Munich’s police presence was hard to miss at this year’s IAA Mobility. Alongside the thousands of officers deployed across the city for the event, a sharp-looking BMW i5 in full Polizei livery was sighted working the streets—another sign that Bavaria’s capital is steadily electrifying parts of its fleet while sticking with a long-standing BMW partnership. Local reports put the total police deployment at roughly 8,000 officers for this year’s Munich Auto Show, so the timing for rolling out a high-visibility electric patrol car couldn’t have been better.
Munich and BMW: A Decades-Long Patrol Partnership
Munich’s relationship with BMW patrol cars goes back seventy years. In the 1950s, the city’s officers began using the stately BMW 501 and 502—nicknamed the “Barockengel”—as some of Europe’s first modern “radio cars,” dramatically raising the visibility and image of the police on Bavarian roads. That era is still part of local lore, memorialized by the “Isar 12” radio call sign and period photos of green-painted 501s serving the Munich precincts.
BMW’s “authority vehicles” arm has only grown since. Over the years Bavarian and Munich police have fielded 5 Series Tourings purpose-built for duty (including an iDrive-integrated light and signal system more than a decade ago), a steady stream of 3 Series wagons, and—more recently—electric pilots. In 2015, Munich formally took delivery of BMW i3 patrol cars as a sustainable city unit, a move that previewed the electric shift we’re seeing today. In 2020, Bavaria added the latest G21 3 Series Touring (320d) to its fleet, underscoring how the region still leans on BMW for daily patrol work.
The new face of the beat: BMW i5 on Patrol
The i5 spotted during IAA lines up with what BMW has been showcasing all year in Munich: a growing lineup of police-ready EVs and hybrids, from iX1 and X3 crossovers to 5 Series wagons configured for duty. BMW staged a whole police fleet display at BMW Welt earlier in 2025, telegraphing exactly this direction. Beyond the sedan seen during the show, there’s already a documented, fully marked i5 Touring (G61) stationed in Munich, outfitted by specialist supplier Haberl—clear proof the platform is being evaluated and used for front-line work.
While Munich previously trialed i3s with mixed results for all-purpose patrol (range and packaging were limiting factors a decade ago), the i5 is a different animal: a larger, faster-charging, long-range EV on a modern electrical architecture that better fits equipment, people, and shift patterns. It also integrates cleanly with BMW’s long-running authority-vehicle program that offers factory-engineered electrical interfaces, cargo solutions, and lighting control—exactly the parts of a police conversion that make or break day-to-day usability.
[Photos: quirin_schoen]
