• The Nuvolari is Audi’s most powerful car ever.
• With a whopping 987 horsepower on tap, the limited-run supercar ties the original Bugatti Veyron.
• But while the Veyron had a huge, W16 engine doing the heavy lifting, the spaceship-like Nuvolari has electric power on its side.

This is the Audi Nuvolari, the German automaker’s most powerful production car ever. With up to 987 horsepower on tap, the angular Nuvolari is as powerful as the original Bugatti Veyron.

Unlike the legendary Veyron, however, the Nuvolari has a much smaller gas engine. So, how did Audi stuff this much power into a car that has half the displacement and half the cylinders of the Veyron? Simple: electric motors and batteries.

Photo by: Audi

While the 2005 Bugatti Veyron is powered by a marvelous 8-liter, W16 lump, the new Audi Nuvolari has a 4-liter V-8 engine sitting behind the driver and passenger. It also has not one, not two, but three oil-cooled axial flux electric motors that chime in when necessary, providing extra oomph, as well as enabling a modern iteration of Audi’s legendary Quattro all-wheel drive system.

Two electric motors power the front wheels, providing up to 1,585 pound-feet (2,150 Newton-meters) of torque and supporting variable torque distribution. A third axial flux motor is sandwiched between the mid-mounted V-8 engine and the eight-speed dual-clutch gearbox. Each of the three electric motors makes up to 147 hp (110 kW). Meanwhile, the gas engine can rev up to 10,000 rpm and delivers a maximum of 788 hp and 538.4 lb-ft (730 Nm) of torque.

A 7.3-kilowatt-hour (gross) lithium-ion battery that can be topped up from a Level 2 charger or through the car’s regenerative braking ties everything together. In other words, Audi’s most powerful and fastest road car, with a top speed of 217 miles per hour, is a plug-in hybrid. So much for the argument that hybrids and plug-in hybrids are useless, then.

The German automaker didn’t say how many miles the Nuvolari can drive on electricity with a full battery, but it should be more than the roughly 5-10 miles that the Lamborghini Temerario, which has a similar powertrain but a smaller battery, can do.

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Source: Audi

Compared to conventional electric motors, axial flux motors are considerably smaller and lighter, enabling automakers to integrate them in smaller packages without compromising performance.

The Audi Nuvolari pays tribute to Tazio Nuvolari, a legendary Italian race driver who won races in the late 1930s behind the wheel of Auto Union-badged cars—the precursors to the Audi we know today. While similar in shape to the discontinued R8, the new Nuvolari supercar is not its successor. Instead, Audi wants to make a statement, building just 499 units of its new flagship, each with an eye-watering starting price of roughly $700,000 (€600,000).

Ours is an era defined by the never-ending war between analog engagement and digital refinement. Few automakers find themselves in the epicenter of this debate more often than BMW. In the same year the U.S. finally got a long-roof M5 of our own, it also happened to be the M5 that weighs as much as a dwarf planet. This is a brand that promises to offer enthusiasts the freedom of working an clutch and shifting their own gears, without entirely grasping why they’d want to. It’s this confluence of conflicting values that also leaves me feeling quite conflicted about the BMW 550e xDrive, the electrified pinnacle of the company’s non-M-badged midsize sedans.

This is objectively a very refined and very well-engineered luxury sedan; the kind of executive German four-door bred to run long distances on the Autobahn in relative—though I wouldn’t say unsurpassed—comfort. I like this car, but I wanted to like it more. And maybe I would’ve, but it seemed intent to frustrate at every turn. You settle in for a nice backroad or a stress-free highway shuttle, and then you have to tweak or fiddle with something, as you would when driving anything. These are the moments that can make or break any car. In the 550e, they’re almost always best referred to as “pain points.”

