Why we ran it: To see if the BMW iX, the firm's second dedicated electric car, could live up to its range-topping billing
Month 7 - Month 6 - Month 5 - Month 4 - Month 3 - Month 2 - Month 1 - Specs
Life with a BMW iX: Month 7
Munich’s first luxury car of the electric era proved so impressive that those looks hardly even matter any more - 26 April 2023
Call it a short memory, naivety or most likely just familiarity from close to 10,000 miles covered in one, but on reading the early coverage of the BMW iX again as research for this report, I had forgotten just how much the styling question had lingered over Munich's flagship electric SUV.
Reflecting again now, I don't think it's as bad-looking as it could have been (have you seen the new BMW XM?), or as bad as some (probably me included) made out, and out in the real world nobody ever seemed to comment.
So I will politely say that it makes an impact and wouldn't be a deal-breaker and leave it at that. Besides, there was so much else to enjoy and experience with this most interesting and appealing of electric cars.
The IX was BMW's first bespoke EV in a decade. It's very different to the i3, of course, being a large SUV of the kind of squashed-crossover style many brands are converging on at the moment, as seen in the Audi Q8 E-tron (née E-tron) Jaguar I-Pace and Mercedes-Benz EQC.
Yet the i3 and iX share a common ethos in being built from the ground up as EVs rather than being ICE car conversions. The i3 reimagined an urban car for the electric era, and the iX shows how luxurious (and I deliberately used that word rather than 'premium') an SUV can be by being electric.
For the IX was almost as refined and comfy an SUV for everyday driving as the Range Rover. Dynamically, that tells you much of what you need to know. It had a smooth ride, predictable handing and supreme refinement. It was that good at covering distances and giving its driver and passengers a calming and relaxing experience.
This car was the first in which I did big miles after the pandemic; five figures on an odo are rarely seen in these pages nowadays given the reduced miles that we've been doing for the past few years. A near-200 chunk of those miles were from taking the i into Europe twice, where that comfort and refinement really shone.
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In the summary it says "Faults: None".
Well, apart from the frequent alarm faults, dashboard screens going blank and the wait for spare parts that lead to Autocar being loaned another model. Still, mustn't upset the advertisers now, must we?
iX is all verry well, but is the x an x or a 10?
And yet hardly anyone quibbles about what People pay for a Range Rover or a Discovery or an Audi Q8 just to name three that can go well into six figures, not any better built, beauty is in the Eye of the beholder, suffer these same gremlins, it's a case of buy what you like etc etc.