2022 BMW iX3 review: New electric SUV tested

Although the BMW iX3 is likely to be the brand's first EV to move the sales needle, BMW has been doing electric cars for a long time now. It hasn’t been doing a lot of them, let’s be honest, but its slow roll-up to electrification has been ongoing for more than a decade. The first two cars to feature electrification at any sort of scale were the i3 and i8 pair and they’re quite rare.

The two cars couldn’t be more different in appearance but shared much of the same philosophy – lightweight materials, EV-only modes (some i3s had a two-cylinder range extender engine), striking looks and a mission to deliver truckloads of data to BMW’s engineering teams. They both did their jobs and I can tell you that if I had to choose an electrified city car and sportscar then never have another car again, I reckon the i3 and the i8 would be my answer so quickly your head would spin.

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Neither of these cars is at the bleeding edge anymore because a lot has happened in ten years. BMW is now tracking in earnest to eliminate internal combustion engines from the fleet due to ever-tightening EU regulations, so a whole new wave of EVs is rolling in. We have the i4 shortly to arrive, the iX is here in all its origami glory and with the arrival of the facelifted X3 came the iX3.

Again, three very different cars, with the same philosophy – make EVs people want. The iX3 is the most demure electric car BMW has ever made and it’s the first surfer on the wave.

Pricing and Features

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The iX3 starts at $114,900 before on-road costs, $4000 less than the excellent X3 M40i straight-six and $10,000 more than the X3 30e plug-in hybrid.

It’s a lot of money but it’s stacked with stuff like 20-inch aerodynamic alloy wheels, auto LED headlights, 16-speaker Harman Kardon premium audio, acoustic glass in the front, keyless entry and start (including BMW Digital Key and NFC card), power-adjustable heated front seats, digital dashboard, leather seats, head-up display, M Sport package, metallic paint, sat-nav, auto parking, panoramic glass sunroof, wireless phone charging and a tyre repair kit.

The iX3 arrives into a reasonably crowded market, with the Germans fond of the mid-size SUV segment for easing into the BEV market

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The huge central touchscreen is a 12.3-inch unit running BMW’s excellent OS 7.0. It has gesture control – which I’ve never got to work reliably – but the rest of it is great. The built-in sat nav is detailed and accurate, too. You get wireless Apple CarPlay and Android Auto but I did find the wireless CarPlay flaky and unreliable in the sense that I would get in and it just wouldn’t see the phone. Get out, do something, come back, all fine.

On the safety list, you’ll find active cruise control, lane-keep assist, lane departure warning, blind-spot monitoring, steering and lane control assistant, lane-change warning, front and rear cross-traffic alert, forward and rear auto emergency braking, speed sign recognition and the excellently-named evasion assistant, which is not a system to help you avoid meeting people you don’t want to while out in the car.

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There is also a clever pedestrian warning where the car plays a sci-fi hoverboard sound effect to warn folks of a slow-moving and otherwise silent EV. Once you get up to speed, the tyres mean this car makes as much racket as most new cars sold today. Because in most new cars, tyre noise is the loudest noise.

You also get two ISOFIX points and three top tethers for child seats but no ANCAP score because that hasn’t happened yet.

This particular car had BMW’s spectacular laser lights for a not-horrific but not-cheap $2000 and if you spend a lot of time on very dark roads, these are amazing.

The iX3 arrives into a reasonably crowded market, with the Germans in particular fond of the mid-size SUV segment for easing into the battery electric vehicle (BEV) market.

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Mercedes has the EQC in two spec levels starting at $124,300. Audi’s e-Tron (which, like the EQC and iX3 is based on an existing ICE-based platform) starts at $139,900 for the 50 SUV, albeit with a shorter range battery. All these prices exclude on-road costs.

Moving further afield, Jaguar’s I-Pace – if you can get one – kicks off at $151,432 before on-road costs with a similar range to the BMW but not quite the space. And we can’t let an electric SUV review go by without mentioning the Tesla Model X that is really a class up from X3, rides on a dedicated platform like the Jaguar and starts at … erm, well who knows because when you go to look at the price on the website it just asks for a $350 deposit and “we’ll tell you the price before you get it”.

Perhaps more fairly you’d be looking at the Model Y, which also hasn’t got a price, although I’m reasonably certain it will undercut the iX3 by a handy margin.