The Basics

The 550e xDrive starts at $73,400, sitting above the entry-level 530i and mid-grade 540i in BMW’s pecking order. The 530i has a 2.0-liter four-cylinder while the 540i contains BMW’s revered 3.0-liter B58 inline-six, both turbocharged and linked to eight-speed transmissions. The 550e supplements the straight-six’s 309 horsepower with an electric motor, for a sum of 483 hp and 516 lb-ft of torque. It’s a plug-in hybrid, too, and while BMW estimates an all-electric range of 33 miles, I found my loaner to outperform that well into the mid-40s.

We’ll start with the exterior, which, despite this G60-generation 5 Series only having spent around three years on the market, already strikes me as a little dated. Mostly, that’s because the G60 arrived just as the brand was on the cusp of a thorough aesthetic overhaul. And look—while I don’t think the Neue Klasse design language has made the journey to production as well as I’d hoped, I’m ready to see how it’ll manifest on the next 5er, because this just isn’t it.

OK, there’s no hated 3 Series nasal-cavity grille, and we can all agree that’s great. But the schnozz on this one’s still too big, with the Zac Efron jaw that BMW seems so desperate to give all its cars. The long hood and C-pillar-to-decklid treatment looks decent, but everything about the current-gen 5’s exterior strikes as too thick, too bloated. Sure, the car itself is quantifiably thick, but there are visual tricks to distract from that, not that BMW’s designers seemed willing to employ any of them here. The interior’s a more dire story, but we’ll cover that a bit later on.

To be fair, I do think this is one of those cars that can look acceptable or entirely forgettable depending on the color you choose, and I wouldn’t have gone for the Carbon Black Metallic of my tester. It does have subtle navy tones that emerge in direct sunlight, but most of the time, black just leaves this sedan looking like a 5,000-pound hunk of slate. Totally missable, and not in the sophisticated, sleeper way; in the desperate-to-be-cool-but-hoping-nobody-can-tell way.

Driving the BMW 550e xDrive

I have absolutely nothing negative to say about this car’s powertrain. Yes, this sedan is a touch under 4,900 pounds, but 483 hp is nevertheless a healthy figure, and 516 lb-ft of total torque—a chunk of it electric and therefore instant, filling in any gaps—is more than enough to make the 550e feel genuinely rapid. The B58 is smooth as ever and doesn’t sound half-bad, either. Not much in this car can be easily turned off, but purists need only toggle one setting to disable the manufactured engine noises of Dynamic mode.

Speaking of Dynamic mode, I particularly like how aggressively it keeps the stout and snappy ZF eight-speed in lower gears. With some cars, a “sporty” powertrain map feels like a missed opportunity. Here, it plays the part. My colleague Andrew called the M5 Touring he drove months ago “too fast for public roads.” The 550e, then, strikes a power quota more like the more manageable, usable M5s of my youth. But it’s also very good at transitioning from a silent, all-electric cruiser to a slightly raucous highway charger. Aside from hearing the straight-six perk up, there’s little in the way of jarring vibrations or palpable power delivery hiccups to call attention to a change in the flow of energy.

Where the driving experience begins to falter a bit is in the steering and ride. This particular sedan, with its optioned rear-wheel steering and M sport brakes, can change direction and stop like a vehicle two-thirds its size in every dimension. And yet, the electric power steering can’t help feeling a little detached in any of its modes. I knew I had all the grip I could desire, and yet, I always felt like I was hovering just above the surface. Grasping the unnecessarily large, chunky wheel, there’s just something missing viscerally. The 550e might be able to boogie in the way you wouldn’t expect a big car to, but, well, it still feels like a big, isolating car.

As for the road manners, my tester’s optional dynamic suspension could be toggled between comfort and sport tuning, a $2,200 option. While there was certainly a difference between them, the 550e never reaches Mercedes Airmatic levels of cushiness, even in the former, more docile setting—let alone capable of the brain-breaking, physics-warping feats that you find in an electrified Panamera or Taycan with Porsche Active Ride. I haven’t driven the current M5, but I hear it’s harsh. You’d hope that a 550e with some optional, M-derived extras would strike a proper balance between a super sedan like that and something more basic and inoffensive, but it isn’t as adept at the soft end of the spectrum as it could be.

