Page 1: Why the BMW iX does electric motoring differently

Driving Experience : Go far it

The iX is easy to drive thanks to a tall seating position, wide-open view, thin A-pillars, and outboard side mirrors. So while the iX is a large SUV, it doesn’t feel big on the road, and even better, navigating tight spaces with tall kerbs is not a nerve-wracking experience like it is in the low-slung and very wide Taycan.

Reinforcing the lounge ambience of the cockpit is the sheer quietness of the car. It’s an extremely refined machine, even more so if you turn off BMW’s Zimmer-concocted soundtrack for the car. In an urban environment, the loudest sounds you will hear are the whirr of the steering wheel, or the shadow of a HGV’s unsightly diesel roar if it’s next to you.

It is a little stiffly sprung – normal for an EV – but there’s no harshness when it crests road bumps or ruts. Pair that with the ease of the drive, and you have a car that even Rolls-Royce’s engineers might admit to learning something from. 

Overall, the car’s dynamics are excellent – it is a BMW in this respect – with tidy, sporty handling handing over no slack or excess weight to the driver. It’s a heavy car, as all EVs are, but doesn’t feel it, nor intimidating to drive. Summon up the 326hp/630Nm and the car gets going fast – even quicker in Sport mode. 

BMW’s Driving Experience Control’s mode switch is a victim of the war on buttons – it’s now become a singular ‘My Modes’ button on the wooden console panel, which brings up the three modes – Personal, Sport, and Efficient – on the screen. 

All of that is impressive enough, but we can add another key plus to the iX’s list: It’s very, very efficient. We know that BMW’s fifth-gen electric drive tech is in our drive of the iX3, but we were very impressed that the iX was able to score sub-17kWh/100km without too much effort.

That was over almost 200km, with largely smooth, steady work, but also inefficient photo shoots and some dynamic driving thrown in. Given that score, the iX could easily top 400km on a single charge, which is more than enough for even higher-mileage drivers here. 

Conclusion : X times 

As a large, fully-electric SUV, the iX doesn’t have any direction competition on the market. There’s ostensibly the Tesla Model X, but the official model hasn’t gone on sale, while cars like the Mercedes-EQ EQC and Audi E-Tron are a size down. They also feel like ‘current’ cars with electric drivetrains, whereas the iX feels like something else altogether.

The takeaway is here that the iX might be a tech flagship, but it’s a thoroughly useful, liveable car day-in, day-out. The parallels we can draw with the i3 are very clear, but it’s far more luxurious, even more technologically-able, and it can go more than twice as far as its ancestor despite being much larger and heavier.

Eight years ago, BMW proved that a practical and cool EV experience was possible with the i3. With the SUV bodystyle, a luxurious but also practical daily experience, and a drive that’s not just enjoyable, but appropriately efficient too, the iX deserves the success the i3 never had in Singapore. 

BMW iX xDrive40i Sport

*Range and efficiency from official LTA homologation figures
**Last listed price in February 2022 before 2022’s ARF increase 

Pages: 1 2