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Old 06-30-2023, 10:22 AM   #1
robg
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Rented a BMW iX in Italy

We had booked a “5 series wagon or similar” from Sixt. They tried to pawn off a VW Tiguan on us but after much arguing we ended up with an iX. I was a bit worried about dealing with charging in Italy but it turned out that our hotel had a few level 2 chargers. Really the only car they had in their lot that was suitably big for our purposes.

I realize that the chances of anyone here buying one of these is close to 0, but it’s still an interesting vehicle so I figured I’d share my impressions after spending a week with it. In many ways it exemplifies modern BMW.

The good:
-in dark grey from certain angles it does look kind of cool. It certainly attracted a lot of stares. I kinda like the rear end styling
-Very roomy with plenty of front and back seat room. Way more than an x5. Held 5 people comfortably without complaints.
-despite being the lowest powered “40” version, it had more than enough power even when fully loaded.
-adaptive cruise and lane centering worked smoothly and flawlessly
-better on center steering feel than other recent bmws I’ve driven
-the augmented reality display (shows a feed from the front camera on the center display overlayed with arrows) when using the native nav is pretty cool if a bit distracting.
-when using carplay, directions and map info appears on the cluster and HUD if you want it to
-I like the way bmw does the covers over the AC and DC parts of the charging port. You release them with levers and they spring open. Much better than the removable covers I’ve seen on others
-Very quiet at all speeds as you’d expect
-Drivetrain was very smooth as you’d expect - just the right amount of responsiveness.
-easy to toggle regenerative braking by just pulling the gear lever back. The auto regen seemed to work very well (automatically applies regen when you’re close to another car). Thought I’d hate this but in practice it was great
-had a creep mode that worked well. The Audi etron I test drove last year lacked this feature and it drove me nuts. I know some die hard EV enthusiasts will tell me it’s not necessary to artificially simulate a torque converter…but the prospect of lurching between the brake and accelerator is not appealing to me. And, no, it’s not the same as a manual where you can use the clutch to modulate power . Big kudos to bmw for this! (Though Audi seems to be the only brand to outright refuse to offer creep)

The not so good
-Overall the styling doesn’t really work for me - especially from the side. Maybe I’m the odd one because the rest of my family liked it as did others who asked me about it
-I think I’m just not a good fit for bmw seats cause I had back and neck pain after about an hour of driving . Overall the seats just didn’t seem worthy of an 80k+ car.
-The range I got wasn’t the best - about 300km on a full charge. Granted that was fully loaded, traveling at european highway speeds on a hot day so maybe that’s all you can reasonably expect
-The ride isn’t as smooth as you’d expect. Yet it stil seemed to lean a fair amount in corners
-braking was lackluster when trying to quickly slow down from high speeds
-“Squircle” shaped steering wheel is just odd looking and doesn’t feel great
-Doors are heavy and that combined with the electronic latches make them awkward to open. Likely because they’re frameless, they sound a bit cheap when closed.
-Why is there no frunk on an enormous built from the ground up EV?! Similarly not as much trunk space as you’d expect even counting the under floor area. Has a hard removable shelf to cover the luggage area instead of a retractable cover. No place to store it under the cargo floor either.
-idrive 8 seems like a mess. For example, why do I have to find separate “apps” for certain vehicle settings? There’s a settings app but that doesn’t contain charging or door lock settings for example.
-I can deal with the touch screen climate controls to some extent but on the iX they’ve also seemingly moved seat adjustments (Beyond the basic ones on the door) to a “seats” app. Weirdly there doesn’t seem to a shortcut to this as there is for the climate menu. Maybe there’s a way to configure it but seems like something that should be there out of the box - they have plenty of room on that huge screen
-You can’t access recent destinations on the nav system without logging in using your bmw id! Very annoying as a rental user but maybe less of an issue for owners. Still seems like an unnecessary hurdle to access a basic feature.
-on a similar note, you need a server connection to search for POIs. I don’t think it has a local database - which defeats one of the advantages of an onboard nav system to begin with. Not sure if the maps are even stored locally anymore either.
-There’s still a control knob with shortcut buttons to nav, media and home but the buttons are all just flush / touch sensitive buttons without much in the way of tactile markings. I miss the idrive 6 era buttons that each had a distinct shape and feel
-the location of the cupholders and wireless charging tray could’ve been better. They’re kind of hidden under the ledge where the gear lever and idrive knob are located. Stil much better than the Audi etron.
-Given all the emphasis on tech I expected the voice control to be better. It also woukd randomly take me to a setup page to configure Alexa (which also required a BMW ID)
-The switchgear didn’t seem worthy of the price. Lots of bronze painted plastic accent ls that look and feel cheap. Generally this struck me as a 50k interior not 100k as these things cost in the US
-no “BC” button at the end of the turn signal stalk to quickly cycle through various information. Generally they seem to make poor use of the large instrument cluster with an odd layout and limited configurability


The weird
-the default drive mode is called “relax”. It seems to include some amount of Hans Zimmer sound effects though weirdly they vary randomly. At one point the car started playing what sounded like a low organ note from captain Nemo’s submarine. On a related note, when you press the drive modes button it takes over the entire screen with no on obvious way to return to where you were
-while the cameras seem of high quality, the system s overzealous in trying to help you during parking - the cameras swivel with the wheel and it automatically cycles to various views depending on its whims. Very disorienting to use. Unfortunately kind of necessary on such a big car with poor rear visibility.
-fixed headrests with little “viewing windows” which alllow rear seat passengers to enjoy staring at the back of the front occupants heads.