The Interior

Industry-wide, excusing some laggards, we’re beginning to see a rejection of screens alone as a defining symbol of luxury. A return to buttons, switches, surfaces, and materials that invite physical interaction. The current 5 Series, though, feels born from a committee completely bought into the unrelenting march of digitization.

Almost all of the buttons are capacitive. There’s no separate climate stack—heating and cooling adjustments all appear as tiny icons at the bottom of a large touchscreen. You open and close the vents by running your finger along a glossy plastic slider, but paradoxically choose their direction with an old-fashioned knob. And the huge crystalline dial right of the gear selector can be used to scroll through an absolute deluge of apps and menu options, if you’re patient (and frankly, unsafe) enough to try. The top of it is a touchpad, which I would’ve actually preferred to use at times, but BMW has weirdly constrained its use to drawing letters instead of typing and pretty much nothing else.

It’s a weird place to be. With a dash draped in different permutations of plastic—some piano black, some translucent, some ribbed silver—it doesn’t feel luxurious, or at least like $87,000. The RGB-lit panels ringing the dashboard, which I initially scoffed at, do catch light in a neat way, and I like how they go all M-branded when switching into Dynamic mode. But it’s not impressive enough to make me forget about wood, or leather, or something that feels like it. Today, a low-end Kia can give you changeable accent lighting; it’s not exactly the flex these higher-end brands think it is.

And then there’s BMW’s infotainment UI, which is so unintuitive it almost feels like trolling. What does “Adaptive” mean in the context of the power meter, and why does half of the meter appear lit when I’m not moving? Why does changing drive modes require at least three presses: once on the capacitive button to pull up the selector screen, a tap on the screen itself, and then another tap or press to return to whatever the display was showing me before? For some reason, after you make your selection, the drive mode page just leaves you with an empty wallpaper.

The frustrations continue. Rather than a comprehensive settings menu, BMW has chosen to break up all relevant functions into different mini apps, throw in a bunch of apps from your phone to take up space in the grid, and then alphabetize that chaos. I know owners sometimes roll their eyes at journalists whining about hard-to-use infotainment systems because, in most cases, if you live with a vehicle for more than a week, you eventually get the hang of things. This system is so busy, though, that I honestly don’t think I would in this case. You get the sense that BMW expects you to search for everything via text and voice. To be fair, that was the only way I could figure out how to locate the audio equalizer sliders.

It’s a shame, because it’s not a total loss in here. I loved the seats—they’re wonderfully supportive yet supple. Granted, I wish the armrests heated up like they can on the X5. And, as versatile as this powertrain is, it resists letting you choose precisely how you want it to deliver thrust, whether via the batteries or engine, or some mix of both. Funny, considering the default drive mode is called “Personal” and has practically no configurable settings.

Fuel Economy, Range, and Charging

If you plan to actually plug in your 550e at every opportunity—which, data has shown, most people don’t do—you could probably get through most daily commutes without tapping into the sedan’s 16-gallon gas tank. BMW’s estimate of 34 miles of all-electric range is conservative; I found myself getting around 45 miles before needing to recharge, which, fortunately, can be done in just two hours via a 240-volt system. That’s thanks to an improved on-board charger for this model year.

Indeed, this powertrain isn’t merely strong in terms of performance; it’s efficient, too. The EPA-estimated 25 miles per gallon on the gas engine alone isn’t too bad when the battery is depleted, and you can’t reach the advertised 68 mpge. And, until you get to that charger, the 550e is pretty adept at recapturing energy. In about an hour of gas-only highway and city driving, I was able to earn back about 7 miles of EV range.

