Found the Boomer! A) Harry royally screwed up the badge and title to this video. B) The same engine/motor can make different power ratings, it’s not that hard to comprehend.
@@ericfitzgerald9139 did you just say "boomer"? That's basically a by-word for tiktok kids AKA Generation participation Trophy AKA The hurt feelings generation. No joke mate nobody listens to anything anyone born after about 1985 says, you lot created a post truth world so you cannot come on here insulting older and vastly more robust & intelligent generations and expect anyone to listen to you. You spent your life playing Call of Duty son... that had consequences.
@@fakevirus8828 actually, the current post-truth world is a late 19th / early 20th century phenomenon. Boomer's added tech & monetization. post-boomers added not particularly caring about the truth or fiction of the world. I personally apologize for not teaching them better.
As an advocate for always reversing into a car parking spot, rather than reversing out into car park traffic I'd be happy with a charge port at the rear of the car.
Absolutely 👍 Also, many of these will end up as company cars and/or driven to corporate offices, which often have reverse parking policies for "health and safety".
On one hand we have the UK Gov making almost any interaction with a smartphone a penalty offence and on the other car makers are loading up cars with more and more touch interfaces with no legal issues.
Exactly. Big business make their own rules. But the ordinary man is fined to pay the government when breaking their rules. Works well for the government and big business. Stuff like this really highlights that not every law is fair. just because it's law doesn't mean its right.
14:10 as a german this astounds me. I know nobody that does not have 3 phase power to their house. I got a 22kW car charger in my house and we have plenty of connection to the grid left. And for NON tesla fast chargers (take IONITY for example) Germany has 105 active fast chargers (350kW), France has 103, but the UK has only 17(!).
Yes I'm not sure what the UK are doing because Europe is way ahead in regards fast charging I like the IX you can find them used at half price in the UK or in the US with very little mileage on them and they will tow 5,000 lb so having the bigger battery will come in very handy
I'd like to see these touch screens with no physical buttons banned. How are they any different to using a mobile phone whilst driving. I don't want mine or anyone else's attention taken from the road to adjust the heating etc... It takes too much faffing to navigate the menus and sub menus and is dangerous. It should be a quick glance to see where the button is and that's it.
Another good point of why German/may other cars are loosing touch of reality, to control one on the go is almost impossible as ive test drove and seen harry do giving a demo.
Excellent point. I would go further and suggest that it’s idiotic that manufactures have chosen to effectively mount an iPad in the middle of the dashboard. I swear the police used to get funny about where you positioned your sat nav in the windscreen. I wish there was some sort of owners survey into what features owners actually use. Air con, heater, radio, maps. Who seriously wants to change the drive mode or gearbox settings in a regular car. I just want to get in and drive ffs. Great comments tho 👍
I agree. I would really like to see a sterring wheel full of physical or virtual buttons with tangible feedback that can be progrrammed to the positions I want them in with relevant head up display when I touch a button. It's all perfectly doable, almost old technology, and I can still see the road while I adjust volume, seat, temperature, and so on.
One of the main points about ergonomics as they were developed during the '70s was that you didn't have to take your eyes off the road to operate the controls. That's why those for indicators, wipers and lights went from being scattered all over the dash to being concentrated around the steering column.
I 100% agree, I have recently got the new leon phev, and it also has zero physically buttons. I have to wait for a safe bit of the road before i start clicking through the various menus to get the climate control i want etc. Its beyond dangerous, muscle memory all the way, but that doesnt apply to tapping various menus on a app
If manufacturers absolutely insist on having touch-screens for every function then these cars need to have a Siri/Alexa type of operating system for things like the heater controls, audio etc. It would make it much safer than messing around going into menus and sub-menus. ....or they can return to regular controls which can be manually adjusted and be safer too. Too much tech becomes annoying after a while.
Most cars nowadays come with voice commands which do those, i think bmw comes with alexa which can be used to control other things and link with your alexa in home
@@michelmoonen3433 Save the Planet? Yea check out the manufacturing process...Oh and with many components made in China, possibly the most environmentally unfriendly country on earth combined with their mining practices in Africa, the EV could possibly be more damaging than ICE...I really don't think Putin really cares what you do.
I have to say a car weighing nearly three tons to transport one person does seem extravagant in the extreme. I think we need Gordon Murray to design the World some economical electric transport, also do we really need such extreme performance? Great car just over the top. Interesting review, thanks Harry.
So a smaller battery has its merit; the old scalability problem for EV. I came across a BMW i3 police car on the street; wonder if they take the range-extender version?
Harry, another very enjoyable and insightful review, thank you. You mentioned driving the BMW iX as being just such a different experience to a conventional car. Many years ago, I was given a lift in an open topped two seater 1930s MG Midget around the back lanes of the New Forest. Everything was so alive! The whine of the crash gearbox; the full on engine sound; the smell of hot oil and leather; the bouncy ride; the lack of bodywork surrounding you and no seat belt!! 30mph felt like 70!! It was exhilarating. When I returned to my own car, then a Mk1 Ford Focus, it seemed utterly refined but comparatively soulless. Now times have moved on and comparisons change. Today, a Mk1 Focus is regarded as a reference point by many for driver involvement when compared to some more modern cars. Judging by your reviews, and those of others, it would now seem that current combustion engined cars, although more refined than ever, have retained more driver involvement than electrically powered cars. Are we moving into the age of the truly 'soulless' vehicle?
I'm afraid it looks that way. I remain unconvinced it's possible to make an involving pure electric sports car but maybe Lotus/Alpine will prove me wrong! But a lot of miles we do today are very tedious commuter type miles and a modern EV (like a Tesla or this BMW) is good at doing such things, so long as the typical 300 mile range isn't an issue for you.
@@harrysgarage great review. we can & will have electric sports cars. there's a long way to go yet in achieving systems having light batt pkgs with quick charging & adequate range. it will flow from the industry as the shift to electrics sinks in... give it 5-10 yrs. pleasure derived from analog fun-in-motion will endure as market pull.
Had to chuckle when opening the door caused all those things to activate and the range go down. Sort of like half a pint of petrol leaking out. I prefer your Jag V12.
I dont get how manufactures claim such low co-efficient of drag on these new cars when they have a massive slab of a front end. The Renault Alpine GTA V6 Turbo from 1986 was the worlds most Aerodynamic car for 6 years in a row from 1986 onwards @ 0.27. Which has a tiny frontal area and very sleek.
A lot has been learned since 1986. Also, being an EV, it's just as smooth on the bottom as on the top, which is almost half the battle. It needs very little air for cooling, and that airflow is much easier to control than with a gas car.
The drag coefficient, Cd, only describes the smoothness of the shape, not the full air resistance. The frontal area, A, is a completely separate factor in the drag equation. Often you'll hear the two combined, as in "the CdA value", because it's the product of the two you can easily measure in a wind tunnel. D = Cd * A * .5 * r * v^2
The shape of front of a car (or in fact any subsonic object) actually makes very little difference to air resistance! The back REALLY matters and maintaining low turbulence down the sides and underneath is next in terms of importance.
It being "sleek" doesn't mean it's aerodynamically efficient, look at the Mercedes W124 for that, it's got a pretty big nose and looks rather brutish and it's CD was 0.3, which is extremely impressive for a car that's design was finalized in 1981.
@@anmihovil I hope BMW have put some thought into that. I wonder how, following a medium side impact an insurance company assessor will be able to judge the integrity of any such damage.
@@anmihovil Lol, hell no, what can be recycled will be, the rest goes into landfill. Car manufacturers have very little incentive to make cars accident repairable, and it's financially better for them to fill up landfills with wrecks rather than repair them - that's why more and more late model cars get written off from what would have been in the past considered a fairly minor accident.
@@sq1rlsqu4d what? So you basically admitting only generation "participation trophy" have zero style or class and actually find a set of Eskimo shoes painted by a cheap can of halfords black.. a sexy car? hahahahaha you plum, get back on Tiktok
I saw another review where they applauded BMW returning to the big grill from their very early models but the truth is that BMWs didn't really look any good until they made the kidneys small, the were still distinctively BMW but didn't have hideous front ends that looked way out of balance.
Harry, you can also get 3phase power in Germany. So 11 kW is no issue and if your local power grid provider agrees you can have even more. Only if you utilize just one single phase you can get at most 4,6 kW (230V x 20A) - hence you should get a car and charger with 3phase AC to benefit from the usual 11-22 kW charging.
@@williamr3840 Very true - but even worse is they are still one of the better German brands for reliability - you are lucky if you get a Mercedes arrive at the dealership without multiple faults from the factory, and VAG - if it's not one of their big selling units like a Golf, it'll be a utter pain in the arse to own too. The only good news is people are starting to wake up to the fact that German Engineering isn't what it was 30 years ago.
@@Beer_Dad1975 Sadly agree, and I'm German. I have no idea what they think they are doing. Good engineering used to be a virtue, now it seems it's all about marketing and cost cutting the engineering, or engineering in a way that won't last.
It's not just the front that looks wrong. If you removed the badges from that car I could not tell you if it was a Hyundai or a Kia or what. I've purchased many BMWs in my life, several of them new. But there is no way I'd purchase a new BMW anymore. I don't know what they think they are doing. Who likes these designs? Is that the Chinese market? Has me puzzled, looks cheap. Way to throw a brand language over board but honestly BMW had lost the plot for a decade now so nothing new here.
@@TheChannel1978 Confronted by the unexpected success and cult of Tesla - who lead the EV market by a country mile - BMW are panicking. They are 5 years too late and these awful designs are handing market share to Audi.....and of course Tesla.
weird logic you have. Cars have gotten heavier each decade since the 60ies because more integrated safety and tech added. the range has nothing with progress to do. will a 1000 mile range be progress? you have to get some food and go to the loo anyway. it is actually progress for you well being!
