Hello, and welcome to what will be a rant before MWS takes a summer hiatus next week. I say rant, but it’s really just some experience I’ve recently had with the BMW M5 Touring and new electric Dodge Charger. If you’re asking whether a hybrid or electric sporty car will work, allow me to present an answer: neither does.
The 2025 BMW M5 Touring’s range, cost and experience
I briefly mentioned some of the issues this car has when it comes to fuel economy, but I couldn’t cover it all. In doing so, it’s important to compare it to the car it replaces, the F90:
- An F90 weights 4,345 pounds. The G91 comes in at 5,550, 1,205 pounds more.
- The G9X is a hybrid, and can travel up to 23 miles on electric-only range. It features brake regeneration like any other electric car, and can speed up to 80 miles an hour on the battery alone.
- A 2022 M5 has a fuel economy rating of 15 city, 21 highway, and 17 combined. It burns 5.9 gallons every 100 miles, and there was a $1,000 gas guzzler tax.
- The 2025 M5 has a 54 MPGe rating, but only a 13 combined rating when using the full ICE powertrain. It burns 7.7 gallons per 100 miles, and has a $2,600 gas guzzler tax.
- The stickers say you will spend $6,500 on gas for the F90, and $5,500 for the G91.
V-wait
The numbers don’t lie – the hybrid is less efficient, heavier, and more expensive. You must remember to refuel and recharge, and even with everything filled to the brim, the new M5 has a range of less than 300 miles when driven like an M5. The government is pointing to that 54 MPGe and saying “Yes BMW, it’s efficient, good job”, without considering how people will actually use this thing.
That last bit is important. I purposely left the car in electric mode around town, and it felt like…an electric car. Problem is, BMW has the i5 M60, which is a better electric car. And they had the F90, which was a better M5. The Touring must lug around an engine no matter where it goes, even if it’s not using it.
But more importantly, who’s buying an M5 to drive around like a Tesla? As soon as you put it in M mode, the S68 turns over, it’s burning 13.3 miles per gallon, and you’re in a car that’s not really accomplishing any of its goals.
The 2025 Dodge Charger’s range, cost and experience
While I have not released the review for this car yet, I thought it would be a good time to compare it to the hybrid setup.
- The Charger is fully electric, with a 78 MPGe combined rating and a range of 216 miles.
- Two electric motors produce 670 horsepower and 627 lb-ft of torque, and weighs 5,925 pounds. Yes, it is a gigantic car – longer than even the M5 by six inches.
- The Monroney label says you save $4,250 in fuel costs over five years – an entirely made up number.
We’ve spoken of the issues with electric cars in general, but the Charger presented something new. So far, every electric press car I’ve had has come with a NACS charger – a way to plug it into a standard home outlet. Charging like this is painfully slow, but usually enough to get me through the week.
Well, Dodge failed to include here. No charger for this Charger.
So I tried to plan ahead. My wife and I will do some food shopping at a local Walmart with a charging station in the lot. It’s not the one we usually go to, so we must use more energy to go further out of the way.
- Upon arrival, all eight charging slots were full, and one wasn’t even working. So I waited about 15 minutes for one to open.
- It was pouring rain, and there was no awning over the chargers like a gas station might have. I got soaked.
- After 30 minutes of “fast” charging, the Charger went from 20% to 75%, at a cost of nearly $40.
If you were to do this regularly, it would take nearly an hour to fully charge your car and cost you about $60. Google says just about 50% of Americans own a home, leaving the other 50% to live life like this when it’s time to charge their car.
Hybrid and electric sports car efficiency has a long way to go
More importantly, the math isn’t mathing. If the sticker says I save $4,250 over five years in fuel costs for the Dodge, that works out to $850 a year. Let’s say you need to recharge your car once a week, and it takes 45 minutes total – that’s 2,160 minutes a year, or 36 hours – 7.5 days over five years. Extend the math, and you “save” $23 dollars for every hour you’ve wasted at a charger, vs filling up your car with gas in just under 5 minutes.
No one spending $78,970 on this Charger is worried about saving that $850 per year.
At the end of the day, the real world cost is the same –$60 bucks to fill up at the Charger, $65 to fill an old Dodge Challenger with premium fuel. You’re just wasting more time doing it.
With both of these cars, things meant to stir your soul, you’re giving up convenience, performance, sound and efficiency so the government can print fake numbers on a piece of paper. They’ll need to do more if they ever want to convince the true enthusiast and the environmentalist.
