BMW X5 review - Reliability & safety
"The BMW X5 is loaded with safety technology, and the brand is improving in terms of owner satisfaction"
BMW has started to get back on track in terms of customer satisfaction with the brand finishing in 14th place in the most recent Driver Power survey. 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
BMW’s 14th-place finish out of 32 brands in the 2024 Driver Power customer satisfaction survey is a welcome improvement over the previous year’s 21st-place finish. Around 21% of owners reported an issue within the first year, which is about average for the industry.
The X5 itself didn’t feature in 2024’s survey, having last 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. Hopefully, the car’s facelift in 2023 will have improved things since then.
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.
