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BMW 5-Series (G30) Forum 2017+ BMW 5 Series (G30) General Discussions After many months of waiting, we are an entirely BMW family

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      02-29-2020, 07:57 PM   #1
bri1042
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After many months of waiting, we are an entirely BMW family

My SO ordered a 530e X-Drive, a bit of a unicorn build as our dealer apparently almost never ends up being asked to order Night Vision (which my SO really wanted for a lot of his back-road driving...I'm not sold on it, but he really wanted it), back in early November and we just picked it up today. It was a rough 3 and a half month wait for his first ordered car, but the car is gorgeous and he's thrilled. I'm sure that it will spend many nights in the garage arguing with my M2C about the relative values of efficiency and speed.

I spent a lot of time lurking and reading all of your posts in the year he was deciding what car to get to replace his '15 Acura TLX (purchased when he was beginning his career as a Registered Nurse, which has worked out well enough to upgrade to the 530e), and conveyed a lot of information that you all posted about your cars to him during the process. Thanks for all your thoughts over the last year!

His Unicorn-ish build:
BSM 530e X-Drive Sport Line
Exec Pack, Luxury Seating Pack, Black Nappa leather, Night Vision, Heated Steering wheel, Parking Assist pack, Driving assist pack, skipped the HK sound (sigh), just the normal 18" wheels (which look great).

The seat massage thing is pretty weird. It was raining a lot today, so we didn't take many pics.
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      03-01-2020, 06:06 AM   #2
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Congrats! How do you like the Luxury Seating package? I was considering ordering in my new build and was trying to decide if it was worth it. Was definitely getting multi-contour seats.
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      03-01-2020, 08:12 AM   #3
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Quote:
Originally Posted by DBV1 View Post
Congrats! How do you like the Luxury Seating package? I was considering ordering in my new build and was trying to decide if it was worth it. Was definitely getting multi-contour seats.
I have the luxury seating package in my 530e. Some don't like the lumbar support and/or the ventilation. I don't have a problem with either and love the massage function. One feature I love, but I assume you get it with the multi-contour seats, is that after I fasten my seatbelt, the wings tighten up around me and give me somewhat of a cocoon to sit in.

Like the OP, I got mine with Nappa and nightvision. Not sure I really need the nightvision but it is cool. To me, the Nappa was essential. I had Dakota in my previous 3 series and really disliked it.
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      03-01-2020, 08:32 AM   #4
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Looks great and will think he will love the car. I love mine!

Now that is interesting. You have an XDrive badge and that was missing on my 2020 530e...
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      03-01-2020, 08:40 AM   #5
bri1042
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The Nappa is SO much nicer than the Dakota in my M2C. My SO is very seat picky and turned away from a few cars just because of the seats. In the short time we've had it, the seats are passing the picky test with flying colors. They're great.
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      03-02-2020, 06:58 AM   #6
bri1042
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We had a good deal of fun getting to know the 530e yesterday. I drove it for a good bit, including on the highway (the car's first highway run). Very impressed with it for a heavy car with only 248 total HP. My SO is having some difficulty getting used to how quickly it gets up to speed compared to his previous TLX and the various rental Corollas he's driven over the years. He keeps calling it a fast car, and I keep making a point to not contradict him as I'm aware that my perspective is deeply skewed on that nowadays.

Couple of thoughts:

The electric motor and the little turbo 4 are a very different experience from a stop for him than the NA I4's he's used to. For driving around the city and a quick pop onto the highway, I had no complaints about the available power (and I expected to), though it is really slow compared to my day-to-day driving in my little blue car.

It was weird that "Hey BMW" was turned off when we got the car. The speech recognition for commands is significantly better than the iDrive 6 in my car (which is massively better than the iDrive 4 in the 340i that I had before my HUD-less M2C).

The HUD is massively cool compared to the HUD in my 340. I deeply miss having a HUD. I'd forgotten how much I like them.

Body-roll isn't as bad as I was expecting (again, I'm used to my M2C). Handling for a comfy big sedan was better than I expected.

We love, love, love the seats. Most comfortable BMW seats I've sat in yet. I think a cruise across the entire country would be just fine in this thing.

The regenerative braking seems really aggressive to both of us. We'll get used to it, but we had a talk about him needing to be aware of how much he's being tailgated (Portland metro drivers are awful about this) as he may need to purposefully at least tap the brake pedal so the idiots know he's slowing down (I've noticed this when behind electric cars before, though I don't tailgate so I have plenty of time to realize what's up).