Comfort and Space

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Being an X3 variant, it’s exactly the same size and shape as any other but with a few subtle changes. The iX3’s interior is appropriately daubed in various blue highlights, as BMW has done since the groundbreaking i3 came to market a decade ago.

Cargo space is slightly down on the ICE cars, a difference of just 40 litres. With the rear seats in place, you’ll have 510 litres available while with the 40:20:40 split-fold bench all down you’ll have 1560 litres. The floor is high but flat, you can sling your charge cables underneath out of sight and that’s also where the tyre repair kit goes.

There is a range of sound effects – including start-up and shutdown – created by Hans Zimmer and BMW’s sound designers. It’s a nice touch

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Moving to the rear seats, there is plenty of room behind my driving position and I’m 180cm tall.

You get bottle holders in the doors, cup holders in the centre rear armrest, air vents and plenty of headroom even with the giant sunroof.

The front of the cabin is one of those ergonomic triumph type spaces. Fantastic comfortable seats, wireless charging, useful cup and bottle holders, a deep centre console bin with rubberised lining on pretty much all of these things to help keep things quiet.

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Everything works, looks good and is easy to work out. It doesn’t bring the Starship Enterprise vibe that some EVs bring but, as you’ll soon see, that’s probably the point of this car.

Bizarrely, although there is room for a front boot, the iX3 doesn't have one.

Unusually, there is a range of sound effects – including start-up and shutdown – created by film composer Hans Zimmer and BMW’s sound designers. It’s a nice touch.

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Battery and Charging

The iX3’s 80kWh battery pack is made of 188 prismatic cells (for those who care) and has a useable capacity of 74kWh. As the X3 is predominantly an ICE platform, the batteries aren’t as low as you might expect from, say, the bigger iX.

BMW quotes a WLTP range of 460km which, as you’ll soon discover, isn’t super-close to real-world performance. Having said that, it’s much closer than the admittedly cheaper Volvo XC40 in everyday use and is probably comparable to the dedicated EV platformed Jaguar I-Pace.

The charge port is on the right-hand side of the car in exactly the same place as the fuel filler on a regular X3.

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BMW supplies the iX3 with a piffling 1.8kW charger that would take two days to fully charge the car from a wall socket, so it’s best for trickle-charging at home. It's worth remembering most Australians cover about 40 or 50km per day and so an overnight charge is enough to recover that usage.

If you install a BMW-approved wallbox you’ll charge at up to 11kW and eight hours should be enough to get you to full, although that last twenty per cent will take a while. To get 11kW you’ll also need three-phase power otherwise the wallbox will step down to 7kW or even less if the power supply to it is a bit spotty.

The car comes with a five-year subscription to Chargefox’s charging network, which is growing ever larger although there are still gaps in the coverage

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The maximum charging rate is 150kW through DC fast-charging stations, which will get you from ten to 80 per cent of battery in just over half an hour. The car comes with a very generous five-year subscription to Chargefox’s public charging network, which is growing ever larger although there are still significant gaps in the coverage.

BMW’s own energy consumption figure is 18.9kWh/100km and in the week I had, the iX3 delivered 100km for 19.4kWh. Extrapolating that against the 74kWh available, that’s a reasonable 381km range for a car that I did not baby around the place. More careful driving would probably get you another 40 or 50km, which gets you within striking distance of the 460km WLTP figure, while turning off the climate control (yeah, I know, Australia) will also net you 20 or 30km.

On the Road

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I think the iX3 is a shrewd move for BMW. The ICE car is quite a popular model for the company and it’s in that medium SUV sweet spot, powered by everything from a 2.0-litre turbo-four, a plug-in hybrid and two different 3.0-litre straight-six turbos. An all-electric version is an unintimidating prospect for a current mid-size SUV owner, even if basing it on the ICE-oriented platform means a small amount of compromise.

Basically, it’s not the polarising iX.

At 2260kg, it’s not going to keep up with the M40i in the corners, though. Given it’s built on that ICE platform, the batteries aren’t as low as they might be, although they’re low enough to bring the centre of gravity down by more than seven centimetres. So it’s plenty of fun for a mid-size SUV, as are each of the performance-biased X3s. With rear-wheel drive, 210kW and 400Nm (both from zero rpm), the iX3 makes the run to 100km/h in 6.8 seconds.