Hey Harry, I wonder if the charging port is put at the rear of the vehicle to promote reverse parking! A lot of companies do this now so you drive out of a parking space rather than reverse out.
It would be great to see your review of this “thing” on a trip to the arctic circle 🥶 …in 40-50 years from now 🤔 Playing with a phone while driving is a big no-no but massive screens with intricate menus in a car seem to be fine?! Beats me 😱
Quite right if you go to commercial MOT with a tax disc in the window they would fail you for obscuring vision. Yet as car drivers we are allowed things stuck to the windscreen. Screens in the car to distract us ETC its all wrong.
It won't be around to be reviewed in 40-50 years, and if it is it'll be on it's 3, 4, 5th replacement battery. This is my main gripe with all modern cars, especially EVs - if we were truly interested in helping the environment we would be championing cars that are built to be maintained and last a generation or three
@@tom_thumb most batteries will outlast ICE engines. 3-400k is not abnormal for Tesla batteries still with 85%+ capacity As for attic, watch horn by land on yt?, he has regular arctic challenge on his channel. Never a problem.
@@johnn17golf I hope you're right, but from what I can see most manufacturers are estimating 10-20 years life for current battery packs, that's before you think about the rest of the car's technology which i'm guessing will be outdated and failing before then. I'm not completely negative about EV's, but I'm not convinced the way we're building them now is the answer
Not having a frunk is a major let down. Even though the one on my Polestar 2 is rather small, I love having the charging cables there. Having to keep them in the trunk would be a hazzle when you have other luggage.
Carbon fibre cell ... I think repairability is a big factor in a car's environmental footprint. I thought these CF cells were uber expensive to fix. So I could understand they would make sense to repair in a super car. But as these things depreciate, and their batteries degrade, would the carbon fibre make them a write off in any sort of accident whereas a metal celled call might not be ?
Damage to the "cell" is normally a write off anyway because the way collision repairs are done, they replace parts that are bolted to the central cell unit, or sometimes glued. They do not "cut and shut" sections of that cell because if that part is damaged, the car is considered structurally compromised, and will be recorded as an unrepairable write-off in most jurisdictions. The only people who will be repairing a major collision to a car like this, will be enthusiasts - and it's not impossible to repair CF. In fact, it some cases, it's more viable than correcting a metal structure.
It depends. There's probably a halve way house in CF chassis design, where parts likely to be clobbered are either protected by something sacrificial, or that part of the chassis is designed for (expert) garage replacement. Or, the car is designed so that CF cell replacement is not a massive job. If the CF cell has been made by gluing together CF parts, then it is possible (if the right glues have been used) to unglue the broken part and replace it with a new. I've had this done (not with a car), and it's as good as new. So, in a situation where that part can be adequately accessed without dismantling the whole thing, then a repair could actually be pretty economic. However, for cheapest / lightest CF cells, the way forward is the one adopted by McLaren where by the cell is made in one step, resulting in a single piece of hollow CF. Very clever. Cheaper to make - just 4 man hours. But, impossible or very difficult to adequately repair... This problem also exists in the airliner industry, with the A350 and Boeing 787 in particular. Boeing make their fuselages in several, giant, single piece CF barrels. For repair there's a lot of work in assessing the extent of the damage, what has to be cut out, how it's cut out, how patches are glued in, or whether it's repairable in the first place. Airbus made the A350 out of jointed CF panels. Much easier to remove damaged parts and replace them. I'm no expert, but I'd hazard a guess that the B787 is more readily repaired on the ramp, for small damage, but might get written off, whereas the A350 is likely less repairable on the ramp but is less likely to be written off when damaged (you can always replace a panel, even if you have to do it in a hangar).
You’ve got the maths confused my friend. The Cd includes drag force in the calculation. Therefore, the lower the Cd (no matter the frontal area) = more aerodynamic, the end.
@@TML34 You are absolutely wrong. D is the drag force. Cd is a coefficient. A is the frontal area, r is the density of the air, V is the velocity. You should keep out of engineering when engineering is involved. Leave that to us engineers. BTW, it's math, not maths, and this is science not math.
Someone at bmw drew that. Thought it looked good and presented it for consideration and then more people liked it and then it was approved for build. It’s an utterly ghastly looking thing shocking how BMW have lost their way
Starting to see quite a few of these up here in Norway, obviously pulling a few potential Audi E-Tron drivers. In the flesh it looks pretty decent from the back, but the front grille is truly awful. Charging ports: The industry really needs to set some standards on this, cos there are a lot of charger/car incompatibilities simply due to cable lengths and charge port location
Well I blame the auto industry. They could have easily standardized it but everyone is too busy making money/things that are impossible to repair. As an auto tech, I won’t have a job in 30 years, everything is going to be maintenance free because everyone is turning stupid.
@@SilentRacer911 - Oh i don't think you need to worry about employment. Speaking as a Tesla owner i can see plenty of stuff that needs maintaining and will wear out. Plus all the fancy stuff that will definitely go wrong. And that's ignoring crash damage. You might need to change skill-set a bit, but i can promise these cars are far from maintenance-free.
100K+ for a mass market car that carries no more people than an average family saloon or indeed supermini. Electric is looking less and less like 'the future'. Unless the future is the bus , for most.
@@justafish-bd8kw Exactly my thought too. I live in an area where most of the houses are Victorian terraces with small side street/footpaths of 16 houses and only on street parking, getting parked anywhere near you house is a rarity, so how are us working class going to charge electric vehicles , or even afford them in the 1st place.. see your comment for the answer lol
That is exactly where they want us to go. The Chipping Norton types get to keep their EVs but the peasants are on the bus getting mugged and farted on. Let's see how it plays.
This is pretty much every luxury SUV summed up so not sure what this has to do with this being electric. In terms of power and performance this is in line with the X5 M50i which starts at 104k€ in Germany vs 102k€ for the iX xDrive50. That is a lot of money of course but top of the line BMW SUVs have always been super expensive and this one is no different.
The euro regulations and emissions benefits for heavier, larger and more expensive cars are forcing the poorer out of cars, it's some high level social manipulation. In a few years when the safety systems make them uneconomical to repair we will enter the 'You will own nothing' stage..
It would be interesting to hook up a Horse float and see what that does to the range. Car Wow did it with a Skoda and teh range dropped from about 250 miles to about 100, which of course would make for a very touring holiday.
I was always taught and teach reverse parking. It safer when exiting from a parking space. Many businesses now insist on reverse parking in company car parks. Would also solve your charging cable issues.
To much tech on the screen surely pressing a switch is a lot safer, Way can’t it have a charging socket on the front as well as the back especially when it costs over £115.000. Excellent video cheers Harry.
BMW have made a car that nobody can afford, takes two days to charge, is so heavy it'll break your driveway AND has a shonky looking PC monitor bolted to the dash. Way to go guys 🤣
Really, I love Harry's Garage, I really do. But please, please, please do a real-world review of an affordable e-car and a proper UK road trip. I'm tired of seeing £90k+ cars going to Europe where the charging infrastructure is way better than Blighty!!
Even electric superminis have a starting price of around £30k, and once a few options are ticked, you're easily looking at a bill of £50k for some of them. For the average household with a budget of around ten grand for the family car, running an EV just isn't viable. And that's before we look at charging infrastructure, which is insufficient at best. The government is going to have to reconsider the 2030 cut off for petrol & diesel new car sales unless this can be improved.
@@jamsxr 'at the moment'. I love your optimism. But just wait until the government start taxing electricity.... do you think they'll let the revenue from fuel just disappear? You ain't seen nothing yet.
Looks bloody awful, big fan of 80's BMW, but this is shocking styling, saw a 635i friday in red, stunning car. This is a horrible mistake. As for the stupid grill....
@@neilrafferty2097 or the E36 or my E39 M5. Even my 2017 440i looks a lot better. This huge grill thing BMW is into is worse than the Bangle-era BMW crap - and that's saying something!
Good job then that these are for BMW’s 2020’s customers. Funny how all the modern BMW haters are anything but the current target customer. The ‘grill’ is no longer a grill anyway it’s to hide all the modern driving aids.
Well Harry, it is preffered to reverse park, because of the safety. I was looking at some statistics and numbers of accidents are pretty significant when reverse exiting parking
I saw one in a dealership last week. In the flesh, it looks far worse than it does on camera, both inside and out. Over £100k for iX is a complete joke.
These cars are brutally badly made they aren't worth £20k and that's the truth. Abysmal build quality that I haven't seen since BMC. Just had to fully respray one on warranty as the customer had picked up several issues with bodywork including panel gaps and boot seal leaking into trunk, the worst part is he clocked some of the issues and the horrific orange peel when he went to pick it up but they conned him into taking it on the promise it would get sorted, they then refused to repaint it till he got a solicitor involved and he said that was £1100 in total. The guy drove it in here raging, I had to point out that he bought the silly thing and that we ain't BMW we are subcontracted to fix their new cars if they are damaged or bellow par before they are sold. Worst still BMW phoned the police on him when he dumped the car outside the dealer with a letter refusing to drive the car again till it was fixed. It needed a new gearbox a few month afterwards as he phoned us asking if anything we had done in the painting process required the gearbox being touched in any way. Still raging at BMW he said the last one he bought was just as bad so he's done with then now. Glad I buy Japanese cars only.
Either it's one of those timeless designs everyone hates on at first but it'll still look good in 10, 15 years time or it will end up among the Pontiac Aztec down the bottom of car hell. I guess we'll see but I still think it's ugly. Looks like a really fat guinea pig with overgrown front teeth.
@@fakevirus8828 is somebdy paying you to spread this nonsense? This is 7-series quality vehicle. I know because I owned 7-series and have driven iX for a week.
I do worry what has happened to BMW since it jumped on the climate emergency bandwagon. These cars used to have character, luxury and panache. Such a shame.
