BMW iX review: 0-60mph, Autobahn and range test!

this is the new bmw ix and it's a bit like the apple iphone 13 event because it's bmw revealing its technology flagship to the world now in this video i'm going to tell you all about this car which is a built from the ground up ev suv to take on the tesla model x i'm going to talk you through the exterior design the interior design practicality of this car i'm going to take it for a drive i'm going to test out some of its tech see how well it really works i'm also doing a bit of a range test on it to see what kind of range you can expect from this car in the real world and of course i'm going to launch it because i'm at watson when you're watching carway buying a new car then head to car wow and my team will help you find your next car at a fair price car wow your one-stop car buying comparison site let's start this video by talking about the most controversial thing about this car now i'm not gonna lie first time i saw the ix i thought what an ugly however it is starting to grow on me a little bit i like the sleek lights these are the laser lights i like the air vents the fact they're real i even like the kidney grill that's not a grill it's just stuck on plaque but the design is interesting and i like the way that they've integrated the car sensors into that panel you can't see them not too sure about this bit though the way the kidney grille not a grill hangs down over the rest of the air intake here it's sort of like a muffin top now the air support model gets a more aggressive front end with bigger air intakes to make it look sportier moving down the sides you get wheels starting at 21 inches which also helps make it look sporty these are the 22s however because they have these black rim to it the wheels look smaller than they actually are now there's no fake vents or plastic add-ons at the side it's all very clean and crisp in terms of the design and the door handles they're just electrically operated like which i quite like however the rest of the side design i'm not so sure about it just looks a bit blobby doesn't it let's just move around the back come on see i like the back better i love the design of these tail lights i always like the fact that bmw's integrated the reversing camera into the bmw badge i'm not sure about this that they're doing at bmw at the moment where they're putting little diffusers where exhaust pipes would go i know they need to add some form of texture and shape to the rear bumper otherwise it just looked like a big expanse of plastic but i wonder if this guy's just plain hideous or the design is a bit like the i3 in the way that it will eventually grow on you is it a big horrible facial mole or a beauty spot let me know in the comments well the exterior design of this car may be polarizing i've got to say this interior is absolutely gorgeous well done bmw you have knocked out the park with the inside of the ix i just love the minimalist look of it this huge screen here just looks super high-tech again test out in a moment the textures and the feeling of the leather although if you're a vegan darling you can of course have um your intuit made out of recycled materials and anyway this leather it's sustainably made well unless you're a cow because they use olive oil or whatever in the was it tanning process or something anyway sustainable and that's a big thing of bmw right now sustainability and i'm gonna sustain talking about how i love the design such as these air vents are so cool they really are got a hexagonal steering wheel not too sure about that but i like the fact it's too spoked they should have just done it round really like on the old i3 i love that steering wheel but this car has some upgrades on it so it's got this crystal effect for the idrive controller here you've got crystal glass for the volume control crystal glass for the rocker switch for the gear selector and then there's this walnut panel here which has your shortcut buttons integrated in it for the infotainment system it's absolutely fabulous now here's a cut away what the center console looks like in the standard car it's not quite as nice as it anyway we've also got some crystal glass here for the seat controls and here as well obviously optional you have to pay extra thing is this particular car i have here to test is fully loaded you're looking around 95 000 pounds for this one with all the bells and whistles however the starting price for the ix range is about 70 000 pounds though already you can save around 1 700 pounds off an ix through car wow and if you want to see how much money you can save on a new car just click on the pop-out banner up there or for the link in the description to go to car wow alternatively simply google help me car wow and my team and i'll help you choose the right car for you and get it for a fair price from one of our trusted dealers but let's continue with the interior of this car so being electric and it's built on a bespoke electric platform means you have loads of space in here look i can put my feet here and there's this nice center console with space for charging your mobile phone now on the charging pad you've got two cup holders down there you've got a deep central cubby here all very lovely huge door bins which i wish i had a bottle to test it in fact i'm going to get two bottles to test it two bottles in there lovely glove box though where's the opening it's there it's not the biggest but it's not the smallest oh i quite like the fact they've got this different textured material here on the lower part of the dash all very good however there is a way that this car is less practical by the fact that they've made it minimalistic so there's hardly any buttons which means it looks clean the design but it does make things a bit more of a faff to use for instance climate control you have to operate it through the screen unfortunately you have some temperature quick access buttons here that are always on the screen but if you want to go and do things like fan speed you then need to go into the climate control menu and there's lots of different functions here and this brings onto the infotainment system so it's bmw's latest idrive 8 and there's so many different things you can do with it and at first glance it is rather confusing because there's loads of different apps different menus but it's very customizable so you can move the apps around have whichever ones you want on shortcuts and once you get used to it it's quite easy to swipe between the different tiles and layout just as you want it it also has various intelligent features so with the climate menu for instance it all works together in terms of the seat heating the steering wheel heating the general climate to get the car to the exact temperature you want it then you've got the navigation system which is really nice and crisp really nice fast responsive system it's intelligent as well so it do traffic routing for you there's so many cool features about it and of course if you don't want to use bmw system you can just connect your apple or android phone wirelessly unrun apple carplay or android auto and if you have apple carplay not only can it show the mapping there from google you can also show your mapping here on the digital driver's display now you can't do that yet with android auto typically however there will be an over-the-air update which will enable that feature later on now let's just look at this digital drivers display because in the past bmw's system was a little bit kind of basic it didn't have so many features but they've really upgraded it here so you can change between different views you can have lots of different information displayed there and it's nice and crisp and when you go into the different driving modes as well which you do by pressing the button down here you can