NEW BMW iX Review: Controversial Yet BRILLIANT? | 4K

when we think about bmw's most important cars we often think about cars built by their high performance m division but while they do make brilliant vehicles the world is going green very green and with that in mind the company needs a slightly different type of flagship a flagship that stands out a flagship that's electric a flagship like the bmw ix welcome to the bmw ix the company's technological flagship they believe that this car will help bmw gain a 50 global market share of all fully electric vehicle sales within the next 10 years it starts at 72 000 pounds it delivers over 500 horsepower nearly 400 miles of range and rapid recharges from 10 to 80 percent in around 30 minutes it's certainly ambitious but is it any good today we're gonna find out first things first though the size it's enormous much bigger than your average electric suv it dwarfs the likes of the audi each run or tesla model y or ford mustang mark e it's a similar size to bmw's own x5 so yeah it's a big old brute which kind of goes some way to explaining why it costs as much as it does it's a lot of car so you've got to pay a lot of money let's talk about the looks now shall we yeah i read the comments on the internet and it is fashionable to hate on bmw right now but actually i've spent a lot of time thinking about the ix and i really like it in fact while we've been filming here today quite a few people have walked past and not a single one of them have thrown up in their mouths it's lovely especially in this aventurine red and the contrasting copper along the sides looks a bit like the kind of car that iron man would drop the kids off to school in according to my cameraman and on the whole yeah i think it's good it's bringing sexy back to beavers yes that is a reference to the grill we've got to talk about it it does look like the teeth from a mole rat but actually it looks quite good in context with the rest of this car it kind of fits in a weird way we do have to discuss some of the weird decisions they've made with the grill though from a distance it almost looks like it's full of intricate little metallic elements but when you get up close you find out it's just smooth plastic although it's not ordinary plastic though because it's made from a thin layer of polyurethane which gives it the power to heal itself like a superhero bit like wolverine why is that important well let's just say you park up in a dodgy area and somebody comes along and decides they don't like bmw's recent design direction and they don't like beavers and they decide to vandalize your precious new ix no problem because the polyurethane heals itself you leave it parked up at room temperature for 24 hours or hit it with a heat gun for five minutes and the scratches completely disappear why is that important well it's because behind this enormous grill are a set of sensors that allow the car to see the world in front of it and if it has scratches well then the visibility won't be as good so it's actually quite a clever feature see what else is a good idea behind the grill is a heated element which allows it to melt away ice and snow in the winter again to allow the car more visibility of the world ahead one other thing i want to point out is the fact that you cannot open the bonnet on an ix if you see an open ix bonnet that means something has gone horribly wrong because only bmw's technicians can open the bonnet which is a bit of a shame it means there's no front trunk and you might ask yourself quite rightly how do you fill up the washer fluid well you do this push that button on the bmw logo and pour your water in there it's quite a nice elegant solution at the sides it's not quite as dramatic but you do get bulging fenders that accommodate large wheels 21s as standard 22's are optional and the hollow door handles look great nothing too ambitious in this area though far more interesting is the back end i think this is probably my favorite angle on this car i particularly like what they've done on the c pillar with this cut out gloss black section with the ix logo embossed makes the roof almost look as if it's floating in mid air then you've got this little spoiler section at the top and then you come to the rear itself which is just full of lovely flowing contoured lines the whole thing looks absolutely sensational to me i especially love these rear lights which are super thin and mirror the design of the headlights in a just a really well thought out way there is a slight problem with these lights though i don't know if you've noticed but on most cars the rear lights are split across the tailgate and the bodywork but on the ix it's all integrated into the boot lid which means that when you open the boot lid the lights disappear so people behind you can't see your car because the lights are in the air and that has meant that bmw has had to design another set of lights that people can actually see which just seems massively wasteful you're paying