Newtons laws apply - the heavier the vehicle and the faster it is going the more kinetic energy it has to transfer into whatever it hits. More energy means more danger to us squishy meat-bags - you'd be pretty safe inside this as it'll be designed to transfer impact energy away from the cabin - but whatever you hit is going to have to absorb and/or transfer that energy somehow - so bad news if you are in a little car and you get moshed by this thing. Of course if the impact causes a thermal runaway event in the battery packs... well you'll probably have a nastier death than the guy you smooshed.
@@Beer_Dad1975 - you need to drive new EV’s. The safety systems in them make it very hard for the driver to crash. They will stop the car automatically before the impact. My Polestar 2 auto stopped when a school kid ran out in front of me, before I could even react. If I’m reversing and someone is walking on the pavement behind the car it knows; Sometimes it can be a bit annoying as it’s too sensitive and the stop can be brutal.
Mine in Thailand at 31°C driving on the motorway at 110 kmph between Korat to our place in Phuket, depart at 90%, and charge 4 times for the 15 hour 31 minute route which is approximately 1091 km
Harry, the charge point thing, either way, the owner will have to turn the vehicle around eventually. Your focused on it taking the extra 30 seconds when you get home instead of when your leaving.
If BMW are starting with a clean sheet, why still design a car with a bonnet, as though it needs that space for an engine? They can put the drivetrain and batteries anywhere in the car, so can use completely new layouts...
Great point this and i was actually thinking along the same lines as yourself . What got me thinking along those lines was the sound ( motors etc ) while Harry was driving . Reminded me ( when i closed my eyes ) , of sitting on a tram !!
@@davidnorton5887 Absolutely - the last thing BMW want is to scare off potential customers with a car that looks too different. Think of the Ford Sierra going back - slated at first because of the looks but only later becoming accepted and changing much of car design.
I laughed at that front end, then laughed harder at the price. And I'm in pain after Harry stated the charging times. So I can only conclude this is a joke.
@@SDK2006b You sleep for 2 days? Lets face it, the only people buying this car will be rich virtue signallers to put in the fleet. This thing is totally irrelevant to most people.
@@ralphmillais5237 - nope, very rarely do you run an EV down to 0%. Mostly you charge EV’s from 10-80%. With this car 50% battery gives you 150+ miles - Most people do that much driving in a week! (Average UK daily miles is 20 miles).
There are no aspects of this vehicle that would make me part with any amount of money. The mass creation of such an ugly status symbol is probably not the best idea when trying to combat climate change regardless of it’s zero emissions ability.
The emissions are just shifted....so while the car in operation is "zero emissions" the power generated by charging is isn't', not mention all the fossil fuels used in mining rare earth, lithium, nickel and other metals for it and the associated environmental issues associated with said mining. EV's aren't really saving the environment or "saving money", but I do think hybrid's with Atkinson cycle or similar super efficient ICE is a practical solution to many issues, especially in regard to city/urban driving.(plus the battery is much smaller)
Harry, regarding the location of the charging socket. Perhaps BMW are trying to encourage you to back into a bay, because Health and Safety Advisers recommend that drivers are able to drive straight out of the bay!
I’m surprised that you don’t understand having the charge port at the back. Many car parks only allow reverse parking and it is best practice as far as I understand.
Does it come with a teeth whitening kit? ☺️ Great review by Harry, always enjoyable to watch. I just find most electric cars repulsive. It’s ridiculous that we even have to mention things like ‘I didn’t have heater or ac on..’ when reviewing any modern car. Too many angles, a messy design all round. I really do not see why this is twice the price of a Tesla, Ioniq 5 or Kia EV6. Back a few years ago in the ICE world there was a big difference in say the BMW 5 series and a top spec Hyundai or KIA. In the BMW or Mercedes you got better engines, more characterful engines and better interiors. EVs seem to me to be an equaliser. They are all fast, quiet, do 200 odd miles and take too long to charge. The most expensive ones make the least sense to me. Keep up the good work Harry. Enjoyed many of the other comments left.
Thanks for your comment, it's becoming a very confusing landscape where we are now being asked to pay more for better range, rather than greater performance and luxury, as used to be the case with ICE powered cars. Odd.
Who told you BMW have good engines? They are the worst alongside Audi. 22% failure rates in some of them and the s/b58 lump, the one BMW fans called "the next 2JZ" has been found out as so bad it can't even do 30k miles reliably on a stage1. Older BMW 6pots are over rated to the point its comical as any mechanic or indeed true car guy knows they sucked, they had constant fan issues, cylinder liners broke up, hydraulic lifters, oil starvation to crank journals and later Vanos issues that were so bad that brand new cars failed the vanos test. Their diesels are terrible too especially the N47 and all era of the inline 6 swallowing their own swirl flaps and dying premature deaths. Even a lowly VW PD1.9 engine embarrasses all BMW engine designs.
@@fakevirus8828 Not so. I have the N47 and it is a great engine. No issues. The N52 inline 6 is a very good engine and it made BMW become renowned. There are some engines with reliability issues but all in all, they are not worse than any other ICE engine with issues, the V10 being an exception. The problem with BMW is that they have many small bits and pieces which fail.
But it's no more ugly and overpriced than its competition. I would agree if this was an outlier, but it's not. This is how cars are going. As with houses, I think the end goal is to stop people buying them and to rent/lease everything. Nobody will care how long anything lasts when they get a new one every 2/3 years.
@@user-sy2mv6my8l No, it's intentional with all cars electric or ICE, they want the drip drip drip of money out of you rather than you owning something outright and keeping it for 15 years.
Looks like BMW totally bypassed the focus testing part of the design process where they ask regular folk, not fellow designers, for their opinion on the new design direction. From what I’ve seen of the comments at least 90% really dislike the front grill. Count me in on that number too!
Its big in chin and bmw stopped caring a long time ago. There was a huge backlash when they previewed the hideous grille on the M4 ans they couldny care less. Because it's just about bling bling and showoff now
I saw one of these in the flesh for the first time a couple of hours ago. It's even worse in real life than it looks in the video. Looks aren't everything but if I were to spend this much money on a car, I wouldn't want to wince every time I looked at it.
Safest way to park is to reverse in, so maybe that's behind the rear charge plug location If you ever go to a car park on a construction site where safety is paramount you will usually see signs telling you to reverse park. This is so you aren't reversing out of a space with poor visibility either side for most of the manoeuvre if you're next to parked vehicles.
Have you driven an i3s Harry? The most fun EV you can buy, honest! Yes, it'll onyl do 140 miles on a charge, but for those of us who don't drive lots of miles, the near 1,200kg mass and carbon chassis give it hilariously fun dynamics! In the real world, it's also plenty fast enough, and more than fast enough to be fun (you can actually use the performance unilke any modern performance car....)
Talk to anyone with home charging and they'll tell you they dont typically drain the battery to 0 and quite often dont bother to charge to 100% because that last 10% takes exponentially longer. A 0-100% charge is not practical unless you know youre going to go on a long trip.
Tesla Model X also has a 2500 kg towing capacity. I’ve towed my Lotus to the track many times and it was always a very smooth experience. Range is almost halved when towing of course which adds charge time but the smoothness of the drivetrain makes it a more relaxing experience than ICE towing.
What difference does it make if you need to reverse up to the charger instead of front on You still need to reverse at some point ? That like moaning that the fuel filler was on the N/S of my last car and my new one is on the O/S ??
It's really not a good look, It's hideous. I know time and familiarity will soften it but no one said things like that about the E38 or E39 and in 25 years no one will be cherishing this iX.
Backing up to park is actually considered safer. You take more care to park properly, the car turns better (like a forklift) and when leaving you don't back up into traffic and see easier. Also when you are not in a hurry, you can save that time to make it faster to leave when you are in a hurry... :)
@@user-ht9fr6eh9u Parking forwards at supermarkets is only my exception to that rule - loading the boot isn't convenient if you have to squeeze the trolley between cars to reach the boot.
Surprised not more mention of the Merc at the charge station. What an epic piece of shithousery - unbelievable 'my time is more valuable than your time' selfishness. Should have shared a pic of the tool at the wheel, Harry.
Strikes me by the content of the comments below that BMW have got this and other models completely wrong in most departments. I'm not sure I'd be wanting to be head of marketing for this range.
@Harry’s Garage Sorry Harry but at 115K or 95K, it is most definitely NOT a “normal” family car, unless the family income is 300K p.a. In three years it’s battery capacity will be at 80% max… I’m certain that this EV bubble will burst when logical people finally realise the constraints of an EV. An engineer recently stated that todays EV’s on a technological level are where ICE where in the 30’s!
I agree it's not a normal family car. Even here in Norway with all our subsidies this is an expensive machine. I disagree with pretty much everything else you say though :) - Batteries do degrade, but nowhere near that fast. Current evidence suggests that 90% retention after 5 years / 100k miles should be what you can expect. - EVs are less constrained than you think. We have a Model 3 and it takes us 850km to my in-laws in exactly the same time as the ICE we used to drive there. It took us 4000km round northern Norway last summer without any inconvenience at all, and i expect it to take us 6000km round europe (including the UK) this coming summer. The only real inconvenience is if you don't have the ability to charge at home or work. That for sure is limiting. - I think your engineer needs to look a bit more closely. The electric motors, AC-DC converters and control electronics in a 2022 EV are mind-bogglingly advanced.
To open the bonnet there are two cables latches each side of dashboard roughly where usual bonnet release is, not that theres much to see other than pipes and cables
My 2020 X5 had iDrive 7 and I was able to set up the system pretty well, so important operations were automatically set. My 2022 BMW iX50 arrives tonight at the Port of Baltimore. I look forward to spending a lot of time setting up iDrive 8. From what I have learned from the UA-cam videos, I can pretty much pre-program much of the options for my usual driving habits. I have no intention of learning iDrive 8 as I am driving. I had two test drives of the iX50 and I am in love.