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Old 06-30-2023, 01:11 PM   #2
Jeff_DML
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thanks for the thorough review. Hope you had a good trip
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Old 06-30-2023, 01:27 PM   #3
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Interesting! Yeah the lack of a frunk is weird. And some of the software choices are just bizarre. 180ish miles is not great but yeah that’s about what I’d expect in real world usage.
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Old 06-30-2023, 03:09 PM   #4
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Appreciate the write up. I'm seeing more and more of them around here. Not sure what I think.
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Old 06-30-2023, 06:38 PM   #5
wdc330i
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Great review.

We have several of these in my neighborhood. And, just saw an i4 today. Haven’t detected too many of those yet, but they can be stealth.
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Old 07-01-2023, 12:51 AM   #6
robg
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Originally Posted by wdc330i View Post
Great review.



We have several of these in my neighborhood. And, just saw an i4 today. Haven’t detected too many of those yet, but they can be stealth.

Interesting - it’s been the reverse for me. Have seen lots of i4s but few iXs on the road


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Old 07-01-2023, 08:00 AM   #7
SCA
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Nice review.

Someone has one in our neighborhood. I never blink an eye at it. I do know that they need to slow the eff down and come to a complete stop at the stop sign. The owner of it drives like a total douche and we have tons of kids in the neighborhood. Edit: They also have a personalized tag on it. I have not been able to read it yet given the excessive speed they continue to travel at in a residential area. Plus, it is usually dark when they fly by us walking the dog.
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Old 07-07-2023, 01:34 PM   #8
robg
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Originally Posted by SCA View Post
Nice review.

Someone has one in our neighborhood. I never blink an eye at it. I do know that they need to slow the eff down and come to a complete stop at the stop sign. The owner of it drives like a total douche and we have tons of kids in the neighborhood. Edit: They also have a personalized tag on it. I have not been able to read it yet given the excessive speed they continue to travel at in a residential area. Plus, it is usually dark when they fly by us walking the dog.
Yeah- I think EVs in general kind of encourage douchey driving given the instant acceleration. Combine that with the type of person who buys a large luxury SUV and I'm not surprised. I bet the personalized plate is some sort of bad EV pun if i had to guess.

BTW- one small "fact check" in my review above. The car I drove with the iX 40 which we dont get here in the US. Apparently it has a smaller battery back of only ~70kwh...so the relatively poor range I experienced isn't necessarily indicative of what someone who buys an iX 50 in the US would get. Also, the model I drove has a relatively slow 0-60 time of only 6.5 seconds....honestly it felt way faster than that (felt like a ~5 second gas car).
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Old 07-07-2023, 01:37 PM   #9
Jeff_DML
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Quote:
Originally Posted by robg View Post
Yeah- I think EVs in general kind of encourage douchey driving given the instant acceleration. Combine that with the type of person who buys a large luxury SUV and I'm not surprised. I bet the personalized plate is some sort of bad EV pun if i had to guess.
yeah I would vote tesla drivers are worse drivers then prius/bmw drivers nowadays in my area
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Old 07-07-2023, 01:45 PM   #10
robg
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Originally Posted by Jeff_DML View Post
yeah I would vote tesla drivers are worse drivers then prius/bmw drivers nowadays in my area
Prius and Subaru drivers are still my least favorite because they tend to go 10 under the speed limit even in 20 mph zones. It takes a special kind of talent to drive steadily at 10-15 mph. But, they also seem to have a habit of turning out on a busy road without looking for oncoming cars causing everyone else to slam on their brakes. Similarly, they like to change lanes randomly and without looking. If I had to choose, I'd rather deal with over caffeinated BMW and Tesla drivers any day (except as a pedestrian of course).

Speaking of being a pedestrian, I had forgotten how aggressive Italian drivers are torward pedestrians. Doesn't matter how many pedestrians, whether there's a crossalk, whether you're actually in a pedestrian zone on a tight medieval street--- cars seem to speed up when they see pedestrians. I'd feel safer trying to cross the west side highway in NYC frankly. And one of the downides to driving an EV there is that no one hears you coming-- most people there are driving diesels or scooters that make lots of noise.
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