for another set of lights that technically you shouldn't really need plus it also looks weird it plays havoc with my ocd it almost looks as if a rolls royce cullinan has crashed into the back of a bmw ix it's odd plus it eats into the space of this car look how thick that is that is a 500 liter boot which is much smaller than the 650 litre boot you get in a bmw x5 it's much smaller than the boot you get in a tesla model y which is a smaller car i don't think i've ever seen a car this big with a boot this small right let's have a look inside the back of the ix is hugely spacious loads of legroom and a tremendous amount of headroom this is actually helped by a clever sky lounge sunroof design which can be electrochromically shaded that means you just push a button and the world disappears there are also two usb ports in the back seats an attachment point for various accessories like coat hangers and tables and of course rear seat climate controls it's great back here no matter what you might think about the bmw ix's exterior design i don't think we can argue about this car's interior design because it is stunning and i won't hear a bad word said about it this is what happens when a manufacturer gives its design team the freedom and encouragement to create something cool this is sensational i love pretty much everything about it i love the shape of the dashboard i love the design of the seats i love the shape of the steering wheel it's not even a wheel is it it's like a dodecahedron but it's great i love the shape of the floating center console and this curved display look at that people are still just slapping ipads onto dashboards but bmw have put some thought into it it's exceptional it's got a 12 inch display for your driver information and a 15 inch diagonal display for all your infotainment stuff you control it using your fingers because it is obviously a touch screen it's also got gesture control because it's a bmw and of course you control it using the next generation i drive system on the center console which in this top model is made of crystal look at this there's a crystal knob you also get a crystal switch for changing gears a crystal volume knob and crystal seat adjustments on the door ah i just love it i really do here's another little interesting feature apparently this car has something called radiant heating which means that a lot of the vertical surfaces so the dashboard the door cards the center console all radiate heat which makes it feel a little bit more warm and cozy in the winter the center console does feel slightly warm i don't know if that's in my head but i'll take bmw's word for it one more thing i'll point out is that the ix apparently is filled with a lot of sustainable materials you might have noticed there's an olive leaf logo on the dashboard which indicates that the dye used in the leather inside this car is sourced from olive leaf extract rather than horrible chemicals or animal extracts apparently it's a bit nicer for the environment of course it is still full of leather inside here but apparently that's sustainable leather as well i don't know what that means that means there's a giant cow that even if you peel its skin off and wrap a bmw in it it's still alive somehow no idea but love the cabin let's go for a drive there are two versions of the bmw ix there's the entry level x drive 40 and the top model the xdrive 50. both cars are pretty similar the main differences being the size of the battery packs and the power of the electric motors today i'm in the x drive 50 but the driving experience is gonna be pretty similar so anything that i say about this car pretty much applies to the lower level model as well the first thing you notice about this car is how comfortable it is it's really really nice to sit in these seats are lovely and you get this lovely sense of space and just general comfort whenever you climb aboard the other thing you notice is how quiet it is i know electric cars are generally quiet anyway but this is a level above i don't hear hardly any road noise i don't hear any wind noise i don't even hear any noise from the electric motors normally you expect to hear a little bit of whirring but even if i accelerate it's got a great turn of speed you don't actually hear that annoying high-pitched wine that you get from so many electric cars wow refinement is on point the other thing you notice about the ix is how adjustable the cabin is there's so much movement in the steering wheel and also a lot of movement in the seat you can basically customize the driving position to your heart's content if i push the crystal knob on my seat adjustment on the door just watch this for a second i'll keep moving i'll keep moving i'll go as far forward as i can tolerate before the seatbelt starts choking me but it doesn't matter what shape your body is or how tiny your arms are you can always find the driving position that's comfortable in this car the other thing is the suspension it's brilliant it makes the