Volkswagen Id.5 vs BMW 535d

What's the difference?

At long last, the ID.5 GTX arrives to make a different pitch than many of its electric rivals. Less about straight-line speed and more about refinement and handling, this EV mid-sizer makes a case for itself, even if it’s not as good value as its ID.4 sibling.

Note: CarsGuide attended this event as a guest of the manufacturer, with travel, accommodation and meals provided.

Not all superheroes wear capes, and we're proud to report the 530e does its bit for green motoring without feeling the need to shout about it. And with no price or specification penalty, it's easier being green than ever before, and the pricing of this BMW really puts the cat amongst the canaries.

The key differentiator between the ID.4 and ID.5 is of course the ID.5’s descending coupe roofline. I think it grants the GTX more presence on the road, and I appreciate the touch of having a true three-dimensional spoiler piece atop the boot lid to round it out rather than a more common lip or roof-mounted extension.

Outside of this, the ID.5 sets itself apart from the rest of the Volkswagen range thanks to its curves rather than hard edges as well as contemporary light bar fittings, front and rear.

The overall visage is fresh but a tad conservative, especially compared to the more radical designs we’re seeing on new-to-the-market automakers like XPeng, or those looking to make a splash with their electric offerings, like Kia with its EV5.

There’s certainly something to be said for a more moderate approach, though, as it feels more resolved than many rivals.

Inside, to a degree, the ID.5 follows similar trends in the market, with a minimalist and screen-dominated dashboard.

The 12.9-inch central touchscreen unit is less overbearing than some 15+ inch units in other cars, and this combines with the sensible 5.3-inch digital instrument cluster to make it feel more like a car than a tech product on wheels.

Still, the minimalist theme prevails, with the ID.5’s interior being free of a space-consuming raised console or a smattering of buttons to interact with.

The seats in this GTX are particularly cool, with the single-piece backing like a Golf GTI, red stitching and nice material quality. 

It leaves you with the impression the ID.5 is modern but with the build quality and know-how of a storied automaker, which is a nice balance.

Crucially, there's nothing weird about the way the 530e looks. While some green cars look like they've been designed by one of the kids from 3rd Rock from the Sun, the 530e looks much the same as the rest of the range, save a few tiny but telltale giveaways - like the e-drive badging outside, and what looks like a bonus fuel flap tucked in behind a front wheel that houses the whole plug-in bit.

And we really, really like it. It's elegant and statesman-like from every angle, and looked especially important in the deep-blue colour of our test vehicle. It's not over-designed, with body creases used sparingly, and the occasional glint of polished silver that rings the windows and the grille adds a final sense of shininess to an understated design. 

Inside, there's more going on than you might normally find in a BMW. The hugely complicated digital display screen now includes everything from battery charge, power usage to the usual assortment of speedometers and petrol readouts. 

It doesn't feel overdone or crazily festooned, but there's more at play here than in your usual BMW.

The dash is busy, too, with a wide screen emerging from a centre stack that also houses a CD player and a digital aircon setup, which in turn sits above a complex centre console from which you can alter driving settings, control the multimedia or cycle through electric modes. It doesn't feel overdone or crazily festooned, but there's more at play here than in your usual BMW.

Elsewhere inside, the seats are beautifully designed, with a quilted leather highlight through the middle, while the gloss-black strip that lines the dash hides a dual strip of ambient interior lights that also runs across all four doors.

First, the less-good. The minimalist and button-free interior will be a major downside for many. Pretty much everything in the ID.5’s cabin is touch-based. There’s not even a stop/start button, you just sit in the car and it’s ready to go. Additionally, it relies on the now-maligned touch sliders below the multimedia screen for volume and temperature adjustment. Never fun to use on the move. Even the buttons on the steering wheel are the touch-based haptic-feedback kind.

At least the software shapes up. It’s easy enough to navigate, and has a slew of straightforward menus. It’s also backed by enough processing power, with swift responsiveness, and the panel quality is good too, with a sharp, high-resolution finish.

