BMW has finally made a new electric auto, the iX SUV. I say “finally” because the last we heard—product-wise—from BMW regarding electric technology was the tiny and lackluster i3 that debuted in 2011.
The $83,200 iX, on the other hand, offers seating for five and 300-plus miles of driving range. It’s not exciting to drive, like a sports car. It lacks the styling cues of even BMW’s X6M, one of my all-time favorite SUVs. But it does offer a well-built, thoughtfully appointed cabin and quick handling for its spacious size. The iX is like a just-plain-decent person you might try dating because, why not? It offers a competent way of navigating daily life for BMW-brand faithful who find themselves, against all odds, curious about getting an electric vehicle.
Let’s just get this out of the way first: The BMW iX does not look as bad at hand as it does in photos.
Not that the iX comes off as a supermodel by any stretch of the imagination. Its hunched rear quarter looks as if some Bavarian engineers scrunched it together in a rush. From some angles it even looks (gasp) like the rear of a minivan. It has those engorged black grilles that are now just reminiscent of the suggestion of BMW’s iconic kidney grille; some in the peanut gallery have likened them to a grotesque caricature of beaver teeth. (I’m not bothered that much by them, and there is plenty of historical precedent at BMW for such a monstrous mien; this, as you’ll find in polite company, is a minority opinion.) The hexagonal shape of the steering wheel is atrocious. If it weren’t for those buck teeth and thinly sliced LED headlights, the whole thing would look pretty generic.
Still, I was surprised to see that the iX looked better as I retrieved it early on Sept. 9 at the Kempinski Hotel Berchtesgaden. After a day-long drive through green Bavarian hillsides dotted with milk cows wandering in bovine bliss, followed by a stop at BMW’s Group Plant at Dingolfing and then a drive to the Munich airport, I found that—despite its looks—the iX is a competent, practical crossover-style EV that fully delivers BMW’s excellent craftsmanship and quality.
It has taken some time for BMW to catch up with Porsche, Audi, and Tesla in offering a premium electric family hauler, but for wealthy consumers partial to the Bayerische Motor Works badge, the iX will have been worth the wait.
Advanced Technology
I mention “partial to the badge” because there is nothing so extraordinary in the iX to compel hordes of, say, Audi lovers to suddenly drop their key fobs and switch brands. Most consumers today shop the badge more than anything else. If a luxury vehicle owner is loyal to a specific brand, it’s more difficult than ever for a rival brand to woo them away, according to the J.D. Power 2020 U.S. Automotive Brand Loyalty Study.
But thanks to new innovations in the iX, BMW has done enough here to retain, even excite, its brand loyalists—so long as they understand that owning an electric vehicle today is an inexact science, that is. Training salespeople how to knowledgeably sell a luxury electric vehicle will be BMW’s prime task in selling this shiny new thing, Pieter Nota, a member of the Board of Management at BMW AG, told me over dinner one night near the Austrian border.
Here’s an example of a little thing that can seem like a big deal to the new buyer, or to the EV-uninitiated: As I first approached the vehicle, it unlocked via an app on a smartphone I had borrowed for the day. This made me extremely nervous, since I know how casually I treat my smartphone.
“What happens when my phone dies? How will I unlock the car?” I asked the nice German man who had handed me the iPhone “key,” a BMW-logo earring in his left ear. “You can charge it off the car,” he told me. Uh. I pressed on. What if the car were locked? Or my phone is lost—or stolen?
“That will be a problem,” he finally admitted. A regular key fob comes standard for this electric SUV, even if potential customers are shown the “cool” app way to unlock their car first. There’s no way I would trust myself to run it via only a phone. The folks selling iXs will really need to know how to hold hands with potential buyers when it comes to explaining even simple things like that.
Modern Interior
Once inside on my own, it took only a minute to orient myself to BMW’s high-quality, calming cabin and excellent new interface, which is a big improvement over the confusing, inefficient, overly complex iDrive we had in older cars. The frameless doors, panoramic glass sunroof, open-pore wooden dashboard, crystal-cut buttons, and novel scrolling “shifter” felt well-made, modern, and refreshingly simple in the iX’s lounge-like atmosphere.
I like that BMW has done a mix here between the new, fully digital and curved display grouping (a 12.3-inch information display and 14.9-inch control display touchscreen interface) and tangible buttons and knobs. The function should dictate which command requires a button or a touch; a blanket decision to eliminate one or the other would feel insensitive.