The BMW iX5 Hydrogen has a 2028 launch date, and BMW began building the hardware to support it. Plant Landshut in Bavaria has started pre-series production of the vehicle’s “Energy Master” — the central control unit for the high-voltage system that manages energy flow between the fuel cell, the high-voltage battery, and the electric drive units.
The Energy Master in the iX5 Hydrogen is mounted on the BMW Hydrogen Flat Storage system rather than on a conventional battery pack, and it handles the power supply for the electric motors, manages the onboard electrical system, and keeps the whole drivetrain operating safely. Think of it as the brain sitting between three competing power sources that all need to cooperate under varying loads.
For battery-electric vehicles, the Energy Master has already been in series production at Landshut since last year — currently for the NA5 iX3 and the new i3 that are part of the Neue Klasse rollout. A second production line for those BEV units is now coming online, which BMW says will nearly double capacity at the site.
A New Tank Layout and Gen3 Fuel Cells
The iX5 Hydrogen uses a fundamentally different tank arrangement than BMW’s current pilot fleet. The BMW Hydrogen Flat Storage system — which is exactly what it sounds like — is designed to work within the same architecture as the Gen6 high-voltage battery, which means hydrogen models can run on the same production line as conventionally powered and battery-electric vehicles. BMW has been working toward that kind of manufacturing flexibility for years, and the flat-storage approach appears to be how they are finally getting there in a production car.
Range is claimed at up to 750 kilometers, which is a meaningful step up from the roughly 500 kilometers the pilot iX5 Hydrogen managed. The Gen3 fuel cell, co-developed with Toyota, is more compact and more powerful than the version in the current pilot fleet — BMW describes it as the third generation, though it is the first that will see full series production.
Fuel cell systems will be built at BMW Group Plant Steyr starting in 2028. Landshut is handling the Energy Master, the media distribution plate, and the fuel cell stack housing — all components it has been developing through the pilot program and has since refined for series use.
The iX5 Hydrogen is still three years away. Pre-series production is a real milestone, but it is also just the beginning of a long validation process. We expect to get a glimpse of the performance of the new BMW iX5 Hydrogen in 2027.