This can be a double-edged sword, though. The high-resolution leads to small shortcut icons across the top of the main screen. While I’m glad the ID.5 has these so you can swap between things like the car’s settings menu and, say, Apple CarPlay easily, it takes some accuracy to jab at while you’re trying to drive.

From there, though, the cabin is clever. Free from the trappings of buttons and a raised console, it feels spacious in every dimension and the seat comfort is excellent with lovely side bolstering and padding.

The seats feel quality, but I wonder whether the synthetic suede-style microfleece trim will age as well or be as easy to clean as cloth or leather. Worth thinking about if you plan to keep this car for a long time.

I even like the touch of having little flip-down armrests which almost makes it feel like you’re being silently propelled along in an armchair in the front seats.

You need these because there’s no traditional raised console with an armrest box. Instead there’s a flexible floating central console piece. It features a modular sort of design, where you can make use of either dividers or a drop-in bottle holder piece in either the upper or lower sections, depending on your preference. Remove these things entirely to have two massive trays.

Meanwhile, the lower section features a cubby with a wireless phone charger, and it also houses the dual USB-C ports with a sliding cover so you can keep the interior tidy. I like it.

There are large bottle holders in the doors, too, and another nice touch is the digital dash being perched on the steering column, so no matter how you adjust it, you can always see it.

The back seat is also excellent in the ID.4 and ID.5, featuring plenty of space for me behind my own driving position, at 182cm tall. There’s heaps of airspace for my knees, and because there’s a flat floor courtesy of this car’s dedicated 'MEB' platform, there’s plenty of space for your feet. It also makes the centre position usable by an adult, which is rare.

Soft trims continue in the doors, but my favourite feature of the ID.5’s rear bench is how the brand has thought to strongly contour the outer two seat backings so even they have plenty of side bolstering.

The backs of the front seats feature an upper pocket for phones and the like, and a larger lower pocket, while the doors feature a large bottle holder each. A drop-down armrest has three shaped cavities for bottles of all sizes, and behind it is a ski port door.

There are adjustable air vents and a touch panel to control the rear climate zone, but because of the low design of the central console, they’re basically on the floor. Nice to have them, but they might be hard to adjust for kids or the less mobile.

This will surprise you. The boot is bigger in the ID.5 than in the ID.4 despite this car’s descending roofline. Measuring 549 litres, it’s also good for the mid-size segment and features an under-floor storage area which is great for your charging equipment. However, there is no spare wheel, just an inflator kit, and also, the ID.5 doesn’t get a frunk like many of its electric contemporaries.

As the world's motoring tastes shrink faster than a lap-banded Clive Palmer, it's easy to forget the joys of the full-size sedan, but the space for passengers and luggage in the 5 Series will have you questioning your downsizing ways.

Upfront, there's plenty of room between front-seat riders, who will also share two smallish cup holders, along with room in each front door for bottles. There's also a dedicated wireless charge pad (which, because of its tight design, is crazy difficult to actually remove your phone from), but you'll also get two USB points and a power outlet that's hidden in the sizeable centre storage bin as standard fit.

Backseat riders get heaps of space, both in width and in leg room behind the front seats. And there's twin air-con temp controls and twin power outlets, too. But middle-seat passengers will be forced to sit with their legs on either side of the raised tunnel, which will definitely impact on comfort.

The boot's still sizeable, despite shrinking slightly to house the battery/fuel tank setup

Best to ditch the fifth passenger, then, and deploy the pull-down seat divider, which also houses two cup holders. Finally, there are three ISOFIX attachment points, one for each seat in the back.

The boot's still sizeable, despite shrinking slightly to house the battery/fuel tank setup (the tank has been moved further back to accomodate the batteries), and can be adjusted to be a flat load area if you'd like, offering up to 410 litres with the rear seats in place.

The 530e commands a 530i-equalling $108,900 price tag, which is genuinely impressive when you consider all the extra bits and pieces that go into make a plug-in hybrid. That money buys you a well-equipped car, and only those allergic to money need reach for the options list.