actually change the look of the display itself as for the seating position well we've got an electrically operated steering column and i went to the seat down there because that's how it's always been in bmw's but they've got mercedes styling there while having up here on the doors and yeah you can get a good view out of this car i think if i was buying this car i wouldn't have this black trim though i would go with a lighter color in fact this is what it looks like with a cream interior i like that here in the back of the ix it's really really comfy there's loads of room so plenty of headroom even though you've got a glass roof doesn't eat into headspace at all there's loads of knee room you can really stretch out your feet as well because it's an electric car and your battery is underneath the floor and there's no prop shaft like having an internal combustion engine car you don't have an annoying lump on the floor instead there's loads of foot space look so if you need to carry three people yeah everyone's got room for their feet and the car's really wide so you can carry three adults in the back of this car no problem at all that's awesome i also like this feature so the isofix anchor points for a child seat are covered and you just reveal them by pulling this up that's a really nice solution i love that feature also there's no annoying cup holders in the armor so you can comfortably lean on it because the cup holders are hidden within the armrest itself like that by the fact that you get through loading there so you can carry your skis and two people when you're off to the alps and then other practical features these nice expensive feeling pockets on the seat backs you've also got two usbc charging points on the back of the seats as well so you don't have to trace cables over people's legs they're normally in the center console on other cars speaking of which you've got 4-zone climate control here big door bins and quality here in the back is lovely as well i am impressed now let's look at the ix's boot so electrically operated tailgate obviously wide as well it is though when you open it up the opening isn't quite as wide because you have these extra safety lights when you're opening the tailgate in the dark at the roadside so the capacity is 500 liters which is reasonably big but small when you compare it to some other electrical suvs for instance a mercedes eqc has a big capacity of 660 liters and if you want to see my full in-depth video review of that car click on the pop-out banner up there or follow the link below the video however you do have a completely flat floor which is really good so it makes it easy sliding items in and out plus look at this you have some underfloor storage for all your cables and i even like the way that there's a little section there for your neck so that you can actually put that in the car if you're carrying a dog in the back so it doesn't slobber over your back seats or come flying through into the front of the car if you suddenly have to brake i also like this feature you can lower the rear seats electrically by pulling these buttons and if you look there you can see you've got a smooth continuous boot floor what's not so good though is that while this low cover looks posh because it's solid it's not as practical as one of the folding tonneau covers you get in most suvs because when you want to remove it all to fit loads of stuff in your car there's no place to store it so you end up on it there and if you put heavy things on it might damage this parcel cover and that brings down to five or nine things about the ix while visibility through this part of the windscreen is really good because you've got a low dash unfortunately in the very center of the windscreen it's not so good because you've got a huge pod with all the forward-facing cameras for the driver's aid and the rear view mirror actually blocking some of your view through here look at this parts of this car are made out of carbon fiber therefore it's going to be lightweight right no this x 50 version actually comes in at two and a half dones when you're maneuvering at lower speeds the brakes make this weird squeaky noise like you've just run over a family of mice sorry mickey you can get some nice accessories for this car such as a roof box and a cool bike rack also you've got this little hole here where you can mount a table for your laptop or ipad though this just feels horrendously cheap and nasty it's really fiddly to use so that holds down like that and then it's all a bit floppy so you have to extend this bit and it's oh it just is not in keeping with a car that costs as much as this i'm sure they could come up with a better solution and it's an absolute bugger to remove because i want to show you another one we've got lock there's the coat hanger that's the wrong way obviously matthew yes it's so hard to remove this it's clearly not been built by the same people who actually built the car seeing as this is an electric car with no huge internal combustion engine up front you've obviously got some extra storage space underneath the bonnet like on a tesla model x uh actually i forgot this bmw ix has a body you cannot open so how the heck would you go about filling up the windscreen washer fluid i have no idea oh oh look the bmw badge opens and it appears to come off i'll be keeping that anyway look you fill it up here it's dead simple you just put your washer fluid in there like that and that brings on to five cool things about this car oh dear now looks like i've had a bit of an accident thankfully the ix is fitted with something called radiant surface heating so there's infrared panels in the doors and this part of the dash which exude extra heat so as i'm driving along it should help warm my loins so i dry out quicker seeing as all the car sensors are beneath this panel you might be wondering what happens if we get a stone chip or scratch it they're not going to work anymore well actually this plastic has special self-healing properties when you apply heat to them any scratches or chips should magically disappear you might be wondering where the heck is the blind for the panoramic glass roof what happens if it gets really sunny or i've got bored of dogging now and i don't want people to look in anymore it's easy you just press a button and the glass blacks out it also does it when you park as well so you can hide the interior away from prying eyes i really like how this car has cool frameless windows and soft clothes like a luxury limousine you can't be asked to shut the door properly yourself the ix has an amazing surround view camera system really high definition obviously you can look all the way around the car you can change the views as well and it has that bmw 3d effect where you can just look all the way around the car like it's a graphic and obviously the car is the same color as the one you've bought then check this out you have camera cleaning so if they get dirty it doesn't matter you don't have to get out and clean them so cool it's time to drive the ix as part of this i'm going to do a range test so we're starting off with 94 battery i'm going to drive for 200 kilometers and see how much battery i have left to work out what the real world range will be so bmw says the maximum will be 600 kilometers but what kind of energy efficiency will i get out of it i'm actually going to start out on a twisty road i'm going downhill so that should help the range oh wow you've got plenty of performance from the dual motors this thing actually has horsepower if you have the lower power ix-40 you only have 326 horsepower well that should be enough oh it really does put its power down very well obviously you've got four-wheel drive now i'm going to put the car into sports mode it's a bit of a fast so i've got to press this button here then