Brandon Turkus goes through the different driving modes on the BMW X5 xDrive40e.
TranscriptBRANDON TURKUS: Hey, Autoblog, this is Brandon Turkus. I'm still here with the 2016 BMW X5 xDrive40e Plug-In Hybrid, and I'm going to show you something that we kind of take for granted after a while in-- in gas-powered cars. But it actually plays a big role here, and it's BMW's drive mode select system. And it says Sport and Comfort, but if we press it down, there's also Eco Pro, and Comfort is the default and then Sport.
And, you know, this does the normal stuff. It sharpens up throttle response and tweaks the chassis and the-- the steering and whatnot based on-- on the settings, but it also has an impact on the regeneration function in the vehicle. And so if we go into Eco Pro and I'm driving along, and there's very, very little recharge of the battery. But if you switch up into Sport and you-- you're driving along, you let off the gas, and the recharge function is very, very aggressive.
It's not quite like a BMW i3 where you basically don't need to use a brake pedal, but it's enough that you're able to recoup some battery. And if we look right here, it says I'm at 29% battery. Honestly, based on-- on my assessments, it's not that hard to boost that up. I drove around in city driving in Sport mode with the eDrive selector set to-- not Max-- Max drive-- to Save, so you're-- you're constantly socking away energy and only using the gas engine.
And during that, you know, short little probably, I'd say, 20-minute session of stop-and-go traffic and whatnot, I was able to regain about a third of my battery capacity, which doesn't equate to very much in terms of mileage. As you can see, I'm right at just south of a third, and I only have four miles. So you're not getting a lot. But if this is-- you're the kind of person that has a lot of stop-and-go driving, you're able to take advantage of what-- what this vehicle can do. And I'm going to talk a little bit more about that if you read on.
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