BMW X5 SUV - Reliability & safety
The BMW X5 is loaded with safety technology, but the brand has some work to do to improve reliability
BMW failed to impress owners in our 2023 Driver Power survey, but on the surface the X5 appears to be a very well-built product. It’s full of complex safety and driver assistance features too which, while a pain if they go wrong, should keep you and your family safe.
BMW X5 reliability
The BMW brand found itself in 21st place out of 32 manufacturers in our 2023 Driver Power owner satisfaction survey, a drop from 16th out of 29 in 2022. While this may seem unimpressive for a luxury brand, it’s five places better than in 2021. This score was partly because around 21% of owners reported at least one fault within the first year of ownership.
The X5 didn’t feature in 2023’s survey, but from that 2022 result, it placed a worrying 74th out of the top 75 cars for 2022. Owners were particularly unhappy with the car’s reliability, while others complained about the car’s somewhat high running costs.
Safety
We've already sampled BMW's latest Driving Assistant Professional pack and came away seriously impressed. You still need to steer, but the car alters its speed within a lane to keep pace with traffic, and if you come to a standstill the X5 can resume driving automatically within 30 seconds. We found it coped well with merging traffic, only faltering when a lane widened into two. It must have impressed the testers at Euro NCAP too, who gave the X5 a hefty five-star rating.
Along with all the safety kit you'd expect, including autonomous emergency braking, the X5 also introduces an evasion aid, which helps to avoid collisions with vehicles or pedestrians by steering into an adjacent clear lane.