Great car so far!
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      03-02-2020, 07:37 AM   #7
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Quote:
Originally Posted by bri1042 View Post
We had a good deal of fun getting to know the 530e yesterday. I drove it for a good bit, including on the highway (the car's first highway run). Very impressed with it for a heavy car with only 248 total HP. My SO is having some difficulty getting used to how quickly it gets up to speed compared to his previous TLX and the various rental Corollas he's driven over the years. He keeps calling it a fast car, and I keep making a point to not contradict him as I'm aware that my perspective is deeply skewed on that nowadays.

Couple of thoughts:

The electric motor and the little turbo 4 are a very different experience from a stop for him than the NA I4's he's used to. For driving around the city and a quick pop onto the highway, I had no complaints about the available power (and I expected to), though it is really slow compared to my day-to-day driving in my little blue car.

It was weird that "Hey BMW" was turned off when we got the car. The speech recognition for commands is significantly better than the iDrive 6 in my car (which is massively better than the iDrive 4 in the 340i that I had before my HUD-less M2C).

The HUD is massively cool compared to the HUD in my 340. I deeply miss having a HUD. I'd forgotten how much I like them.

Body-roll isn't as bad as I was expecting (again, I'm used to my M2C). Handling for a comfy big sedan was better than I expected.

We love, love, love the seats. Most comfortable BMW seats I've sat in yet. I think a cruise across the entire country would be just fine in this thing.

The regenerative braking seems really aggressive to both of us. We'll get used to it, but we had a talk about him needing to be aware of how much he's being tailgated (Portland metro drivers are awful about this) as he may need to purposefully at least tap the brake pedal so the idiots know he's slowing down (I've noticed this when behind electric cars before, though I don't tailgate so I have plenty of time to realize what's up).

Great car so far!
Re the regenerative braking: I don't know if I have to but I have this feeling that the gentle braking that I do when driving purely electric makes me concerned that the brakes could be getting glazed. Probably an old wives tale (which makes sense since I am old). So every now and then I try to do a hard braking (when no one is around) to clear the rotors.

I agree with you about the HUD. I wouldn't buy another car without one (although your little blue car would be rather tempting).

More power would be nice but I have never lacked power I needed to enter traffic or a highway or to pass on highways with 75 mph speed limits.
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      03-02-2020, 08:32 AM   #8
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You'll be impressed by night vision. The display is really cool and highlights any person or animal within view. It really paid off on a trip to WV as it readily identified deer near the road. Whether or not you have the display active it will even display an appropriate animal or person in the instrument cluster warning. And activate frontal collision warnings if necessary.
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      03-02-2020, 09:08 AM   #9
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Quote:
Originally Posted by bri1042 View Post
We had a good deal of fun getting to know the 530e yesterday. I drove it for a good bit, including on the highway (the car's first highway run). Very impressed with it for a heavy car with only 248 total HP. My SO is having some difficulty getting used to how quickly it gets up to speed compared to his previous TLX and the various rental Corollas he's driven over the years. He keeps calling it a fast car, and I keep making a point to not contradict him as I'm aware that my perspective is deeply skewed on that nowadays.

Couple of thoughts:

The electric motor and the little turbo 4 are a very different experience from a stop for him than the NA I4's he's used to. For driving around the city and a quick pop onto the highway, I had no complaints about the available power (and I expected to), though it is really slow compared to my day-to-day driving in my little blue car.

It was weird that "Hey BMW" was turned off when we got the car. The speech recognition for commands is significantly better than the iDrive 6 in my car (which is massively better than the iDrive 4 in the 340i that I had before my HUD-less M2C).

The HUD is massively cool compared to the HUD in my 340. I deeply miss having a HUD. I'd forgotten how much I like them.

Body-roll isn't as bad as I was expecting (again, I'm used to my M2C). Handling for a comfy big sedan was better than I expected.

We love, love, love the seats. Most comfortable BMW seats I've sat in yet. I think a cruise across the entire country would be just fine in this thing.

The regenerative braking seems really aggressive to both of us. We'll get used to it, but we had a talk about him needing to be aware of how much he's being tailgated (Portland metro drivers are awful about this) as he may need to purposefully at least tap the brake pedal so the idiots know he's slowing down (I've noticed this when behind electric cars before, though I don't tailgate so I have plenty of time to realize what's up).

