large centre console. Rather than feeling claustrophobic though, it is best described as cosy, with lots of plush finishes throughout the doors and centre stack befitting a luxury nameplate.

Adjustability is great for the front two occupants and there are two large bottle holders between the seats, a large but shallow console box under the armrest, bottle holders with adjoining bins in the doors, and a smallish glove box.

That’s about where storage ends though, with no extra trays or bins in front of the oddly placed shifter, just an awkwardly finished plastic panel where it feels like a little tray or storage cutaway should be.

The touchpad for operating the media screen joins an unnecessary drive-select cluster in eating up centre console space where there could be more storage.

The rear seat is quite limited on space despite being lavishly trimmed. I fit behind my own (182cm/6'0") driving position with little knee or headroom to spare.

Again, it’s cosy and very comfortable, but if you're taller or wider than me you may run into issues.

The centre rear seat is all but useless for adults, with the IS’s rear-drive architecture necessitating a huge transmission tunnel that almost comes as high as the seat base itself.

Storage is limited to pockets on the back of the front seats, small bins in the doors that double as handholds, and a drop-down armrest with two bottle holders.

There are no power outlets for rear passengers, but there are dual adjustable air vents.

Boot space is 450L which is a little small for the class. It’s impressive the hybrid only managed to lose 30 litres compared to petrol-only IS variants, though, so best to count your blessings.

The largest CarsGuide travel case easily fit in the wide but short available space.

To be precise the variant we’re looking at here is the IS 300h Luxury. It’s the base IS trim with the hybrid powertrain and it wears a before on-road costs (MSRP) of $64,500.

Base car or not, the new IS is very well specified. Now standard are 18-inch alloys (up from 17s), full LED headlight clusters, eight-way power adjustable front seats, dual-zone climate control, 10-speaker audio system, and importantly a brilliant new 10.3-inch multimedia screen with widescreen Apple CarPlay, Android Auto, built-in navigation, and DAB+ digital radio support.

Keyless entry and push-start ignition also continue to be offered, as well as a leather-look interior trim which in our car was in a rather contrasting 'Ochre' colour option.

Our IS 300h was also fitted with the creatively named ‘Enhancement Pack 1’ which adds an openable moonroof for $2000. The significantly more expensive ‘Enhancement Pack 2’ ($5500) adds the moonroof alongside 19-inch alloys, upgraded LED headlights, interior ornamentation, scuff plates, a panoramic reversing camera, 17-speaker premium audio, ‘leather-accented’ interior trim, ventilated front seats, and an electric rear sunshade.

These packs are seemingly largely unnecessary but are also very cheap for a brand at the premium end of the market.

Lexus has made pretty much all of its high-end active safety equipment standard on this base ‘Luxury’ for 2021, alongside some previously unavailable tech which we’ll take a look at in the safety section of this review.

At this price the Lexus IS 300h goes into battle against the Mercedes-Benz C 200 ($66,900), BMW 320i ($70,900), Audi A4 35 TFSI ($55,900), and the ever-looming threat of Hyundai’s Genesis, which offers its similarly-sized G70 in base form at $59,300.

Some of these base-spec rivals are cheaper, some are more expensive, but did you notice none of them are hybrids?

Access to Toyota’s affordable and popular hybrid drive is a real point of difference for the Lexus brand, and we expect it’s a key drawcard for the loyal customer base. More on that later.

The 530e comes with a 2.0-litre four-cylinder turbocharged engine developing 135kW and 290Nm, with the eight-speed ZF automatic sending power to the rear wheels. The electric motor spins up 83kW and 230Nm, also driving the rear wheels. When everything is working together, the combined output is 185kW and 420Nm, which delivers a quick 6.1-second dash to 100km/h, which isn't mucking about.

You can choose four drive modes. EV will (mostly) drain the battery, Hybrid will keep the two working together and Sport will deliver the most power. And drain the battery, albeit more slowly. Adaptive works the averages and decides what you need or want by how frisky you're being with your driving style.

The IS 300h does stand out from the luxury sedan crowd by offering a hybrid drivetrain at a reasonable price. Some rivals offer plug-in options further up the price scale cementing them as a niche option, but the beauty of this Lexus is its very mild $3000 price jump over the base petrol car.