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With adaptive damping, the ride is smooth and easygoing in comfort but fails to deteriorate in Sport, which is always a blessing. Sport ups the throttle response too, something that is much easier to do with electric motors, and it feels swifter in the first phase of a run to 100km/h than the ultimate time suggests.

There are two pseudo-transmission modes. In Drive, the car will coast lightly along when you lift off the throttle. Knock it to the left into B mode and you then have the thing I love in EVs: one-pedal mode. The energy recovery amps right up (see what I did there) and you’re in a good position to never have to use the brake pedal in normal driving. You can set the regen to three levels or an adaptive setting in the menu for your Individual mode configuration if you just want it to happen.

The motor doesn’t have any magnets and therefore doesn’t need rare earth metals. That is a little extra step of sustainability some others don’t have

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BMW has taken the concept a step further by having the car read the road ahead and work out how strong the braking effect should be. It’s intuitive, it’s clever and it’s better than the overly-enthusiastic XC40’s, which you have to turn off in high-speed running to ensure smooth progress.

That electric motor is a clever all-in-one unit, with the motor, transmission and electronics all packed into a single unit and mounted on a dedicated subframe. The motor itself is what BMW calls a “current-excited” unit that doesn’t have any magnets and therefore doesn’t need rare earth metals. That is a little extra step of sustainability some others don’t have. The battery probably has them, though, but so do most.

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Despite only being rear-wheel drive, there’s a lot of grip wet or dry. One of the things I really like about this drivetrain is that the traction and stability controls are as you might expect from a BMW – not too interfering, quick to act but not like a sledgehammer.

You can obviously feel the extra weight, albeit masked by the low down performance. It stops and turns with great enthusiasm, matching the cheery way it gets up to speed in the first place. It feels reasonably chuckable for its size and not once did I think it needed another set of motors up front for more grip or poise. It’s one of the more balanced EV SUVs I’ve driven, which may be down to my familiarity with the platform and the X3 itself.

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Slightly annoyingly, the range indicator on the digital dashboard is a bit pessimistic. For instance, the morning I returned it, I had 204km of range left with the battery holding three-quarters of its maximum charge before leaving. That made me frown but a hideous run in traffic and then some faster running to make up time, I handed back the keys with 202km left from a 22km drive.

Now, I’ll take that over “yeah, sure you’re totally going to get 400km, wait, no find a charging station NOW” but it will probably take you a while to learn to trust it. Admittedly this car has been on the press fleet, which means some folks will have driven it like it’s stolen and the computer has “learned” to err heavily on the side of caution.

Ownership

BMW – disappointingly – is the last hold-out of the Germans to offer a three-year, unlimited-kilometre warranty. It’s just not long enough and both its luxury rivals, also heavily into electrification, offer five years. Cheeringly, the battery warranty is a more competitive eight years or 160,000km.

You also get a very generous five-year subscription to unlimited charging on Chargefox’s public network. That represents a significant saving, obviously on fuel, but also time and home charging costs.

BMW offers two types of service plan; Basic and Plus. A four year, unlimited-kilometre plan is $1200, working out at $300 per year. Extending it to six years costs $1650, which seems quite reasonable (cue the shrieking of Tesla adherents) and both plans are significantly cheaper than the ICE or PHEV X3s.

If you want to go large, you can spend more than triple, which adds coverage for brake pads, rotors and wiper blades. Three years of Plus hits you for $4605 while six years takes you to $5500.

As ever, servicing is condition-based but you’ll be at the dealer once a year at least, I reckon.

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VERDICT

The iX3 is a grown-up product from a very grown-up manufacturer. I think it’s fairly obvious that BMW wasn’t just going to chuck any old thing into the EV marketplace and it shows in the engineering of this car.

It’s not without compromise, of course – it’s heavier than a dedicated platform might be – but nor is it just an EV-ified X3. BMW did a lot of detail work on the aero and handling and changed the materials in core components to save a few kilos.

I think it also looks better than the standard car with the cool active flaps in the kidney grilles and an understated look, the latter being in short supply at BMW at the moment (I’m not complaining, I just know some folks aren’t too keen on the BMW design direction of late).

Critically, this car will get bums on electrified seats. My wife, who is a very hard marker in the first place and even harder marker when it comes to EVs, said she would own this car in a heartbeat. She never, ever says that and definitely not about electric cars.

2022 BMW iX3 specifications