Jeez fatboy, what are you doing?

There comes a time in every man's life, usually around a week before he turns 42, when he looks in the mirror and has thoughts. He places his hands under his belly - yes under, that is possible now - lifts it up and releases his hands. The belly flops down, jiggles a bit and the man is happy his member still is safe from squashing. His thoughts go like this" Jeez faboy, what are you doing? Preparing for a long distance marathon on foot? You've certainly built up the reserves to make it."

No, I'm not admitting this was me just a few minutes ago. But I'm also not fully denying it. I'm just putting it out there for you to think about. Just like BMW has put kind of mentioned, but also not mentioned that the new X5 is going to be a very fat boy with the reserves to do a marathon or two. What I'm talking about? You don't see it in the leaked images, but the SUV has a 144 kWh battery pack and probably the efficiency of a wheezing, overweight American who's still snacking on hamburgers while trying to climb the stairs to the second floor.

Yes, it's cool and all for a huge SUV to get huge range and insane fast charging speeds, but it feels like we're edging, no, where over the edge on over compensating here. I've driven the Lucid Gravity with all of its 2.800+ kg's and 123 kWh battery and the efficiency I thought we have long left behind. 4.25 km per kWh. Yes, that translates to a real world range of 523 km, which is fine, but I managed the same numbers with the Lucid Air while smashing the throttle pedal through the floor on the German Autobahn going 200 km/h.

The BMW X5 is going to be a bit heavier than the Lucid Gravity, while potentially still be a bit smaller, but I doubt the efficiency will be any higher. But it increasingly looks like this is the area car makers are wanting to play in. I mean, the Porsche Cayenne started it with its excess weight of 2.720 kg while still having a relatively small battery pack of 118 kWh.

But in the world of the heavyweights, the amount you bring to the scales doesn't seem to matter anymore. There is even a funny myth being pushed around that all the extra weight in EV's actually makes them MORE efficient. Why? Because the regeneration of energy under braking works better. No, I'm not joking, one of the biggest internet car experts told it in one of his video's. I think he'll probably won't like doing long road trips with minimal braking on the German Autobahn in one of those ultra efficiently regenerating fatboys, but that is just me.

What makes this even weirder, is that I've actually proposed this exact problem to the designer of the new X5 Adrian van Hooydonk when the latest version of the i5 was launched. I asked him if he felt like weight wasn't an issue anymore, because efficiency of EV's didn't seem as important anymore with cheaper charging, easily gained power and no more restrictions because of emission regulations. He flat out told me that he and all the people at BMW are in fact trying look at every kilogram they add to a car. If it's not needed, it's not being added. In fact, that was one of the reasons the I5 Touring no longer had the opening back window. It added too much weight. With the new X5 coming out today, I'd very much like to ask him the exact same question again. I have the feeling the answer is going to be a bit different and a bit more deflecting.

The way I see it: adding kWh's in bulk is opting for the easy way out. And I feel like that's going to turn out to be a missed opportunity. On this part we could've out innovated the Chinese. This is exactly where the West should've and could've shown the difference. Lowering our dependence on the battery monopoly China has, while improving for the future. Instead we're also handing this innovation, which you know is coming, to the Chinese.

In the end losing weight is harder than adding more reserves. Just look at the fatboy typing this. It looks like he's preparing for several marathons, but he isn't. He's telling himself he's carb loading, is what he's doing. Shoving that lovely Swedish KEX chocolate down his hole while he perfectly knows he's had too much sweets in the office today. "I'll start losing weight tomorrow", he promises himself.

Let's hope he does, and the car industry does too.

Cheers,

~ Dennis