The base car’s 2.0-litre turbo is dumped in favour of a 2.5-litre non-turbo Atkinson-cycle four-cylinder hybrid set-up similar to the one proving popular in the Toyota Camry and RAV4.

The petrol engine produces 133kW/221Nm on its own, and the electric motor produces 105kW/300Nm. Toyota says the “combined system output” of this is 164kW.

Either way, that's less than the base 2.0 turbo. The 300h also swaps out an eight-speed torque converter automatic in favour of a continuously variable transmission. Rare in a rear-wheel drive car.

The 12kWh battery takes up the same amount of space as the old one, but has more capacity, extending its EV range. The claimed EV range is 57km on the WLTP standard. 

The iDrive system has a bunch of settings that you can play with to squeeze more out of the silent-running mode and there's also a battery-charging mode button to force the ICE to charge the battery while you're on the move. Also useful is a timing system, so you can schedule when the car charges to take advantage of the cheap power available in the dead of night.

Recharging is easy but sadly a bit slow off a domestic power point. Having said that, if you plug it in after a day's commuting, you'll be topped up to 100 percent overnight. It's a long charge, but it's not as if you'll be stranded if you forget. You can get a wallbox, but there's not much point.

The fuel tank is just 46 litres. The WLTP combined cycle figure is a laughable 2.3L/100km. On that official figure, you'll cover an unlikely 2000km. My week with the car, which included 70km on EV-only power with one charge off my solar panels, got me an indicated 6.1L/100km in a mostly suburban week of driving. So based off that, you'll get about 530km from one full charge and a full tank, which is a bit confusing. Keep charging and, if you're an average Australian who travels little more than 30km per day, you won't use much petrol at all.

Having said all of that, out on the freeway, you'll probably slide towards that 2.3L/100km and make it from Sydney and Melbourne on a single tank. Just.

As you might hope this hybrid IS has an astoundingly low official/combined fuel consumption rating of 5.1L/100km.

I was pleased to find that after a week of mainly urban driving conditions, our IS was returning a figure of 6.9L/100km. Not bad at all, especially for a class where fuel consumption can get a little out of hand with turbocharged engines or V6s.

Of course, using the hybrid system to your advantage over the long term will get this number much lower, as I discovered on my long-term test of the Toyota Corolla hybrid which essentially uses a smaller version of the same system.

Certainly, if fuel consumption is a high concern, you’re better off with this car than the top-spec V6 (IS 350) which will easily see consumption enter double digits.

Lexus recommends a minimum RON rating of 95 for the IS 300h, and the fuel tank is 66 litres regardless of variant, giving the hybrid an impressive theoretical range of around 1000km.

The reason I like PHEVs as a tool for pushing people towards electrification is about more than the fact that it will likely cure buyers of range anxiety once they're realistic about their actual car usage. I mean it does do that, but it's more about the fact that PHEVs drive like a normal car, with few exceptions.

In EV mode, the acceleration is swift but not that brutal, YouTuber-friendly thrust EV fanboys use as proof that legacy car makers are dead. It's all very serene and very, very quiet as you move from traffic light to traffic light in near silence, while more than keeping up with traffic. The blue of the dashboard indicates your progress and the iDrive screen can keep you updated with power consumption.

The switch between EV and ICE propulsion is very smooth and it's almost like BMW has been doing this forever. You'll also discover an appreciable lift in performance, more in line with the M Sport badges. BMW's engineers have done nothing to make the 2.0-litre petrol sound better than a whirring mixmaster, though.

Slightly less M Sport-ey is the suspension. While there's absolutely nothing wrong with it, the adaptive dampers never dial things up too much for the average motorist. Granted the 5 will leave just about anything this size for dead as far as driver involvement goes, but it certainly keeps the dial closer to comfort than, say, the M550i does. Once again, it's a serene thing to get around in and passengers will love the quietness and easy flow of conversation. Or the lovely sound from the harmon kardon speakers.

You don't have to try too hard to cover a good chunk of the claimed 57km of EV range. Realistically you'll get close to 45km, even after my colleague Matt Campbell drained 20km of charge in a six-kilometre trip that he maintains was driven gently (snigger) and normally (guffaw). Without trying too hard, I managed 41km in pure EV after his attempts to ruin my numbers (not really, but I do enjoy the amusing false narrative).