get it up on the screen and there we go sports mode and now i can't see where the heck my map is i can see i'm going again so this is heavy car two and a half tons but it actually disguises its weight pretty well because a big battery pack is low down in the floor you have a low centre of gravity for a high riding car the brakes are actually fairly progressive for an electric car sometimes electric car brakes can be grabby but not these which is good when you're trying to control the car down a steep and twisty road such as this actually grips really well it doesn't lean too much in the bends for a tall vehicle obviously it's no sports car but it handles as well as many other suvs one of the good things about it is that as i'm braking i know that i'm putting energy back into the batteries so maybe i'll actually end up with more battery when i get down this road than i started with in fact i'm going to put the car into braking mode now so when i lift off the accelerator it automatically slows and it will actually bring you to a complete stop i don't actually want that at the moment i do quite like one pedal driving though however until you get used to it can make it feel a bit jerky so it's not great for your passenger is it jack no whoa don't have shift though this thing so you can have a bit of fun in it oh my gosh it's quite quick down there and so after all that driving down the twisty road i've still got the same 94 battery left i haven't used any energy that's good well we're coming into a german town and the directions i'm a little bit confused as to where to go thankfully this car has augmented reality satnav saying i've got to go around here okay i get that what's the next bit though i'm not lost help me out technology oh i've got to go up there right doing those kind of maneuvers around tight tones in a car this big would be problematic but it does have rear wheel steering which makes it able to make tighter turns than you'd think possible another thing i've noticed in this car is that the view forward to the center part is really good because that low dash also the heads-up display is absolutely brilliant it's so clean it's really projected on the road in front of you i like that another good thing about this car is the suspension you've got adaptive suspension as standard and it can alter the stiffness depending on which driving mode you're in i'm in the comfy setting at the moment and over bombs which i'm seeking out yes there we go to test the suspension it's really good this car is super super comfy it's actually easier and more comfortable to drive around town than you would imagine think about this though does need to be good in town doesn't it it's gonna be used on the school run a lot finally we're on the autobahn so it's giving me a chance to test this car at higher speed i've got the adaptive cruise control on and it's doing that thing right give me a safe distance from the car in front stir to keep me in lane so it's all very easy and you control it using this single button on the steering wheel now i'm poodling along i'll say pootling i'm actually doing 120 kilometers an hour but it doesn't seem that way because it's just so quiet in here you see this big suv is actually quite aerodynamic it has a drag coefficient of 0.25 cd if that means anything to you what it translates to is very very little wind noise at all just a little bit of fluttering from around the door mirrors but that is it there's hardly any tyre noise either all i'm hearing is the other vehicles around me as they whizz past in the opposite direction it's so quiet in here that's the lorry going past by the way if you can hear that seats are comfy as well and i could if i wanted to enjoy some music because this car is an amazing bazz and wilkins upgraded stereo i love the way the speakers are integrated into the door panels and you've also got speakers in the headdress here as well for a full immersive experience now i've got the sat nav doing its thing taking me on my way thankfully i've got more than enough charge to get to where i want to go however if i didn't the satellite navigation would automatically plot me a route to take into account charging locations and it would precondition the battery to make sure that it's going to charge at the optimal rate when i get to my charging station another thing that satellite navigation can do let's say it's the morning you're gonna go to work it actually learns the routes that you do regularly and if it can spot that there's traffic on one of the routes that you'd be doing that day it will actually send a text to your mobile phone to warn you that you need to leave earlier that's really clever another feature it's got is that it can use the surround view cameras and its 5g connectivity to send you video clips if someone's trying to steal your car one other thing that you need to know about this car is its tone capability so electric cars aren't great for towing normally but this one's fine it's got a towing capacity of two and a half tons now you might be thinking gosh matt some of this car's got some amazing technology on it and it has but of course you have to pay for it and if a bmw ix is a little bit expensive for you i've actually found a good deal on another electric suv if you want to see what that is click on the pop-up banner up there i'll follow the link in the description below to get a car wag now i've just noticed on the dash that i'm in a de-restricted part of the autobahn so i can put my foot down and see what that does to the remaining charge in the battery so the top speed of this is only 200 kilometers an hour so 124 miles an hour which is slower than most other bmws not a problem in england but if you're a german and you have a de-restricted autobahn like i'm on now it could be a bit frustrating or maybe it won't be that frustrating because that de-restricted section lasted for all of about two kilometers back to 120 kilometers an hour now at least that's good for the battery speaking of the battery let's talk about charging so if you have the ix 40 you can charge it from a 7 kilowatt wall box fully in about 11 hours however with this bigger battery i50 it's going to take you 16 hours to fully charge it on a seven kilowatt war box i think you're going to want to use some dc fast charging thankfully this ix50 can charge at 200 kilowatts so it'll go from 10 to 80 full in just 30 minutes it's the same for the ix-40 though it only has 150 kilowatt charging capacity but then it's got a smaller battery so it just doesn't take as long to charge the ix-50 is supposed to 60 in 4.6 seconds but i'm going to see for myself using my specialist timing gear up here i'm going to launch it oh christ almighty oh tell you what goes well for a big thing nord 60 4.4 seconds so this ix does the numbers when it comes to acceleration but what about the range well i've driven today for a total of 223 kilometers and i've got 53 of the battery remaining but remember i started with 94 percent of the battery so i've used 41 and when i do the mass to work that out for if i'd started with 100 and used on the battery i reckon i would have been able to do 544 kilometers so not too far off the maximum claim range of this car of around 600 kilometers and if you want my real world range in old money then it works out to 340 miles which is pretty good [Music] so then what's my final verdict on the bmw ix should you avoid it consider it shortlist it or just go right ahead and buy it well i reckon you should just go right ahead and buy the ix it's a brilliant electric suv i hope you enjoyed the video if you did please give it a like let me know what you think of the ix in the comments below click on those windows there for more videos and click on that box there to get a car word see how much money you can save on your next car