Great car so far!
Glad you're liking it so far! It is a fantastic car

With regards to regenerative braking. A few of things I've noticed:
  1. In sport mode Regenerative Braking is set to a high level so you'll feel a more aggressive pull as soon as you let go of the accelerator.
  2. You can determine how "aggressive" the brake regen is with the accelerator pedal. It takes a bit to get used to if you're used to just pulling your foot off the accelerator pedal entirely when coming to a slowdown. But regenerative braking activates whenever the car is slowing down (above a certain threshold) so once get used to the accelerator doing a bit of double duty you won't find it so aggressive. It is much softer on this car as BMW didn't optimize for this, but this is the "one pedal driving" people tend to refer to when talking about PHEVs and EVs.
  3. The same is true for the brake pedal. It will start by increasing regenerative braking first and only hit the friction brakes either once you've exceeded the regenerative braking capacity or you've slowed enough that regenerative braking no longer makes sense. I've noticed that you can brake pretty hard and still be purely on regenerative braking.
  4. Watch the regenerative braking gauge in the instrument cluster and you'll get a better feel for how it works and how to modulate it as well. It works so well and even at such high brake levels I wonder if I'll ever need to replace the brakes...
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      03-02-2020, 11:02 AM   #10
SteveinArizona
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Quote:
Originally Posted by LogicalApex View Post
Glad you're liking it so far! It is a fantastic car

With regards to regenerative braking. A few of things I've noticed:
  1. In sport mode Regenerative Braking is set to a high level so you'll feel a more aggressive pull as soon as you let go of the accelerator.
  2. You can determine how "aggressive" the brake regen is with the accelerator pedal. It takes a bit to get used to if you're used to just pulling your foot off the accelerator pedal entirely when coming to a slowdown. But regenerative braking activates whenever the car is slowing down (above a certain threshold) so once get used to the accelerator doing a bit of double duty you won't find it so aggressive. It is much softer on this car as BMW didn't optimize for this, but this is the "one pedal driving" people tend to refer to when talking about PHEVs and EVs.
  3. The same is true for the brake pedal. It will start by increasing regenerative braking first and only hit the friction brakes either once you've exceeded the regenerative braking capacity or you've slowed enough that regenerative braking no longer makes sense. I've noticed that you can brake pretty hard and still be purely on regenerative braking.
  4. Watch the regenerative braking gauge in the instrument cluster and you'll get a better feel for how it works and how to modulate it as well. It works so well and even at such high brake levels I wonder if I'll ever need to replace the brakes...
I wonder about brake replacement also. But I can't monitor regeneration because I have opted to use the Alpina display in my car instead of the regular one. I would rather have a full time tach.
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      03-02-2020, 12:01 PM   #11
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one thing I missed is ordering comfort seat. Thought about night vision, wants to add to the build, but was too late, though given how rare I drive to up state in the night it probably is not worth it...
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      03-02-2020, 07:21 PM   #12
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I am one of the people who criticizes the ventilated seats as being inferior, but I still use them asssuming they may be doing some good, even if it's just "less hot".

But you have brought up the massage feature. I must confess that the first 18 months I had the car the massage didn't really get used and I did not see much use for it. But then I hurt my back but on of those needless "pick up my motorcycle that fell on its side" events. My back was in a fair amount of pain for a few months, especially because I was doing projects around the house...I digress!

I was still working then (now retired) and had a 25 mile commute to and from work. So I tried the massage feature, and it was cool enough outside that I figured heat would be good too. I learned to love the massage feature. And keep in mind that there are a LOT of settings on it.
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      03-03-2020, 06:43 AM   #13
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My SO is a Registered Nurse and is on his feet all day quite a lot, including yesterday. Apparently, the massage function was a god-send when he left work yesterday. He's not a car guy but he's deeply giddy and cheery about this car. It's fun to watch his excitement with it.

He'll be driving out into the hinterlands later this week in the early morning for a patient home visit, so the Night Vision will get its first use. I nearly nailed a deer last month in my M2C on the way to work...the NV would have been useful. The brakes on my car saved both car and deer, though (stopped about 18" from the poor thing).
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      03-04-2020, 08:54 AM   #14
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Quote:
Originally Posted by jjscsix View Post
I am one of the people who criticizes the ventilated seats as being inferior, but I still use them asssuming they may be doing some good, even if it's just "less hot".
I have the massage feature and use it on occasion, especially long trips, given back issues as well. I do feel it's that which makes the seats less comfortable given the thin padding over the massage bladders. Seat ventilation has to be air forced in between those layers.

I had the same (although butt massage only) in an F10 M5 and those were the most comfortable supportive seats ever. So the M550i comfort seats, although still good, are a bit of a disappointment.
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      03-05-2020, 07:38 PM   #15
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Nice! I have the massage seats, they're good but not as good as my last Audi A8L. We are getting close to an all BMW family, I have my '19 540, wife has a 2010 335i Cabrio (great friggin car and fast) and a Land Rover LR4 but will look at the X7 when the LR4 starts to give up the ghost, as the last 3 LRs we've had have... they're too expensive to repair out of warranty and an extended warranty on them is pricey, much worse the BMW for the extended.
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