There is no doubt the IS 300h is capable. You can feel it through the car’s solid rear-drive underpinnings, silky smooth steering, and reactive chassis.

What this car doesn’t offer is excitement in quite the same sense as many of its rivals. That’s down to this hybrid’s drivetrain. It just doesn’t have that powerful follow-through in the same way turbocharged BMWs or Audis or Mercedes do.

If it’s that 'sports luxury' experience you’re seeking better off looking to the base 2.0-litre turbo or the V6 and their eight-speed automatics.

The 300h does offer something a bit different. The gentle refined efficiency of Toyota’s signature hybrid system in a luxury rear-drive package that’s smaller than this car’s ES bigger brother.

While it may feel capable thanks to the lighter suspension components and altered track that the brand has committed to for this update, the hybrid drive matches this car’s softer character brought about by its gentle suspension tune and light steering.

This is an easy car to drive around a city, it filters out bumps nicely, while offering near silence in the cabin and breezy steering for every day scenarios like manoeuvring in tight parking lots.

The CVT auto and instantaneous torque available from the electric motor make it best at traffic speeds, being both reactive and predictable, with silent acceleration when inching forward at the lights or cruising along at 50km/h.

As you might expect though, the wheezy Atkinson cycle engine and CVT conspire for a noisy and less than engaging experience under heavy acceleration.

It’s not as though you’re rewarded with particular vigour either, with this combination being a bit sluggish when a lot is asked of it.

It loses its reactivity and refinement at higher speeds or in the corners on country roads as the transmission elastically tries to keep up with the demands of the driver.

Still, few luxury sedans are quite as purpose-built for the toils of a city, and if you want to get drawn into this car’s hybrid drive antics, it’s easy to make a game out of saving fuel by trying to rely on its low-speed electric motor capability.

Really then, it leans into its urban luxury appeal. A luxury sedan for the streets of Tokyo. An ideal car in this class for the urban environment.

If you don’t care for the thrill of a turbocharger or frequently seek to explore the twists of your nearest B-road, you could do worse than the comfort and ambiance the 300h offers.

A full active safety suite is now standard across the IS range, including freeway-speed auto emergency braking with pedestrian detection (works during the day and at night) and cyclist detection (works during the day only), and a new intersection braking feature, lane keep assist with lane departure warning, blind spot monitoring, rear cross traffic alert with reverse auto braking, traffic sign recognition, adaptive cruise control, and auto high-beam assist.

There is also an auto SOS function, as recently added to the Toyota Yaris Cross, which automatically triggers if an airbag is deployed. On the topic of airbags, every IS has a thorough suite of 10 (dual front, dual side, quad head, dual front knee).

This all adds up with the standard array of stability, brake, and traction controls for a maximum five-star ANCAP safety rating, although the IS was last assessed way back in 2016.

The IS is built in Japan.

BMW really needs to up its game, as do Audi and Porsche (among others). Munich is still sticking with a three-year/unlimited-kilometre warranty while German rival Mercedes is up at five years and Japanese competitor Lexus four. You do get three years roadside assist thrown in.

All 5 Series (excluding M5) are eligible for service plans. For $1950, you're covered for five years/80,000km of servicing. As with most BMWs, servicing is based on how you drive but really, if we're being honest, the car will get you into the dealer once every 12 months or 15,000km. Roughly.

Lexus gets slightly ahead of the luxury pack with an extra year of warranty. While BMW and Audi still sit on three, Lexus offers four, but it is limited to 100,000km and is still outdone by Mercedes-Benz and Korean newcomer, Genesis, offering five-year/unlimited kilometre promises.

The IS has capped price servicing fixed at $495 for the first three years of ownership with roadside assist, and the brand will even pick up and drop off your car, or offer a free loan car during every 12 month or 15,000km service.

It’s worth noting that German rivals offer pre-paid service packages out to five years, and Genesis is trying to make a splash with free servicing.

Lexus does offer a luxury ownership program dubbed ‘Encore’ which includes invites to experiences and certain partnerships with restaurants and the like to keep potential owners enticed.