Ken Livingstone, the Mayor of London had only just told his subjects that the so-called Chelsea Tractors were unacceptable when BMW announced the launch of a new one, writes Rob Golding.
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Livingstone has declared an intention to raise the London congestion charge from GBP8 to GBP25 for cars that emit over 225 grams of carbon dioxide per kilometre. He also wants residents who own vehicles with high emissions to be ineligible for the 90% residents’ discount. Just down the road the London Borough of Richmond plans to treble its parking permit to GBP300 for the high CO2 cars.
BMW knows full well that it is at the eye of a storm. All three models of the new X5 are over the 225 gram limit. The 3.0-litre diesel is 231, the petrol 3.0-litre is 261 and the towering 4.8-litre V8 is 299.
That these figures are all improvements on the outgoing seven-year-old X5 and a therefore a massive engineering achievement, is by the by. The company claims to have invented a segment which it likes to call ‘sports activity vehicles’ but which most people just ignore and bundle up with the all-embracing title of SUV. Being an American category, SUV contains all sorts of journey-juice junkies: Ford Explorer, Chevy Suburban and Lincoln Navigator.
You need to know that the new X5 carbon output is better than that of the outgoing X5 so that you have a balanced view of developments when you are confronted with the information that X5 is seven inches longer, wider, taller and heavier than the retiring model. It weighs two and a quarter tons. There you are, Ken.
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By GlobalDataEngineers are disappointed that they have just failed to reduce the weight below that of the outgoing model. They have tried pretty much everything short of making girders from gossamer. There are light-weight, high-strength steels in the body stiffeners, magnesium in the dashboard frame, aluminium for the bonnet and there’s rigid plastic for the front wings. The end result is that fuel consumption is down compared with the last X5 and is 27% better than the average of the competitors. In America they are the Mercedes M-Class, Porsche Cayenne, Volvo XC90, VW Tourag, Audi Q7, Lexus RX330, Acura MDX and Infiniti FX35.
The X5 has been a sales phenomenon worldwide. Historic trends routinely show that sales of a new car start slowly, reach a peak after three years and then decline gently to expiry over the next four years. The X5 ran up to volumes of 100,000 in 2003 and stayed there. More than 600,000 have been built. “The success rather surprised us,” BMW says mildly. What they do like to boast about, which is rather cute, is that “creating new niches” is a BMW core competence. We are thinking Mini here I guess, the first car in the “premium small-car” class – and another BMW that was selling in record number when it was replaced early with something that looked identical.
X5 is built in South Carolina. It is therefore an American car built in America for Americans. It sells (mostly) against other European premium brands but some of the buyers are stepping out of the Ford Explorers and therefore saving a fragment of the ozone layer in that way. Executives of BMW from the US are genuinely startled when confronted with the idea that this cute little X5 is unacceptably large, fuel hungry and generating carbon in unnecessary quantities.
What they see is a medium-sized SUV with a carbon footprint that is very small in its class. They also – presumably – see a rich seam of profit from X5 because the thing is built with costs in dollars and sizeable revenues in euros and sterling. Germany and the UK are the second and third largest markets.
This niche needs watching. If it goes on growing, all the good ambitions of the car industry in Europe to reduce fuel consumption year on year are off to hell in a handcart. We will have to blame the ladies it seems. In the US, 43% of registered buyers of X5 are women. Given that the usual thing is for the men to register cars even if the lady is to be the principal user, we can take it as read that the choosers are mostly of the fairer sex.
The problem is quite simple. They have come, very quickly, to like what one marketing guy described as the “sovereign” driving position – a height from which you can command all you survey – especially big men in little saloons. Try to explain that height means frontal area, weight, and compromised handling and we are talking water off a duck’s back, apparently. What the ladies see – according to all the post-purchase research – is that tall equals safe, and large equals carrying capacity for junior’s school pals.
We blokes have always relied on the ladies to stop us leading the species to self destruction. Is the SAV the throne from which they will direct the rush to the precipice?
Rob Golding
Confessional post-script: Golding has just checked the stats for his personal BMW 728. The figure of 267gms of C02 per kilometre is worse than the 3.0-litre X5. Methinks the sinner must repent.