While the 5 Series’ competitive set is a roster of the usual suspects—Mercedes E-Class, Audi A6, Genesis G80, you get the idea—the 550e sort of has the plug-in hybrid niche all to itself. Those cars are available as mild hybrids at best, though the E-Class kind of gets on the Bimmer’s level, via the AMG E53. The only trouble with that comparison is that the E53 costs about $16,000 more than the 550e. It’s a more powerful, less forgiving sport sedan, with similar all-electric range on paper but slower Level 2 charging than the 550e. However, it does allow for DC fast charging, something BMW does not.

The Verdict

The 550e is one of those cars that leaves you impressed, but also a little disappointed. The bones here are unquestionably good; yeah, the steering is a little anemic, but it is in many vehicles like this, and the plug-in hybrid powertrain’s tremendous versatility and efficiency give it a unique appeal.

On paper, it’s a good luxury sedan. The real test for any potential buyer is going to be how they get on with the interior. Does it feel intuitive? How about special? Half the time with this car, I was amazed at its potential; the other half, I was scratching my head, asking, “Why have they done it that way?” You shouldn’t have to compromise when dropping $80,000 on a car like this, but I would understand deciding to anyway, provided you get what you pay for. Besides, if you’re smitten with the powertrain, it’s not like you have many alternatives.

BMW provided The Drive with a seven-day loan of this vehicle for the purpose of writing this review.

2026 BMW 550e xDrive Specs

Quick Take

The BMW 550e is a fantastic plug-in hybrid, wrapped in a detached luxury sport sedan with ill-conceived priorities.

The next chapter of the Bentley Bentayga is shaping up to be a decisive one. Slated for a 2028 debut, the new model of the luxury SUV won’t go fully electric as once planned. Instead, it will be a high-performance PHEV.

Originally intended to be based on the Volkswagen Group’s advanced SSP architecture, delays (largely tied to Porsche pushing its ‘61’ platform into the next decade) forced Bentley to rethink its strategy. Hence, the new Bentayga will use the PPC platform, shared with the latest Porsche Cayenne and upcoming Audi Q9.

The 2028 Bentley Bentayga is expected to feature a sophisticated plug-in hybrid setup built around a 3.0-litre V6 engine, delivering performance similar to today’s 456 bhp Bentayga PHEV but with an improved electric-only range.

Design cues will draw heavily from the EXP 15 concept, hinting at a sharper, more progressive styling. Other advanced features that would be offered in the new PHEV luxury SUV include air suspension, active ride control, and next-gen driver aids.

Source: Autocar UK

Audi has finally revealed the new RS5. It comes in both wagon/estate and sedan body styles, blending sportiness with everyday comfort and practicality.

The new Audi RS5 promises motorsport levels of performance from its improved 2.9-liter twin-turbo V6 engine. It is paired with a 174 hp electric motor integrated into the hybridized 8-speed automatic gearbox, for a combined output of 630 hp and 609 lb-ft of torque.

The internal combustion engine alone delivers 503 hp, almost 60 hp more than before. The engine uses a modified Miller cycle that offers significant advantages under partial load. It is equipped with two variable-geometry turbochargers. The various modifications have not only boosted performance but also improved the fuel efficiency by 20% under high loads.

The plug-in hybrid system includes a 25.9 kWh battery pack that gives the RS5 an all-electric range of up to 54 miles.

In terms of performance, Audi claims, the new RS5 can accelerate from 0-62 mph in just 3.6 seconds, thanks to the Quattro all-wheel-drive system with Dynamic Torque Control.

The Audi RS5 comes with RS-specific front and rear axles, sport suspension and RS-tuned steering. The car rides on 20-inch and 21-inch wheels in the front and rear, respectively and comes with optional ceramic brakes.

The car looks sporty and muscular. It features the Singleframe grille flanked by pixel LED headlamps and massive vents on the front bumper. In the rear, the RS5 gets an aggressive rear diffuser with twin oval exhausts, sleek pixel LED DRLs and slim taillights connected by a light bar.

Inside, you get a massive central touchscreen, a digital cockpit and body-hugging bucket seats with RS logos. It has a sporty steering wheel wrapped in Alcantara with a red button marked ‘Boost’.