car so comfortable you get air suspension as standard on the x-drive 50 it's an option on the 40 and let me tell you it is buttery smooth i'm getting a little bit annoyed with electric cars lately in that around 95 of electric cars that i've driven seem to have really busy suspension very twitchy it doesn't seem to settle on any electric car that i've driven this year but this in contrast it just rides over imperfections in the road so well it really is a highlight it's wonderful the ride is lovely as for what it's like to drive so easy it's a big car so maneuvering can be a little bit tricky but it does help you out with a 3d camera system which has cameras at the front and rear and on the sides the cameras incidentally are self washing so if you press a button on the screen it can actually clean the cameras to make sure they're always completely free of any mess and smear so you can always see where you're going but even when you're just driving around a fairly tight country road like this one it doesn't feel too big and unwieldy it's an easy car to maneuver the steering is light the brakes and the accelerator are really smooth it's just a lovely predictable progressive car to drive i really enjoy it this one really is rapid you put your foot down and it really takes off it's got 523 horsepower 765 newton meters of torque and it will do not to 62 in 4.7 seconds obviously that's not quite quick enough to scare a tesla model x for example but i don't think you need to go as fast as you can in a tesla model x this is plenty quick enough and when you put it in sport mode and you see the ambient lights glow red and the noise changes that sound incidentally is created by the legendary movie score producer han zimmer it's actually a better sound than the one he created for the bmw ix3 this one yeah i like it it's not a sports car it's definitely a lot of fun though as for range the x-drive 40 has a 71 kilowatt-hour battery which is even smaller than the 74 kilowatt hour battery in the smaller bmw ix3 that means it delivers around 250 miles wltp that should be fine for most people but throw in a bit of cold weather or enthusiastic driving or motorway miles and that number might start flirting very closely with 200. the battery in the xdrive 50 is far bigger it's a 105 kilowatt-hour net capacity battery which allows this car to do 380 miles wltp that's actually very decent it goes significantly further than the tesla model x for example which only does around 340 miles so big battery good in some ways but there is a problem when you have a big battery it can take a long time to fill up from a rapid charger that's not such a big deal the ix charges it up to 200 kilowatts so if you find one of those you can go from 10 to 80 in just over half an hour but at home on a normal wall box charging the x drive 50 is gonna be a problem trying to fill a 105 kilowatt hour battery pack on a seven kilowatt wall box is gonna take nearly 17 hours charging the car on a normal three pin plug will take you 54 hours your best bet if you're gonna get this car and intend to run it anywhere close to empty on a daily basis and you need a full battery in the morning is to get an 11 kilowatt charger at home although this simply isn't an option for most residential properties in the uk the last thing we need to discuss with the ix is the cost it really is an expensive car seventy thousand pounds for the entry level x drive forty and around ninety four thousand pounds for this x drive fifty it's not cheap and then you start throwing options at it things can get expensive pretty quickly these fancy crystal knobs they're a grand this fancy sunroof up here that's three thousand pounds the fancy bowels and wilkins stereo system five thousand pounds if you're made of money then obviously that's not going to be a massive deal to you but 70 000 pounds for a car that might only do 200 miles or 94 000 pounds for a car that some of us won't be able to charge up overnight well you got to start asking yourself whether the ix really is worth that kind of cash so is it worth considering the ix3 well it's a fantastic piece of engineering as a technological flagship it's a remarkable achievement but it's certainly not for everyone that price and the fact that most people can't charge one overnight means it's quite a niche product but if neither of those things bother you there's no denying it's one of the very best electric cars on the market today if you can then you absolutely should you

Channel: AutoTrader

Views: 445,115

Keywords: Bmw ix, Bmw ix xdrive50, Bmw ix review, new Bmw ix, Bmw ix xdrive50 review, Bmw ix xdrive40, Bmw ix front, Bmw ix grill, Bmw ix performance, Bmw ix sound, Bmw ix interior, Bmw ix screen, Bmw ix boot, Bmw ix lights, Bmw ix range, Bmw ix power, Bmw ix rear, Bmw ix wood, Bmw ix leather, Bmw ix battery, Bmw ix test, Bmw ix carwow

Id: S9WP-HxxTFs

Length: 15min 53sec (953 seconds)

Published: Wed Dec 22 2021

Reddit Comments

[u/HighHokie]

yeesh this car is heinous.