Turning heads inside and outside, and flaunting equal parts tech leading edge and design oddity, the 2023 BMW iX is anything but conventional. And, as I found in a recent week with the iX, this kind of weirdness grew on me.
The BMW iX pairs some of the advanced material smarts and the battery and electric propulsion braintrust of the BMW i3 with a more conventional shape that families can relate to. All of the iX’s considerations for keeping its structure light and strong have allowed for two important themes in this big SUV: A nimble driving feel, and the opportunity to pack in more battery—and driving range.
It almost delivers on all those things. The nimble feeling is pretense; really, it’s far more tuned for comfort and ride than for sharp handling. It’s not the kind of ride and handling other U.S. BMW models even offer, but in this one case, the iX casts the net of appeal wide.
Looking past all the levels of quirky—which I’ll get to shortly—the iX easily makes the honor roll as an electric vehicle. It packs all the pieces of BMW’s in-house-engineered fifth-generation EV propulsion system, including a 105.2-kwh pack, with prismatic cells set into modules. The dual-motor system makes a combined 516 hp and 564 lb-ft of torque in our test xDrive50i. The rear motor not only has a higher output than the front (335 hp and 295 lb-ft of torque, versus 268 hp and 250 lb-ft of torque); it’s geared significantly lower than the front for stronger launch characteristics, while the system can depend more on the front motor in cruising.
First, the design-oddity part. From its perplexingly big, bold face to its incongruous surfacing, quirky frameless doors, and visible carbon-fiber body pieces, the iX makes no aim at universal appeal and “normal.” It’s for those who want The Future to look like nothing else, and to pack all kinds of technology that makes it collectively feel like nothing else.
BMW’s ‘i’ franchise of electric cars has been a little hard to follow, and the iX is a completely different kind of vehicle than the i4 hatchback. The iX follows in some of the footsteps of the urban-focused i3—albeit with double the weight, and a mother lode of visual and functional non sequiturs. The profile, stance, and proportions are just fine. But the tall, blunt snout and giant textured faux grille—surfaced with self-healing solid plastic—catches a bevy of bugs on highway trips but doesn’t fit a frunk. Thin taillights and a bulbous look in back don’t match the front (or sides) and don’t seem to have any continuity to anything previous hatch or SUV from BMW or i. Its profile is attractive and nicely proportioned from the side; the combination of the floating roof and the surfacing down below just feel like several ideas thrown at a wall.
The longer you look it, the less it makes sense. So get inside.
And then you know what? It’s pretty great. It has the best luxury interior in a larger, fully electric SUV, I’d say, once you get used to some of the interface niggles and a continued onslaught of different-for-different’s-sake. Yes, you’ll get your hackles up over some of the details, but they’re almost all things that I warmed up to over the course of a week.
The iX continued to throw me curve balls in the way that it won me and other passengers over. It really oozes quiet solidity. It’s warmly adorned and feels truly luxurious for five. Front footwells span across the cabin, with a center console sitting as an island in just the right position to act as an armrest without getting in the way of the middle position in back. Getting in and out is easy and head and leg room are more than abundant for all. Seats fold easily, and there’s good cargo space, too, with a tray area underneath a firm floor divider.
The frameless doors give the iX some of the design panache of a coupe—it’s the first BMW SUV to get them, and I suppose we can be glad BMW didn’t attempt a version of the i3’s suicide-door layout. But the execution of iX doors is strange whether you’re inside or outside. While they offer an excellent seal from wind noise, their mechanisms (inside and outside) proved finicky, and you have to learn the pacing of them. Further, the Comfort Access feature, which locks and unlocks the doors automatically, was on high alert, locking the car even when I walked around to the charge port to plug it in.
The iX is built around an aluminum space-frame body, incorporating carbon fiber reinforced plastic (CFRP) for strength and rigidity in specific places—like around the doors and hatch, where they’re visible—without adding too much extra weight. Its approximately 5,700 lb is portly compared to many gasoline SUVs, but somewhat slimmer than comparable EVs, even while packing more battery.
Considering the space and the comfort, the BMW iX is remarkably efficient. After a full charge, I did about five and a half hours and 253 miles of touring, a mix including about 85 miles of 65-75-mph freeway driving, and the remainder on two-laners, climbing from about 500 feet up to 4,000 feet elevation and back down.