As standard, you'll find leather-wrapped - and heated in the front - sports seats, 19-inch alloy wheels and a 10.25-inch touchscreen that pairs with a really very good 16-speaker Haman Kardon stereo. Wireless Apple CarPlay is available, but it'll cost you an extra $500. To be honest, though, we didn't miss it.

You'll also find adaptive LED headlights, a huge head-up display (so big, in fact, that it impedes vision when climbing steep hills), dynamic dampers, an auto opening/closing boot and a self-parking system, along with BMW's suite of self-driving tech - but we'll come back to that under the Safety sub-heading.

Instead of a frunk there’s simply a mess of hardware under the bonnet which is largely related to the ID.5’s high-voltage and cooling systems, but what sets the GTX apart is the addition of a front motor to add to the standard rear one.

It’s not a huge power boost. The ID.4 already puts out 210kW/545Nm, and the front motor on the ID.5 simply adds 40 additional kW for totals of 250kW/545Nm (as the torque figures for the two don’t simply add together).

Its claimed 0-100km/h sprint time of 5.4 seconds isn't bad, especially compared to combustion equivalents, but it’s also not as breakneck fast as some of its EV rivals.

Instead, the additional motor for the ID.5 GTX is more about adding something to the handling equation, as well as the dependability of all-wheel drive and additional drive modes. More on this shortly.

Drift around in pure EV mode and you'll be relying on the 530e's 83kW and 250Nm electric motor, which will provide what BMW refers to as "between 28 and 32 real-world kilometres".

Run out of range, or simply use too much throttle, and the 2.0-litre petrol engine comes into play, adding 135kW and 320Nm to the mix. All up, that's 185kW and 420Nm - respectable numbers by any measure, and enough to match the petrol-powered 530i's zero to 100km/h sprint of 6.2 seconds.

That power is fed through an eight-speed automatic transmission before being sent exclusively to the rear wheels, where it belongs.

One of the biggest benefits of the Australian market waiting this long for VW’s ID. range is the upgraded battery and charging offering.

The ID.5 GTX has a larger battery than the ID.4, measuring 84kWh which helps off-set its slightly less efficient all-wheel drive system. The result is a WLTP driving range of 522km between charges, which is only 22km less than the ID.4. It’s still plentiful, and on the higher end at this price point.

Additionally, the charging specs are great. A peak speed of 175kW on DC means a charge time of around 22 minutes (10 - 80 per cent) on a pylon capable of outputting such a speed, while on AC it is 11kW, making it worthwhile plugging in down at the local shops.

The big missed opportunity here is the lack of vehicle-to-load, vehicle-to-grid or a household power outlet in the cabin or boot. These are convenient features becoming more prevalent in the market. At least VW throws in a wall socket and a Type 2-to-Type 2 charging cable as standard.

Like a Facebook relationship status, it's complicated. The 530e will sip a claimed combined 2.3 litres per hundred kilometres on the claimed/combined cycle, which is amazing for a car this size. Better still, it seems genuinely achievable - at the vehicle's launch, our own Richard Berry recorded a stunning 2.0 litres per hundred kilometres on a short test route.

But that's with a full load of battery charge on board. For our week with the 530e we were unable to actually plug it in (living in Sydney, I can't afford a garage), so once the initial battery charge had been used we were back to mostly petrol power. Unlike some other plug-in hybrids we've driven, we found it very difficult to recharge the battery to any meaningful level using regenerative braking, so once we were flat we stayed flat. If we had plugged it in, it would have been a two-hour recharge using a specialised wall unit, or about four hours using a normal plug.

As a result, though, our fuel use was closer to 7.0 litres per hundred kilometres after some considerable real-world testing.

The ID.5 GTX isn’t quite in the same vein as other ‘performance’ EVs. It feels more measured than a Tesla Model Y Performance for example. But then it also feels a lot more organic. It feels a lot more like a car.

This is because rather than focus on straight-line performance, the GTX has benefits when it comes to its handling. Compared to the ID.4, for example, the ID.5 is sharper on its front axle, adding a little additional torque at the front to make it sharper and faster to grab the tarmac.