I’d struggle with the looks but that insight into charging times is often overlooked I’m sure. Although I assume few people need to do 300 mile days back to back
Excellent review. I am considering this car as my next but why should a good part of the car - the hood - be inaccessible to the owner? There could be some room inside for extra luggage but despite that, my response is, “Hey BMW, this car is my property so open up!”. The other issue is range. We drive to my birthplace in the country from Perth to the little seaside town of Esperance along the southern coast, some 750km from Perth. I would hate to break the whole day journey for a 3 hr recharge pit stop in Ravensthorpe before reaching Esperance.
The huge grille is apparently intended for the Chinese market. We're not in China. It would be nice if BMW brings a European version on the market, a car that looks at least a bit presentable. Never mind the tech, this monstrosity is just too ugly to consider.
I can’t stop laughing at the ridiculous name, and the fact that there’s no frunk/the bonnet won’t even open! But the exterior design is very strange, it’s clean but fussy at the same time. No more traditional BMW angel eye headlights, and of course an overstylized version of that grille…
False information guess you just decided to make up? Umm have you seen higher end Chinese EV’s like Nio they are pretty and not ugly like this BMW. Chinese dont want these ugly BMW’s either.
Why can't manufacturers build entertainment systems that aren't laggy? Look how long it takes to switch into the heating menu. Thats a safety issue on one hands as its even more distracting when driving, and on the other hand someone paid over 100k for that thing! More that than it is a bespoke hardware/software package and they still can't manage. This is true for pretty much any manufacturer of any price-range.
As ever Harry, a sensible review and whilst I am sure that it is an excellent car, the design is visually awful. I was interested in your comments about recharging it and that would apply to most 'long range' cars because I have always thought that range as an issue would always be secondary to the time it takes to charge it.
how this is sensible?, does it have value to anything that's happen in the real world of motoring? A 3 tone gazillion hp electric SUV will save the planet?, does anyone who can afford a 100k suv have the means for only one vehicle? As a tech demonstrator, ok, BMW did a good job; but, as a car, this is just an overwwight, limited range, uber expensive, useless vehicle.
@@eugenux I commented that the review was sensible. My view of EVs generally is that the technology is massively under cooked and with it seems a roughly 40k price tag, massively over priced. As for the price of this BMW, at over £100k, total nonsense.
Just an update: Though I don't think it was this particular model/specification, I saw the same body shaped BMW as this pulling out of a car park the other day and if there is any doubt and despite how technically good it may be, this is without doubt one of the ugliest cars on the road !
Is it so less convinient to back up when parking, you still need to turn around the car when leaving.... And a few of the companies I've been sub-contracted to demand backing in when at a company parking lot
While I'm not in love with the looks, I don't find them as offensive (whatever that means in car styling context) as others and I give BMW credit for at least trying something different. As well as being super refined by all accounts the iX rides very well too. As highlighted by Harry, the issue for me - which is shared with most EVs - is the weight of batteries and therefore the whole car, impacting only the dynamics, but also its efficiency.
In Germany the majority of houses have 3-phase so 11kW is standard and if you are luck (and ask the local electricity supplier nicely) then one can have 22kW. (Or charging 2 cars at 11kW... 😁)
115,00 pounds FOR THAT!!!!!......I mean , would one look back at that after parking with pride or horror. A six year child could draw that shape , and as for 3 tons.........Ridiculous!!
Agreed. I think this "vehicle" is far too expensive and there is no justification whatsoever in needing to buy something like this. This could seriously finish BMW if they aren't careful.
Harry, I bet the bonnet does open. Check in the front passenger footwell and I bet you’ll find a removable panel that has the hood release hidden behind it, most likely painted bright red trying to make you scared of pulling it. The ESQ Merc also has an un-openable bonnet and what I describe is how you get into it.
you can actually open the front end of it, they just make it as hard as possible. Similar situation with the Mercedes’ EQS in the footwell there is a small panel that unscrews and then there is a handle to pop the bonnet.
I'm old enough to remember when BMW naming conventions didn't look like encrypted passwords.
Yeah so do I, 4 pre 74 2002's in my collection, Rj in Oz
Found the Boomer!
A) Harry royally screwed up the badge and title to this video.
B) The same engine/motor can make different power ratings, it’s not that hard to comprehend.
@@ericfitzgerald9139 Found the BMW nerd!
@@ericfitzgerald9139 did you just say "boomer"? That's basically a by-word for tiktok kids AKA Generation participation Trophy AKA The hurt feelings generation. No joke mate nobody listens to anything anyone born after about 1985 says, you lot created a post truth world so you cannot come on here insulting older and vastly more robust & intelligent generations and expect anyone to listen to you. You spent your life playing Call of Duty son... that had consequences.
@@fakevirus8828 actually, the current post-truth world is a late 19th / early 20th century phenomenon. Boomer's added tech & monetization. post-boomers added not particularly caring about the truth or fiction of the world. I personally apologize for not teaching them better.
As an advocate for always reversing into a car parking spot, rather than reversing out into car park traffic I'd be happy with a charge port at the rear of the car.
Absolutely 👍
Also, many of these will end up as company cars and/or driven to corporate offices, which often have reverse parking policies for "health and safety".
Safest way to park.
@@roybatty4687 actually I guess its safest way to unpark
I can see a lot of charge point rage in the future.
Ideally, for convenience they should have 2 charge ports - front and back
On one hand we have the UK Gov making almost any interaction with a smartphone a penalty offence and on the other car makers are loading up cars with more and more touch interfaces with no legal issues.
Exactly. Big business make their own rules. But the ordinary man is fined to pay the government when breaking their rules. Works well for the government and big business. Stuff like this really highlights that not every law is fair. just because it's law doesn't mean its right.
Very good point!
@@TheChannel1978 the laws are only for middle class and below
Loading cars with unecessary tech is why they charge the higher prices.
@@mjames978 and the latest trick is to install all the tech, but get the customer to pay a subscription for access to that tech.
14:10 as a german this astounds me. I know nobody that does not have 3 phase power to their house. I got a 22kW car charger in my house and we have plenty of connection to the grid left. And for NON tesla fast chargers (take IONITY for example) Germany has 105 active fast chargers (350kW), France has 103, but the UK has only 17(!).
Yes I'm not sure what the UK are doing because Europe is way ahead in regards fast charging I like the IX you can find them used at half price in the UK or in the US with very little mileage on them and they will tow 5,000 lb so having the bigger battery will come in very handy
I think I could sit and listen to Harry reviewing just about anything. Cool guy.
I'd like to see these touch screens with no physical buttons banned.
How are they any different to using a mobile phone whilst driving.
I don't want mine or anyone else's attention taken from the road to adjust the heating etc...
It takes too much faffing to navigate the menus and sub menus and is dangerous.
It should be a quick glance to see where the button is and that's it.
Another good point of why German/may other cars are loosing touch of reality, to control one on the go is almost impossible as ive test drove and seen harry do giving a demo.
Excellent point. I would go further and suggest that it’s idiotic that manufactures have chosen to effectively mount an iPad in the middle of the dashboard. I swear the police used to get funny about where you positioned your sat nav in the windscreen. I wish there was some sort of owners survey into what features owners actually use. Air con, heater, radio, maps. Who seriously wants to change the drive mode or gearbox settings in a regular car. I just want to get in and drive ffs. Great comments tho 👍
I agree. I would really like to see a sterring wheel full of physical or virtual buttons with tangible feedback that can be progrrammed to the positions I want them in with relevant head up display when I touch a button. It's all perfectly doable, almost old technology, and I can still see the road while I adjust volume, seat, temperature, and so on.
One of the main points about ergonomics as they were developed during the '70s was that you didn't have to take your eyes off the road to operate the controls. That's why those for indicators, wipers and lights went from being scattered all over the dash to being concentrated around the steering column.
I 100% agree, I have recently got the new leon phev, and it also has zero physically buttons. I have to wait for a safe bit of the road before i start clicking through the various menus to get the climate control i want etc. Its beyond dangerous, muscle memory all the way, but that doesnt apply to tapping various menus on a app
If manufacturers absolutely insist on having touch-screens for every function then these cars need to have a Siri/Alexa type of operating system for things like the heater controls, audio etc. It would make it much safer than messing around going into menus and sub-menus.
....or they can return to regular controls which can be manually adjusted and be safer too.
Too much tech becomes annoying after a while.
Most cars nowadays come with voice commands which do those, i think bmw comes with alexa which can be used to control other things and link with your alexa in home
They do. Not as smooth as Siri but you can command these cars to do everything you want.
I wouldn't like to connect with that screen and it's supports in an accident #impaled
it would be more safe if no one drive's, sum, you clearly havent thought your pant wetting through....
The voice command in modern BMWs is second to none. They also have Alexa integration.
I love Harry and watch the electric stuff so that I can try and understand the future, but my hearts not in it. Show me a leaking Lambo engine any day
@@lukemallory7832 +2
@@lukemallory7832 +3 these things aren't really cars just $100,000 appliances.
I like to learn, not just nostalgia.
Use an electric vehicle as a daily, save the planet and annoy Putin, drive the lambo on weekends 😉
@@michelmoonen3433 Save the Planet? Yea check out the manufacturing process...Oh and with many components made in China, possibly the most environmentally unfriendly country on earth combined with their mining practices in Africa, the EV could possibly be more damaging than ICE...I really don't think Putin really cares what you do.
LOL, that guy in the Mercedes cutting you off to get to the charging point - what an asshole!
14:09 In Germany 3P AC is standard -> 11kW or 22kW are no problem for wallboxes.
I have to say a car weighing nearly three tons to transport one person does seem extravagant in the extreme. I think we need Gordon Murray to design the World some economical electric
transport, also do we really need such extreme performance? Great car just over the top. Interesting review, thanks Harry.
