Video: 2016 BMW X5 eDrive

It's an SUV that combines a gasoline engine with an electric motor and enough battery capacity to get you in the right conditions about 14 miles of all electric driving range, the question is, how much does this cost you? Not a whole lot of visual differences between the regular X5 and the X540e except for the obvious, this thing right here. Now, a full charge takes about seven hours on an ordinary household outlet. You don't have to go out and get any expensive infrastructure, but if you do install a level two charger, BMW says it drops to less than three hours. And a note about that 14 miles of range, steady state highway cruising, as we've found, tends to decrease it a little bit, it'll lose a few miles there versus what's estimated. There's an eDrive button here near the center console that can minimize or maximize electric power and you can kind of mix and match that with some of the X5's driving modes. Now about this full electric driving range, it does require a pretty light touch on the gas pedal, even a modest prod on the pedal will fire up the gasoline engine, which is an important safety feature in the name of acceleration if you gotta get it out of the way of something. With the battery fully depleted, the X5 xDrive40e drives essentially like a normal hybrid with an EPA estimated 24 miles per gallon combined, that's about 20% better than an X5 xDrive35i. Lithium-ion battery sits underneath the floor of the X5 so you can't get an optional third row seat, and optional spare tire. Those are both features you can get in conventional gasoline X5s, but still pretty good cargo numbers back here. About 34 cubic feet behind the rear seats, you drop them down, there's more than 70 cubic feet of maximum room with all the seats folded. Pretty good for this competitive set, which brings us to some numbers, how much does all of this cost? Well, the X5 xDrive40e runs about $63,000 to start, that's about $5,000 more than an X5 xDrive35i, that's kind of a conventional gasoline X5 with all-wheel drive. That $5,000 though is diminished by the kicker, about $4,700 worth of federal tax credits if you qualify. So essentially it's a wash, plus the 40e gets a standard adaptive suspension, that's a $1,500 option on the 35i. Now that doesn't necessarily make the X5 Plug-In Hybrid cheap, conventional luxury hybrid SUVs, like the Lexus RX 450h, the Infiniti QX60 Hybrid. Those are thousands of dollars less even after you factor in the tax credits for something like this. But, I gotta say, if you're actually just shopping for an X5, the X540e certainly a viable possibility. Even though gas prices are low right now, definitely something worth checking out. (gentle music) (trunk door shuts)