Its accelerator response may be comparatively steady, but somehow the ID.5’s more traditional stability control tuning allows it to have a bit more leeway when you push it in the corners. It grants it a little extra fun factor, where some rivals are too locked down.

Additionally, VW’s experience in providing a balanced ride and sharp steering tune is on full show. While a lot of electric vehicles in this class feel a little over-electrically assisted or even vague when it comes to the steering, the ID.5 feels connected and accurate.

The adjustable ride settings are also a rare win for an electric mid-sizer. This is because you can adjust the ride to suit the conditions. If you’re on a bumpy suburban road for example, you can keep it nice and soft. But if you’re out carving corners in the countryside, a much firmer setting is available to help limit the amount of floaty rebound this car’s low-set battery weight can have.

It does adjust in a limited band, so there’s still a bit of softness to it, which combines with the predominantly rear-drive characteristics to make for a distinctly different vehicle to a Tiguan, for example.

It’s simply not as athletic as VW’s finely-tuned combustion offerings, but then its more plush open-road feel isn’t necessarily worse. At the very least it maintains all those key refinement characteristics which make Volkswagens generally a cut above to drive.

There's so much to like about the way the 530e sets about saving the world, and that's mostly because it doesn't shout about it, either to the driver or the outside world.

It's very much an underpants inside its pants superhero, which makes us like it even more. Set off in EV mode, and the 530e will drift silently away from the curb, burning battery power over fuel for as many as 30(ish) kilometres. But equally important, the shift from green to gas is largely imperceptible, with the petrol engine joining in willingly when you ask it to - usual via a prod of your right foot.

It is so effortlessly smooth that you need to really pay attention to notice the eight-speed 'box changing gears at city speeds, and it's commendably quiet, whichever drive mode you're in.

Downsides? Well, it doesn't feel quite as sharp as it's conventional-engined siblings. The batteries add around 230kg in weight, which never helps, and it all feels a little softer and a little less dynamic, even with Sport mode engaged. BMW assures us the adaptive suspension setup and tune is identical, but the 530e feels noticeably softer when you tackle a twisting back road. And that encourages you to use your right foot a little more, which in turn negates the whole electric thing in the first place.

One of the great joys of BMWs has always been their ability to transform from cosseting comfort to rear-drive rocket when you want them to, and you can't help but notice the 530e isn't quite up to that challenge. But if your intentions are mostly city- and freeway-based, then this plug-in BMW is almost indiscernible from its petrol-powered sibling.

You'll want for little here, with front, front-side and full curtain airbags joining parking sensors, a surround-view camera and a self-parking system.

You can also expect active cruise control, lane control assist with lane keep assist (so it will stay between the lane markings for you), AEB and cross-traffic warning. And all of that means that, technically, the 530e can drive for you. That is, of course, if you don't mind driving like a dick - in full-autonomous mode it will swerve from lane marking to lane marking like it's playing bumper bowling.

VW hasn’t used this opportunity to increase its standard warranty terms of five years and unlimited kilometres, however, the battery pack is covered by an industry standard eight-year/160,000km deal. 

There are other ownership perks designed to coax people into an electric car, though. Servicing, for example, is only required once every 24 months or 30,000km and when packaged up at the time of purchase, very affordable.

A 10 year or 150,000km plan costs $2890, or just $289 a year, which is excellent for a European car, and is even more affordable than some of its Korean and Chinese rivals with generally longer service intervals.

On top of this, VW stresses the repairability of its battery components, and promises parts supply will continue for 10 years after the discontinuation of the ID.4 and ID.5 range in its current form, with repairability through its network for at least 15 years.

Like the rest of the 5 Series range, the 530e falls under BMW's three-year, unlimited-kilometre warranty. There are no set service intervals, either, with BMW using what it calls 'condition-based' servicing. In other words, the car will tell you when it requires a trip to the service centre.

The batteries are covered by a separate warranty covering six years or 100,000km.