This week at the annual Car Week kerfuffle in Tony Pebble Beach, BMW is the star of the show. Events and races are planned around the Monterey Peninsula to herald a new set of M cars making their debut on US shores: the BMW M5 and M5 Touring. While both vehicles have been some of the worst-kept secrets in the business, they have enthusiasts pumped for what is coming next from the Bavarian automaker.
Earlier this year, at the Goodwood Festival of Speed, BMW launched its BMW M5 sedan with a new plug-in hybrid powertrain, and while BMW purists might bemoan the sunsetting of the sonorous V8s and V12s , the truth is that even the luxury automakers have to keep up with the global move to electrification. While BMW has a robust portfolio of very good EVs, known as BMW's i-series (and its Neue Klasse concepts ), it has yet to electrify the very pointy end of its lineup: the M vehicles. The M5 sedan and M5 Touring–the latter of which happens to be the first M5 wagon to ever grace US shores–represent an incremental step toward the eventual electrification of that line, and a brief look at what the transition to a fully electric future might look like for BMW's M line.
The new 2025 BMW M5 and M5 Touring both produce 717 horsepower and 738 pound-feet of torque, all of which come from a combination of a 14.8 kW lithium-ion battery powering a 194-hp motor integrated into the 8-speed transmission and a 4.4-liter twin-turbo V8 engine.
The technology that underpins both is closely related.