Batteries mean added weight - you can’t get around physics.
thats why I commute on an Innova, 100kg, 1.7L/100km (~135 mpg)
on pretty much ancient technology
So a smaller battery has its merit; the old scalability problem for EV. I came across a BMW i3 police car on the street; wonder if they take the range-extender version?
Gordon Murray? He'll probably get someone else to design it and claim he did it all.
More and more, the environmental credibility of these things shrink.
The BMW designers have lost the plot haven't they?
Just following Audi's lead, I guess.
German "style".
@@stevemawer848 lol…… it’s bmw style!!
Not a design to create calmness on the motorway.
Totally
Harry, another very enjoyable and insightful review, thank you. You mentioned driving the BMW iX as being just such a different experience to a conventional car. Many years ago, I was given a lift in an open topped two seater 1930s MG Midget around the back lanes of the New Forest. Everything was so alive! The whine of the crash gearbox; the full on engine sound; the smell of hot oil and leather; the bouncy ride; the lack of bodywork surrounding you and no seat belt!! 30mph felt like 70!! It was exhilarating. When I returned to my own car, then a Mk1 Ford Focus, it seemed utterly refined but comparatively soulless. Now times have moved on and comparisons change. Today, a Mk1 Focus is regarded as a reference point by many for driver involvement when compared to some more modern cars. Judging by your reviews, and those of others, it would now seem that current combustion engined cars, although more refined than ever, have retained more driver involvement than electrically powered cars. Are we moving into the age of the truly 'soulless' vehicle?
I'm afraid it looks that way. I remain unconvinced it's possible to make an involving pure electric sports car but maybe Lotus/Alpine will prove me wrong!
But a lot of miles we do today are very tedious commuter type miles and a modern EV (like a Tesla or this BMW) is good at doing such things, so long as the typical 300 mile range isn't an issue for you.
True
@@harrysgarage Electric cars are for people who don't like cars. Or driving, hence the plethora of driver "aids" which basically just deskill you.
@@harrysgarage great review.
we can & will have electric sports cars. there's a long way to go yet in achieving systems having light batt pkgs with quick charging & adequate range. it will flow from the industry as the shift to electrics sinks in... give it 5-10 yrs. pleasure derived from analog fun-in-motion will endure as market pull.
@Steve Mawer many ICE cars are the same. To many it’s just a box to get from A to B
Had to chuckle when opening the door caused all those things to activate and the range go down. Sort of like half a pint of petrol leaking out. I prefer your Jag V12.
9:33 Lovely little Lambretta 2 stroke buzzing around! The antithesis of what Harry is driving!
I dont get how manufactures claim such low co-efficient of drag on these new cars when they have a massive slab of a front end. The Renault Alpine GTA V6 Turbo from 1986 was the worlds most Aerodynamic car for 6 years in a row from 1986 onwards @ 0.27. Which has a tiny frontal area and very sleek.
A lot has been learned since 1986. Also, being an EV, it's just as smooth on the bottom as on the top, which is almost half the battle. It needs very little air for cooling, and that airflow is much easier to control than with a gas car.
The drag coefficient, Cd, only describes the smoothness of the shape, not the full air resistance. The frontal area, A, is a completely separate factor in the drag equation. Often you'll hear the two combined, as in "the CdA value", because it's the product of the two you can easily measure in a wind tunnel.
D = Cd * A * .5 * r * v^2
The shape of front of a car (or in fact any subsonic object) actually makes very little difference to air resistance! The back REALLY matters and maintaining low turbulence down the sides and underneath is next in terms of importance.
Physics!
It being "sleek" doesn't mean it's aerodynamically efficient, look at the Mercedes W124 for that, it's got a pretty big nose and looks rather brutish and it's CD was 0.3, which is extremely impressive for a car that's design was finalized in 1981.
If that thing is involved in a side impact, does that mean it's basically written off or can that carbon fibre structure be replaced?
I'm sure it can be repaired for a third of the price of a new car.
@@anmihovil I hope BMW have put some thought into that. I wonder how, following a medium side impact an insurance company assessor will be able to judge the integrity of any such damage.
I think, at that point, you’re more focused on whether or not everyone is safe
@@anmihovil a cunning plan. It costs a fortune to repair so they make the purchase price astronomical in order to make the repair viable! Genius 👍🤣
@@anmihovil Lol, hell no, what can be recycled will be, the rest goes into landfill. Car manufacturers have very little incentive to make cars accident repairable, and it's financially better for them to fill up landfills with wrecks rather than repair them - that's why more and more late model cars get written off from what would have been in the past considered a fairly minor accident.
“The front is a statement look” and that statement is “it looks like it crashed head on into a brick wall”
No, that statement is "piss off Helipeek you mangy old luddite"
@@sq1rlsqu4d what? So you basically admitting only generation "participation trophy" have zero style or class and actually find a set of Eskimo shoes painted by a cheap can of halfords black.. a sexy car? hahahahaha you plum, get back on Tiktok
@@sq1rlsqu4d the joke’s on you, I’m not from Ludd!
@@helipeek2736 bmw looks crap
I saw another review where they applauded BMW returning to the big grill from their very early models but the truth is that BMWs didn't really look any good until they made the kidneys small, the were still distinctively BMW but didn't have hideous front ends that looked way out of balance.
"What's happened to the BMW kidneys?" They're not kidneys any more Harry, they're beaver teeth.
Funny thing is .. to repair stone chips and scratches you use a hair dryer to melt out the blemishes !!! Most bizarre thing I never heard of before .
@@faadarif it works that's a wonderful innovation
Harry, you can also get 3phase power in Germany. So 11 kW is no issue and if your local power grid provider agrees you can have even more.
Only if you utilize just one single phase you can get at most 4,6 kW (230V x 20A) - hence you should get a car and charger with 3phase AC to benefit from the usual 11-22 kW charging.
BMW has been struggling with design lately. These modern BMWs are not nice looking in my opinion.
Looks like Bugs Bunny to me.
"Struggling" is a very generous way to put it. Every time I see a new 1 or 4 Series it hurts my inner car lover
They've been struggling even more with reliability -- which is in the toilet.
@@williamr3840 Very true - but even worse is they are still one of the better German brands for reliability - you are lucky if you get a Mercedes arrive at the dealership without multiple faults from the factory, and VAG - if it's not one of their big selling units like a Golf, it'll be a utter pain in the arse to own too. The only good news is people are starting to wake up to the fact that German Engineering isn't what it was 30 years ago.
@@Beer_Dad1975 Sadly agree, and I'm German. I have no idea what they think they are doing. Good engineering used to be a virtue, now it seems it's all about marketing and cost cutting the engineering, or engineering in a way that won't last.
This is the antithesis of what I want in my life.
I could not agree more with statement.
It is awful, and tacky with that 🤮 'crystal' interface
@@conflagrationTuesday ~ well said
BMW has lost the design plot in the last 10 years. The front of the car looks like the front door to a futuristic brothel.
I thought it looked more like something you visit the brothel to get....
I don’t think they have a design department.
It's not just the front that looks wrong. If you removed the badges from that car I could not tell you if it was a Hyundai or a Kia or what. I've purchased many BMWs in my life, several of them new. But there is no way I'd purchase a new BMW anymore. I don't know what they think they are doing. Who likes these designs? Is that the Chinese market? Has me puzzled, looks cheap. Way to throw a brand language over board but honestly BMW had lost the plot for a decade now so nothing new here.
@@TheChannel1978 Confronted by the unexpected success and cult of Tesla - who lead the EV market by a country mile - BMW are panicking. They are 5 years too late and these awful designs are handing market share to Audi.....and of course Tesla.
@@berwhaletheavenger except...everyone know Tesla and BMW are both junk heaps with shocking reliability.
Weird how a near 3 ton car costing over £100K to move 5 people over an interrupted 300 mile range is seen as progress!
and once 8 to 10 years old you will be scrapping it when it needs a new battery.'
only a moron buys into this junk
That's because you have critical thinking skills of the average ape.
@@NickLiang we're all descended from apes. Some of us managed to learn how to have more polite discourse on the way though.
@@m7dgz But obviously for some, not intelligence, we didn't descend from apes.
weird logic you have. Cars have gotten heavier each decade since the 60ies because more integrated safety and tech added. the range has nothing with progress to do. will a 1000 mile range be progress? you have to get some food and go to the loo anyway.
it is actually progress for you well being!
Hey Harry, I wonder if the charging port is put at the rear of the vehicle to promote reverse parking! A lot of companies do this now so you drive out of a parking space rather than reverse out.
And because people can't reverse park, they have to have parking assist.
It would be great to see your review of this “thing” on a trip to the arctic circle 🥶
…in 40-50 years from now 🤔
Playing with a phone while driving is a big no-no but massive screens with intricate menus in a car seem to be fine?! Beats me 😱
Quite right if you go to commercial MOT with a tax disc in the window they would fail you for obscuring vision. Yet as car drivers we are allowed things stuck to the windscreen. Screens in the car to distract us ETC its all wrong.
It won't be around to be reviewed in 40-50 years, and if it is it'll be on it's 3, 4, 5th replacement battery. This is my main gripe with all modern cars, especially EVs - if we were truly interested in helping the environment we would be championing cars that are built to be maintained and last a generation or three
@@tom_thumb most batteries will outlast ICE engines. 3-400k is not abnormal for Tesla batteries still with 85%+ capacity
As for attic, watch horn by land on yt?, he has regular arctic challenge on his channel. Never a problem.
