BMW's latest EV will do over 450 miles on a charge and even close its own doors.

Too many manufacturers are getting too clever in trying to reinvent the humble door handle lately, sometimes with fatal consequences. BMW is certainly joining that crowd with the upcoming electric SUV, the iX5. It's the effective replacement for the iX, the next step up the model line from the recently released iX3, and a battery-powered alternative to the two-row X5.

The iX5 has little winglets at the top of the front and rear doors containing strain meters that can detect a subtle pull without actually flexing. It's a vastly complex system that enables something surprisingly nice: power doors that actually work.

Pull the little winglet and the door swings itself open as far as it can, relying on embedded sensors to avoid slamming into you or the car you parked next to. Get inside, step on the brake pedal and the door quickly closes itself. This isn't novel technology by any means. A fair few cars (mostly expensive ones) have offered this in the past, but I tend to find them extremely annoying.

Most are so slow that I never want to wait for them, so sluggish that they're hard to close manually or so unreliable that I couldn't trust them to not create a power-assisted ding into the next car over. In the iX5, they actually work, adding a little more luxury to the electric version of BMW's second-best-selling machine in the US.

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