That included a mix of modes, too, with some Eco-mode driving on the highway, as well as some aggressive Sport-mode driving. Summer temperatures were exceptionally warm for Portland—running in the mid-80s to upper 90s for much of the time I had the iX—and I didn’t spare any use of the climate control.
At the end of that, I still had 20% remaining, which the iX indicated was 22.5 kwh. And according to the iX it amounted to an average 3.0 mi/kwh—better than I’ve seen in similar driving with a number of smaller EVs.
Charging is steady and quick enough
Plugging into an Electrify America 150-kw connector, I went from 20% to 60% charge in exactly 20 minutes—recovering about 125 miles of range—with the charge power jumping almost immediately to a peak of 141 kw and settling gradually to 118 kw by the time I unplugged. The iX isn’t the fastest-charging, but it’s steady and kept to its original time prediction—and that’s important.
My test iX totaled $101,020, and one of its many options was the $1,600 Dynamic Handling Package, which adds a rear air suspension, adaptive dampers, and rear-wheel steering. The iX’s rear-wheel steering makes it feel like a much smaller vehicle to maneuver, and in tight city streets the hair-trigger maneuverability back and forth is useful and precise if you have both hands on the wheel but a little touchy and nervous-making if you’re looking back on a toddler. I speak from firsthand experience.
All those underpinnings make the iX sound like it’s going to be a back-road stormer. It is, in a way, but it’s not inspiring. As I selected Sport mode and took the iX on a heaving country road with oddly banked corners and hairpins, the iX went comfortably numb. It was very hard to get a sense of how much grip there was and to tell how connected it was with the road. It held on tenaciously, but didn’t feel rewarding, and in this backroad route that I take with a lot of cars, it was one of the most composed yet rapid I can recall.
I’m happy with everything but the steering. Braking is well-blended and stops are precise, and the entire powertrain feels well in tune with the iX’s dynamics and body motion, responding sharply with power when and where needed, and quietly.
The iX offers four modes for brake regeneration, including adaptive, high, medium, and low. I found the medium regen setting to be about perfect in a wide range of uses—most leisurely city and suburban driving, in which I only stepped on the brake near the end of a stop—and I only looked to dial it up when I was really cooking along on a backroad and wanted to be dabbing less between the accelerator and brake.
There is, by the way, a sound-supplementation system that name-drops Hans Zimmer, and that you might find inspiring for your drive—if you want your passengers to leave with the impression that, in Sport, your $100,000 SUV sounds like your console driving games. You can turn that off.
Even then, on the outside, in a parking lot or driveway, the iX sounds like it has an engine under the hood, because the climate control, which is under the hood, is so loud whenever you approach the vehicle with the keyfob in your pocket.
A jewel box of space
Inside, the iX is a whole lot of practical—even though details like its jewel-like seat adjustment controls might scream out otherwise. There’s true space for five adults—or four plus a child seat, with room to spare. Cargo capacity is 35.5 cubic feet with the rear seatbacks up or 77.9 cubic feet with them folded forward. A long, shallow tray below the cargo floor helps keep items safe and out of sight, and there’s lots of space for any grocery stockup.
The iX has no frunk. There’s no way to pop the hood, just a windshield-washer filler beneath the BMW emblem.
The interface itself isn’t eccentric, but it’s more complex than it needs to be. A configurable gauge cluster sits in 14.9 inches of screen space, while at the center of the dash and canted toward the driver is a 12.3-inch touchscreen that reminds me of a billboard on a hillside in the way it’s mounted atop the steep dash.
BMW’s iDrive 8 gives you lots of redundancy, and the home screen is straightforward enough, but finding special functions involves not the tree-structure menu you might have become familiar with in BMWs past, but sifting through a screen full of app icons instead. Is the latter really better?
One of the things I warmed up to in the iX is the weird, initially off-putting hexagonal steering wheel. Engaging the Driving Assistant Professional system—adaptive cruise control plus active lane assist—you can place one hand or both on the flat bottom and quickly flip them up to the side when your attention is warranted. It is a better idea than the yoke, all around.
So where is the iX’s element? We struggled with that—and even by the end of the week didn’t have a clear answer. If anything, this is one of the most efficient, contented long-distance cruisers among the electric SUVs, despite some mixed messaging.
No, it’s not normal. But everything about the iX as an electric vehicle excels; everything about it as a luxury vehicle does, too. It’s all the pieces in between—the styling, the handling, hardware—that confound. And if they keep growing on you, maybe this is the one.
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