@@johnn17golf I hope you're right, but from what I can see most manufacturers are estimating 10-20 years life for current battery packs, that's before you think about the rest of the car's technology which i'm guessing will be outdated and failing before then. I'm not completely negative about EV's, but I'm not convinced the way we're building them now is the answer
@@tom_thumb like my 800kgor so mx5 that's averaged 4k miles a year for 21years and Im expected to change it to a new electric 50k one? fkn mental
£120,000?????????? Jesus 😳
At least you can save money on the servicing by filling up the washer bottle.
Blasphemer
Absurd - from just about every point of view. Thanks for the review.
I couldn't agree more. Well said! 😖
Not having a frunk is a major let down. Even though the one on my Polestar 2 is rather small, I love having the charging cables there. Having to keep them in the trunk would be a hazzle when you have other luggage.
Lol…….. even most tesla users never/barely uses the frunk and also this bmw has way more space than a tesla despite having no frunk.
The vw id4 has the practicality of the giant tesla modelX for the records!
@@alanmay7929 Good luck fetching your cables from under your luggage.
@@andyknuckles2903 that’s what she said lol…… there are tons and tons of space still.
@@alanmay7929 Haha
Thanks! Fascinating to have a real enthusiast's balanced assessment. The comments were equally interesting. All the best.
Carbon fibre cell ... I think repairability is a big factor in a car's environmental footprint. I thought these CF cells were uber expensive to fix. So I could understand they would make sense to repair in a super car. But as these things depreciate, and their batteries degrade, would the carbon fibre make them a write off in any sort of accident whereas a metal celled call might not be ?
Damage to the "cell" is normally a write off anyway because the way collision repairs are done, they replace parts that are bolted to the central cell unit, or sometimes glued. They do not "cut and shut" sections of that cell because if that part is damaged, the car is considered structurally compromised, and will be recorded as an unrepairable write-off in most jurisdictions. The only people who will be repairing a major collision to a car like this, will be enthusiasts - and it's not impossible to repair CF. In fact, it some cases, it's more viable than correcting a metal structure.
Carbon fiber is 100% non recyclable
It depends. There's probably a halve way house in CF chassis design, where parts likely to be clobbered are either protected by something sacrificial, or that part of the chassis is designed for (expert) garage replacement. Or, the car is designed so that CF cell replacement is not a massive job.
If the CF cell has been made by gluing together CF parts, then it is possible (if the right glues have been used) to unglue the broken part and replace it with a new. I've had this done (not with a car), and it's as good as new. So, in a situation where that part can be adequately accessed without dismantling the whole thing, then a repair could actually be pretty economic.
However, for cheapest / lightest CF cells, the way forward is the one adopted by McLaren where by the cell is made in one step, resulting in a single piece of hollow CF. Very clever. Cheaper to make - just 4 man hours. But, impossible or very difficult to adequately repair...
This problem also exists in the airliner industry, with the A350 and Boeing 787 in particular. Boeing make their fuselages in several, giant, single piece CF barrels. For repair there's a lot of work in assessing the extent of the damage, what has to be cut out, how it's cut out, how patches are glued in, or whether it's repairable in the first place. Airbus made the A350 out of jointed CF panels. Much easier to remove damaged parts and replace them. I'm no expert, but I'd hazard a guess that the B787 is more readily repaired on the ramp, for small damage, but might get written off, whereas the A350 is likely less repairable on the ramp but is less likely to be written off when damaged (you can always replace a panel, even if you have to do it in a hangar).
Cd may be 0.25, but the Drag Force also depends on the frontal area (D = Cd * A * .5 * r * V^2). That is NOT a small number.
Yeah, 275 wide tyres sheesh...
@@JR-ii4lq it's an 'M' car lolololol
You’ve got the maths confused my friend. The Cd includes drag force in the calculation. Therefore, the lower the Cd (no matter the frontal area) = more aerodynamic, the end.
@@TML34 nope, it's a coefficient that acts on the drag area, fluid density and flow velocity relative to the object.
@@TML34 You are absolutely wrong. D is the drag force. Cd is a coefficient. A is the frontal area, r is the density of the air, V is the velocity. You should keep out of engineering when engineering is involved. Leave that to us engineers. BTW, it's math, not maths, and this is science not math.
That front end is many things but “a good look” is not what springs to my mind 🤣
Those oversized kidney 'grills' are very obnoxious at first glance. Now they just have a cheap computer case look about them to my eye.
The current lease prices on the MSport 40 version are ridiculously cheap. I am very tempted and don’t need the range.
Someone at bmw drew that. Thought it looked good and presented it for consideration and then more people liked it and then it was approved for build. It’s an utterly ghastly looking thing shocking how BMW have lost their way
Have you ever seen it in person?
It actually looks much better, especially in the red and bronze accent.
@@MH-im4oh unfortunately I have and if anything it looked worse
Stunning and brave
@@wolfiestreet6899 I agree... I like the bold design starting with the M3, M4 and the new X7 and i7 as well.
@@MH-im4oh .....
Starting to see quite a few of these up here in Norway, obviously pulling a few potential Audi E-Tron drivers. In the flesh it looks pretty decent from the back, but the front grille is truly awful.
Charging ports: The industry really needs to set some standards on this, cos there are a lot of charger/car incompatibilities simply due to cable lengths and charge port location
I like the rear quarter view as well. Such a shame about the front
A non Tesla EV is a mess of various cables / apps / credit cards and faulty untrustworthy chargers … utterly ghastly to charge.
Well I blame the auto industry. They could have easily standardized it but everyone is too busy making money/things that are impossible to repair. As an auto tech, I won’t have a job in 30 years, everything is going to be maintenance free because everyone is turning stupid.
@@SilentRacer911 - Oh i don't think you need to worry about employment. Speaking as a Tesla owner i can see plenty of stuff that needs maintaining and will wear out. Plus all the fancy stuff that will definitely go wrong. And that's ignoring crash damage. You might need to change skill-set a bit, but i can promise these cars are far from maintenance-free.
Two Edsel grills on the front, not a winning look.
The light show on the cluster has just taken 10 miles of the range! 😂
Well spotted, saw that too.
Yes, It seems like just opening the door eats into the range!
@@peteracton6360 🤣👍🏻👊🏿.. petrol all the way sir 👌🏾
100K+ for a mass market car that carries no more people than an average family saloon or indeed supermini. Electric is looking less and less like 'the future'. Unless the future is the bus , for most.
And without any front boot ... I am pro tech, but imagine the quantity of gas I can pay with this obscene amount of extra money needed
@@justafish-bd8kw Exactly my thought too. I live in an area where most of the houses are Victorian terraces with small side street/footpaths of 16 houses and only on street parking, getting parked anywhere near you house is a rarity, so how are us working class going to charge electric vehicles , or even afford them in the 1st place.. see your comment for the answer lol
That is exactly where they want us to go. The Chipping Norton types get to keep their EVs but the peasants are on the bus getting mugged and farted on. Let's see how it plays.
This is pretty much every luxury SUV summed up so not sure what this has to do with this being electric. In terms of power and performance this is in line with the X5 M50i which starts at 104k€ in Germany vs 102k€ for the iX xDrive50. That is a lot of money of course but top of the line BMW SUVs have always been super expensive and this one is no different.
The euro regulations and emissions benefits for heavier, larger and more expensive cars are forcing the poorer out of cars, it's some high level social manipulation. In a few years when the safety systems make them uneconomical to repair we will enter the 'You will own nothing' stage..
It would be interesting to hook up a Horse float and see what that does to the range. Car Wow did it with a Skoda and teh range dropped from about 250 miles to about 100, which of course would make for a very touring holiday.
Any weight adds loss of range in these appliances.
I was always taught and teach reverse parking. It safer when exiting from a parking space. Many businesses now insist on reverse parking in company car parks. Would also solve your charging cable issues.
To much tech on the screen surely pressing a switch is a lot safer,
Way can’t it have a charging socket on the front as well as the back
especially when it costs over £115.000. Excellent video cheers Harry.
The price is a comedy. . The looks are a tragedy.
3 tonnes? The last vehicle I drove that weighed 3 tonnes was towing a horse box - With a horse in it!
it has 2585kg and not 3000kg
It's 2.5, not 3.
May not be quite 3 tonne unladen… but put four passengers and their luggage in, it will not be far off…
@@dr-ok3sn Yeah, it's 2585kg kerb weight.... 4 average people and their luggage will have it knocking on 3 tonnes.
@@TheDoosh79 6000 US pounds. That's 3 tons to us in the US and ridiculously high for an SUV of this size.
BMW have made a car that nobody can afford, takes two days to charge, is so heavy it'll break your driveway AND has a shonky looking PC monitor bolted to the dash.
Way to go guys 🤣
Don't forget that grill!
I was just thinking the same about the screen - looks a bit of an afterthought rather than integrated design….
and still sells like hot cake
@@eugenux no it doesn't, German car sales are tanking faster than British Leylands did when everyone realised they kept breaking down.
Way to go Boomer! 😆 Isn't it an utter crock of shit?
Great review Harry. I like it, not a stunner from the front, lovely from the rear and side but undoubtedly a breathtaking feat of engineering.
This looks amazing! I would love one for my next car. Thanks Harry.
Really, I love Harry's Garage, I really do. But please, please, please do a real-world review of an affordable e-car and a proper UK road trip. I'm tired of seeing £90k+ cars going to Europe where the charging infrastructure is way better than Blighty!!
All EVs are overpriced at the moment.
Even electric superminis have a starting price of around £30k, and once a few options are ticked, you're easily looking at a bill of £50k for some of them. For the average household with a budget of around ten grand for the family car, running an EV just isn't viable. And that's before we look at charging infrastructure, which is insufficient at best. The government is going to have to reconsider the 2030 cut off for petrol & diesel new car sales unless this can be improved.
@@jamsxr 'at the moment'. I love your optimism. But just wait until the government start taxing electricity.... do you think they'll let the revenue from fuel just disappear? You ain't seen nothing yet.