Channel: carwow

Views: 1,609,407

Rating: 4.8607922 out of 5

Keywords: carwow, mat watson, 4k review, car review, car review 2020, bmw, bmw iX, bmw iNext, bmw electric car, electric car, new electric car, new bmw electric car, bmw electric car 2020, bmw electric car 2021, bmw iX 2020, bmw iX 2021, bmw iX review, bmw iX review 2021, best electric car, best electric suv, tesla, tesla model x, electric suv, electric suv review, best electric suv 2020, best electric suv 2021, best electric car 2021, bmw ix review, ix review

Id: VoWqeaNMJOM

Length: 21min 47sec (1307 seconds)

Published: Wed Sep 29 2021

Reddit Comments

[u/fan_tas_tic]

This shows how far we have gone. Over 500 km real-world range and the reviewer goes like "it's okay". Fast forward in 2025 probably 600-700 km will be okay. People that think ICE will be a thing in 2030 in the richer countries will be quite surprised.

[u/UnitedMario]

I love that interior design. It's so tasteful and spacious, good sense of airiness. It looks like a car you can jump in and get accustomed to in no time.

[u/aklbos]

UI on the infotainment screen just looks… weird? Dated? Kinda like what movies thought “the future” would look like twenty years ago?

I would not spent big money on this vehicle.

[u/Its_Buzz_Lightyear]

Weird that the bonnet can’t be opened 🤔

[u/dcisive1]

Aside from the price I find it a rather sweet addition to the EV family. Nicely made, fast and decent looking as well.

[u/Low_Reading_9831]

Software looks very good and intuitive in fact I feel like it is better than Tesla’s UI. Matt Tl;dr: it is so good that you should just go right ahead and buy it with 340 miles of range it is really good looking car too.

[u/hurst_]

Is this the European Doug DeMuro?

[u/zeek215]

Anyone have the relevant info to post? Not really going to watch a video just to know what the 0-60 and range test numbers were.