Gadgetory

we were almost in the air for longer than we were in Munich by the time we landed an hour and a half later we're already filming we had a cram a lot of stuff into a really short period of time we've had a lot of really cool opportunities to TechnoBuffalo but one of the coolest is definitely when BMW asked us to go out to Munich to check out their all-new x5 x dr-40 ii so while BMW was nice enough to fly us out to germany all the opinions in this video are my own it's a cool opportunity to get to go to Munich to drive the car on European Munich roads to experience Bavaria to try the food try the beer just to experience the culture what's up everyone John render from TechnoBuffalo here I don't generally like to drive more than 30 minutes from my house for anything let alone travel clear across the world to Munich without a good reason but behind me I think I've got a good reason this is the BMW x5 x drive 40 e and that little e at the end tells a pretty cool story uh.if missiles inside of this guy is a 9.2 kilowatt hour battery pack it's gonna give you a pure electric range about 1820 miles depending on how you drive you want to play a game of spot the e Drive differences are really subtle on the left-hand side though this is the biggest hell this is where you're going to charge your car and I'm out here battling the elements to show you all the cool things I think this car is going to have so where you're going to charge it and will charge up on level two in about two hours forget a home charger at 120 little longer I've got a really cool LED illumination ring around there let you know what you're doing it'll change colors depending on what's your state of charge us at night would you kilowatt hour battery pack is going to live in the back without any loss of storage space oftentimes when cars have an electric pack you end up with a weird battery hum or you'll lose storage through W actually designed the xix your comment that battery pack from day one so no issue at all to go ahead open up this back looks unremarkable like the back of nex-5 and again that's part of the idea oh it did include a handy spot for you to keep your cables so the bmw x5 comes with a lot of stuff already in it whether it's connected drive or the 9.2 kilowatt hour battery pack really the one accessory you want one John Rhett injure per car there's also plenty of space in the trunk so with about an 18 to 20 of my electric range you might want to control how the car is using that battery pack and you can do that with this II drive button I like to push buttons I'm going to push that guy and I have three separate ways that car can use a battery pack the first one is safe it's going to save the energy in that pack whatever you want to use it for later the other one is max e Drive and that should be pretty obvious it'll use a battery Packer first maybe you've got a short commute you don't want to have to worry about burning any gas you can use that next one is Auto II drive that's to let the car do all the thinking for you and it with a car this smart probably a pretty good way to go yeah just lady with the chainsaw it's cool so I've got a straightaway right ahead that seems like a fun time to try the acceleration let's go in to change the drive modes it's just throw to sport see how it does fast we weren't entirely sure we wanted to film so while we're on the Autobahn we took the closest house part which means exit and is not a city in Germany we found a really cool almost abandoned dirt road that had a farmhouse at the end of it usually with cars that have some sort of electric component there's almost always a premium BMWs done with the x5 X Drive 40 ease that it's almost the same price as the base x5 model so you get all the benefits of the electric drive without having a shower any extra bucks the car is also going to come with xDrive BMW versions of four-wheel drive and since there's a battery component you're also going to be reducing your co2 emissions controlling pretty much everything this car is I drive this is definitely the best version BMWs ever made there's now a new touch pad on top lets you write in letters or numbers when you're putting a navigation for me I prefer the touchscreen option which BMW is moving towards though with the new 7 Series BMW ConnectedDrive has some cool internet-enabled features if you want to send a tweak you can do that doing schedule meeting you can do that too you wanna use a concierge service and have them tell you a story they can do that also talking about it's one thing we figured we'd actually try it so we hooked up Ron's phone and sent out a tweet that was completely in German if you speak German you can tell us what it says like all BMWs with connected Drive it also comes a remote app but hybrid cars also get some pretty cool new features I'll pull up a map and show you charging stations if you're running low on electricity you want to make sure you are fully charged up you can also have some fun with the efficiency you can see how well you're driving in different modes and how much lectricity you're putting back in the car or how much you're draining if you just want to floor it one of the reasons BMW thought of us to drive as cars I've been a big proponent of electric cars in general so as curious how this 9.2 kilowatt hour battery pack is going to work in a giant SUV the transition from battery only to gas is actually pretty smooth and lot smoother than I expected you're thinking though about driving this car and not plugging in and maybe just using like a regular hybrid don't do that you're carrying around several hundred extra pounds of battery that is going to hurt your mpg so if you want to pick up a car like this you definitely wanna make sure you have a chance to plug it in on a nightly basis in comfort mode not surprisingly the car is comfortable to drive and sport mode though you might think it's going to drive like a 3-series and it's not it's gonna still drive like a big SUV while you are gonna feel bump suspension can be tightened up you're not can get the handling love that you get from something like a smaller smaller sporty car this car is more cameras than we do in our studio it's got a front camera rear camera cameras under each mirror give you a full 360-degree view from the top down so you can see everything going on outside your car you can see exactly how close you are to the curb you can see how close you are to another car in front of you to make sure you just ever run over anything again don't run over anything despite having all these cameras I initially forgot they were there and then these tight European roads I ran over a curb I was just happy I didn't damage our car I was able to check out the traffic jam assist essentially turns a car into almost autonomous driving in certain conditions on the freeway or Autobahn if you're lucky enough to live near one in electric mode not surprisingly it drove like an electric car meaning it had a ton of torque and it was very silent I was impressed with how quickly and seamlessly the gas engine kicked on I don't know what the actual mpg is going to be in actual usage we did get a chance to drive the car and that long so for all the experience was a lot of fun I never been to minute before I only been lucky enough to been to Berlin once for the IFA show well the Germans are known for making really good cars getting a chance to try the beer and drink the coffee made the trip worth it