Yep, it's like people think they'll be able to run Evs on pennies. All that lost fuel duty will be clawed back, just wait
@@matthewgodwin3050 But you're assuming big car manufacturers will still be making fuel cars......!!
Looks bloody awful, big fan of 80's BMW, but this is shocking styling, saw a 635i friday in red, stunning car. This is a horrible mistake. As for the stupid grill....
2002tii or 323i any day over this soulless monstrosity.
@@neilrafferty2097 or the E36 or my E39 M5. Even my 2017 440i looks a lot better. This huge grill thing BMW is into is worse than the Bangle-era BMW crap - and that's saying something!
It may be quiet, but that means you'll hear people being sick as you drive past.
@@pete540Z Great cars and a simple streamlined model range in the 80s .
Good job then that these are for BMW’s 2020’s customers. Funny how all the modern BMW haters are anything but the current target customer. The ‘grill’ is no longer a grill anyway it’s to hide all the modern driving aids.
Needs auto-drive feature (having checked no pasengers) to auto-launch off the white cliffs of Dover
Well Harry, it is preffered to reverse park, because of the safety. I was looking at some statistics and numbers of accidents are pretty significant when reverse exiting parking
I think your wrong on the charger location, I always want to back my car onto the drive. Much more convenient to have the port on the rear.
Was fully expecting the Chiron today, haha. Love every Harry video.
Harry’s farm as well ❤️✌️
@@MrMarcol29 Anything Harry. Damn those fertalizer prices! And that fence is AWESOME! lol
Snap!
Same here haha
I saw one in a dealership last week. In the flesh, it looks far worse than it does on camera, both inside and out. Over £100k for iX is a complete joke.
These cars are brutally badly made they aren't worth £20k and that's the truth. Abysmal build quality that I haven't seen since BMC. Just had to fully respray one on warranty as the customer had picked up several issues with bodywork including panel gaps and boot seal leaking into trunk, the worst part is he clocked some of the issues and the horrific orange peel when he went to pick it up but they conned him into taking it on the promise it would get sorted, they then refused to repaint it till he got a solicitor involved and he said that was £1100 in total. The guy drove it in here raging, I had to point out that he bought the silly thing and that we ain't BMW we are subcontracted to fix their new cars if they are damaged or bellow par before they are sold. Worst still BMW phoned the police on him when he dumped the car outside the dealer with a letter refusing to drive the car again till it was fixed. It needed a new gearbox a few month afterwards as he phoned us asking if anything we had done in the painting process required the gearbox being touched in any way. Still raging at BMW he said the last one he bought was just as bad so he's done with then now. Glad I buy Japanese cars only.
Either it's one of those timeless designs everyone hates on at first but it'll still look good in 10, 15 years time or it will end up among the Pontiac Aztec down the bottom of car hell. I guess we'll see but I still think it's ugly. Looks like a really fat guinea pig with overgrown front teeth.
@@fakevirus8828 is somebdy paying you to spread this nonsense? This is 7-series quality vehicle. I know because I owned 7-series and have driven iX for a week.
@@marlasota I think it is a case by case basis, some model months/years are fine when build in a certain factory and other are not.
I do worry what has happened to BMW since it jumped on the climate emergency bandwagon.
These cars used to have character, luxury and panache.
Such a shame.
So what's the actual electric cost at home to fully charge this ??
And are cars this heavy (and fast ) more or less dangerous than a normal X5 ??
Octopus Go for new customers now is 7.5p per kWh, so about £6.00 for 200 miles.
Thought that had been put on hold during the present fuel crisis?
@@shanedavis9166 - I joined Octopus Go two weeks ago
Newtons laws apply - the heavier the vehicle and the faster it is going the more kinetic energy it has to transfer into whatever it hits. More energy means more danger to us squishy meat-bags - you'd be pretty safe inside this as it'll be designed to transfer impact energy away from the cabin - but whatever you hit is going to have to absorb and/or transfer that energy somehow - so bad news if you are in a little car and you get moshed by this thing. Of course if the impact causes a thermal runaway event in the battery packs... well you'll probably have a nastier death than the guy you smooshed.
@@Beer_Dad1975 - you need to drive new EV’s. The safety systems in them make it very hard for the driver to crash. They will stop the car automatically before the impact. My Polestar 2 auto stopped when a school kid ran out in front of me, before I could even react. If I’m reversing and someone is walking on the pavement behind the car it knows; Sometimes it can be a bit annoying as it’s too sensitive and the stop can be brutal.
Mine in Thailand at 31°C driving on the motorway at 110 kmph between Korat to our place in Phuket, depart at 90%, and charge 4 times for the 15 hour 31 minute route which is approximately 1091 km
Harry, the charge point thing, either way, the owner will have to turn the vehicle around eventually. Your focused on it taking the extra 30 seconds when you get home instead of when your leaving.
If BMW are starting with a clean sheet, why still design a car with a bonnet, as though it needs that space for an engine? They can put the drivetrain and batteries anywhere in the car, so can use completely new layouts...
Great point this and i was actually thinking along the same lines as yourself . What got me thinking along those lines was the sound ( motors etc ) while Harry was driving . Reminded me ( when i closed my eyes ) , of sitting on a tram !!
I think they are keeping traditional styling during the ’transition’ phase so as not to scare off the early adapters.
@@davidnorton5887 Absolutely - the last thing BMW want is to scare off potential customers with a car that looks too different. Think of the Ford Sierra going back - slated at first because of the looks but only later becoming accepted and changing much of car design.
The only thing that impressed me was the low CD factor. But that’s like saying you married your wife because she was great at mental arithmetic.
@@johncarter7355 But the CD figure has to be multiplied by the frontal area, which in this case is pretty large.
I laughed at that front end, then laughed harder at the price. And I'm in pain after Harry stated the charging times. So I can only conclude this is a joke.
Charging times is the least funny thing about it. Most cars are parked long enough to fully charge at their spot, daily.
Charge whilst you sleep - no issue
And a not very funny one at that.
@@SDK2006b You sleep for 2 days? Lets face it, the only people buying this car will be rich virtue signallers to put in the fleet. This thing is totally irrelevant to most people.
@@ralphmillais5237 - nope, very rarely do you run an EV down to 0%. Mostly you charge EV’s from 10-80%. With this car 50% battery gives you 150+ miles - Most people do that much driving in a week! (Average UK daily miles is 20 miles).
There are no aspects of this vehicle that would make me part with any amount of money. The mass creation of such an ugly status symbol is probably not the best idea when trying to combat climate change regardless of it’s zero emissions ability.
Zero emissions, oh yeah, apart from the power station!
@@barry5138 And the extraction of the raw maierials for those humoungous, 56 hour recharge batteries. 56 hours.... !!!🤣
The emissions are just shifted....so while the car in operation is "zero emissions" the power generated by charging is isn't', not mention all the fossil fuels used in mining rare earth, lithium, nickel and other metals for it and the associated environmental issues associated with said mining. EV's aren't really saving the environment or "saving money", but I do think hybrid's with Atkinson cycle or similar super efficient ICE is a practical solution to many issues, especially in regard to city/urban driving.(plus the battery is much smaller)
@@nickb3968 ....and don't forget all those plastics that constitute the body the battery (and you) ride around in...those are derived from dino juice.
@@keefr22 these car owners couldn't cate less about the environment. It is just a show of wealth and even more conspicuous consumption.
Harry, regarding the location of the charging socket. Perhaps BMW are trying to encourage you to back into a bay, because Health and Safety Advisers recommend that drivers are able to drive straight out of the bay!
I’m surprised that you don’t understand having the charge port at the back. Many car parks only allow reverse parking and it is best practice as far as I understand.
Does it come with a teeth whitening kit? ☺️ Great review by Harry, always enjoyable to watch. I just find most electric cars repulsive. It’s ridiculous that we even have to mention things like ‘I didn’t have heater or ac on..’ when reviewing any modern car. Too many angles, a messy design all round. I really do not see why this is twice the price of a Tesla, Ioniq 5 or Kia EV6. Back a few years ago in the ICE world there was a big difference in say the BMW 5 series and a top spec Hyundai or KIA. In the BMW or Mercedes you got better engines, more characterful engines and better interiors. EVs seem to me to be an equaliser. They are all fast, quiet, do 200 odd miles and take too long to charge. The most expensive ones make the least sense to me. Keep up the good work Harry. Enjoyed many of the other comments left.
Thanks for your comment, it's becoming a very confusing landscape where we are now being asked to pay more for better range, rather than greater performance and luxury, as used to be the case with ICE powered cars. Odd.
Who told you BMW have good engines? They are the worst alongside Audi. 22% failure rates in some of them and the s/b58 lump, the one BMW fans called "the next 2JZ" has been found out as so bad it can't even do 30k miles reliably on a stage1. Older BMW 6pots are over rated to the point its comical as any mechanic or indeed true car guy knows they sucked, they had constant fan issues, cylinder liners broke up, hydraulic lifters, oil starvation to crank journals and later Vanos issues that were so bad that brand new cars failed the vanos test. Their diesels are terrible too especially the N47 and all era of the inline 6 swallowing their own swirl flaps and dying premature deaths. Even a lowly VW PD1.9 engine embarrasses all BMW engine designs.
These days a top spec Hyundai is very nearly the equal of a BMW.
@@scottthomson9813 In what way?
@@fakevirus8828 Not so. I have the N47 and it is a great engine. No issues. The N52 inline 6 is a very good engine and it made BMW become renowned. There are some engines with reliability issues but all in all, they are not worse than any other ICE engine with issues, the V10 being an exception. The problem with BMW is that they have many small bits and pieces which fail.
Ugly and horrifically over-priced, the future of BMW doesn't look good.
But it's no more ugly and overpriced than its competition. I would agree if this was an outlier, but it's not. This is how cars are going. As with houses, I think the end goal is to stop people buying them and to rent/lease everything. Nobody will care how long anything lasts when they get a new one every 2/3 years.
@@TheDoosh79 Maybe, this is intentional to make battery car BAD and keep pertol. ;-)
@@user-sy2mv6my8l No, it's intentional with all cars electric or ICE, they want the drip drip drip of money out of you rather than you owning something outright and keeping it for 15 years.
@@TheDoosh79 Yes it is more ugly than its competition and as a result overpriced
@@TheDoosh79 I do NOT plan to buy/rent/use any battery car!
Looks like BMW totally bypassed the focus testing part of the design process where they ask regular folk, not fellow designers, for their opinion on the new design direction. From what I’ve seen of the comments at least 90% really dislike the front grill. Count me in on that number too!
The hideous front grilles on the new M4 are one of the reasons I haven't swapped my M5 for an M4.
Its big in chin and bmw stopped caring a long time ago. There was a huge backlash when they previewed the hideous grille on the M4 ans they couldny care less. Because it's just about bling bling and showoff now
I saw one of these in the flesh for the first time a couple of hours ago. It's even worse in real life than it looks in the video.
Looks aren't everything but if I were to spend this much money on a car, I wouldn't want to wince every time I looked at it.
@C J B and ugly indeed
But thats just my opinion
Safest way to park is to reverse in, so maybe that's behind the rear charge plug location If you ever go to a car park on a construction site where safety is paramount you will usually see signs telling you to reverse park. This is so you aren't reversing out of a space with poor visibility either side for most of the manoeuvre if you're next to parked vehicles.
Have you driven an i3s Harry? The most fun EV you can buy, honest! Yes, it'll onyl do 140 miles on a charge, but for those of us who don't drive lots of miles, the near 1,200kg mass and carbon chassis give it hilariously fun dynamics! In the real world, it's also plenty fast enough, and more than fast enough to be fun (you can actually use the performance unilke any modern performance car....)
Great review as always. £114k, really….? When is reality going to kick in, like electric charge point rage…?
What a total "see you next Tuesday" that Mercedes driver was.
About the same as estimated starting price of new Lotus SUV - don't want that either!
It's a good deal considering it rides better than the electric S class (EQS) and its performance and refinement.
I back into every single parking stall, for convenience... Lol. Great video!
I got 3 phase installed on my new house. I could see this becoming a issue. There's a push for all new homes to be 3 phase
You've nailed it Harry... those full charge from empty timings are what prevent most EV's from really killing it in the marketplace.
Talk to anyone with home charging and they'll tell you they dont typically drain the battery to 0 and quite often dont bother to charge to 100% because that last 10% takes exponentially longer. A 0-100% charge is not practical unless you know youre going to go on a long trip.
A 7kw home charger can give 200 miles in 10 hours overnight. That's enough for most people.
The "in conclusion" is spot on on every single point. From towing to BMW building to charging... Thanks again. 👍👍👍
Sorry Harry, the first review that really isn’t for me. The BMW is a shocker.
And it's ONE HUNDRED AND FIFTEEN THOUSAND POUNDS 😂
@@ChocolateFrog oh man 🙁 I didn’t get that far in the review
This actually makes the X5 look like good value!
Anyone buying modern German cars needs their head checken. Utter heaps
@@fakevirus8828 take a look at Lexus pricing or JLR. The 7 series is a bargain in comparison.
C'mon Harry, we don't care about hybrid electric crossover vehicles! Show us more of the classics! 🙏
Tesla Model X also has a 2500 kg towing capacity. I’ve towed my Lotus to the track many times and it was always a very smooth experience. Range is almost halved when towing of course which adds charge time but the smoothness of the drivetrain makes it a more relaxing experience than ICE towing.
What difference does it make if you need to reverse up to the charger instead of front on You still need to reverse at some point ? That like moaning that the fuel filler was on the N/S of my last car and my new one is on the O/S ??
It's really not a good look, It's hideous. I know time and familiarity will soften it but no one said things like that about the E38 or E39 and in 25 years no one will be cherishing this iX.
94k for something so ugly and fat , well done bmw keep up the good work
Backing up to park is actually considered safer. You take more care to park properly, the car turns better (like a forklift) and when leaving you don't back up into traffic and see easier.
Also when you are not in a hurry, you can save that time to make it faster to leave when you are in a hurry... :)
always always park boot in
@@user-ht9fr6eh9u Parking forwards at supermarkets is only my exception to that rule - loading the boot isn't convenient if you have to squeeze the trolley between cars to reach the boot.
The quietness is very apparent in the video, super quiet. I also like the sound of the car.
Loved the bit where the other car muscled their way into the charging bay! Brilliant - thanks for a thoroughly enjoyable vid. 👍
Surprised not more mention of the Merc at the charge station. What an epic piece of shithousery - unbelievable 'my time is more valuable than your time' selfishness. Should have shared a pic of the tool at the wheel, Harry.
And then the waste of space cannot even reverse into the space first time. What a p***k!
Strikes me by the content of the comments below that BMW have got this and other models completely wrong in most departments. I'm not sure I'd be wanting to be head of marketing for this range.
@Harry’s Garage Sorry Harry but at 115K or 95K, it is most definitely NOT a “normal” family car, unless the family income is 300K p.a.
In three years it’s battery capacity will be at 80% max…
I’m certain that this EV bubble will burst when logical people finally realise the constraints of an EV.
An engineer recently stated that todays EV’s on a technological level are where ICE where in the 30’s!
I agree it's not a normal family car. Even here in Norway with all our subsidies this is an expensive machine.
I disagree with pretty much everything else you say though :)
- Batteries do degrade, but nowhere near that fast. Current evidence suggests that 90% retention after 5 years / 100k miles should be what you can expect.
- EVs are less constrained than you think. We have a Model 3 and it takes us 850km to my in-laws in exactly the same time as the ICE we used to drive there. It took us 4000km round northern Norway last summer without any inconvenience at all, and i expect it to take us 6000km round europe (including the UK) this coming summer. The only real inconvenience is if you don't have the ability to charge at home or work. That for sure is limiting.
- I think your engineer needs to look a bit more closely. The electric motors, AC-DC converters and control electronics in a 2022 EV are mind-bogglingly advanced.
To open the bonnet there are two cables latches each side of dashboard roughly where usual bonnet release is, not that theres much to see other than pipes and cables
Does the BMW energy impact assessment include the materials, or is it just the assembly?
Hideous! BMW have completely lost it! They used to look smart and business like, but now it could easily just be a Hyundai or something!
I think the Hyundai Ioniq 5 looks better than the BMW and it is every bit as large inside!
Wait, I thought I was watching a Hyundai review
That's an insult to Hyundai.
My 2020 X5 had iDrive 7 and I was able to set up the system pretty well, so important operations were automatically set. My 2022 BMW iX50 arrives tonight at the Port of Baltimore. I look forward to spending a lot of time setting up iDrive 8. From what I have learned from the UA-cam videos, I can pretty much pre-program much of the options for my usual driving habits. I have no intention of learning iDrive 8 as I am driving. I had two test drives of the iX50 and I am in love.
I wonder what the environmental impact is of burning through tyres at an explosive rate with all that torque???
I’d struggle with the looks but that insight into charging times is often overlooked I’m sure. Although I assume few people need to do 300 mile days back to back
Excellent review. I am considering this car as my next but why should a good part of the car - the hood - be inaccessible to the owner? There could be some room inside for extra luggage but despite that, my response is, “Hey BMW, this car is my property so open up!”. The other issue is range. We drive to my birthplace in the country from Perth to the little seaside town of Esperance along the southern coast, some 750km from Perth. I would hate to break the whole day journey for a 3 hr recharge pit stop in Ravensthorpe before reaching Esperance.
The huge grille is apparently intended for the Chinese market. We're not in China. It would be nice if BMW brings a European version on the market, a car that looks at least a bit presentable. Never mind the tech, this monstrosity is just too ugly to consider.
I can’t stop laughing at the ridiculous name, and the fact that there’s no frunk/the bonnet won’t even open! But the exterior design is very strange, it’s clean but fussy at the same time. No more traditional BMW angel eye headlights, and of course an overstylized version of that grille…
It’s not a huge grill tho. It’s actually too small for the size of the car! The concept looked really good. Much bigger. This is dreadful!
Are they all visually impaired over there ?
False information guess you just decided to make up? Umm have you seen higher end Chinese EV’s like Nio they are pretty and not ugly like this BMW. Chinese dont want these ugly BMW’s either.
Why can't manufacturers build entertainment systems that aren't laggy?
Look how long it takes to switch into the heating menu.
Thats a safety issue on one hands as its even more distracting when driving, and on the other hand someone paid over 100k for that thing!
More that than it is a bespoke hardware/software package and they still can't manage.
This is true for pretty much any manufacturer of any price-range.
As ever Harry, a sensible review and whilst I am sure that it is an excellent car, the design is visually awful. I was interested in your comments about recharging it and that would apply to most 'long range' cars because I have always thought that range as an issue would always be secondary to the time it takes to charge it.
how this is sensible?, does it have value to anything that's happen in the real world of motoring?
A 3 tone gazillion hp electric SUV will save the planet?, does anyone who can afford a 100k suv have the means for only one vehicle?
As a tech demonstrator, ok, BMW did a good job; but, as a car, this is just an overwwight, limited range, uber expensive, useless vehicle.
@@eugenux I commented that the review was sensible. My view of EVs generally is that the technology is massively under cooked and with it seems a roughly 40k price tag, massively over priced. As for the price of this BMW, at over £100k, total nonsense.
Just an update: Though I don't think it was this particular model/specification, I saw the same body shaped BMW as this pulling out of a car park the other day and if there is any doubt and despite how technically good it may be, this is without doubt one of the ugliest cars on the road !
Is it so less convinient to back up when parking, you still need to turn around the car when leaving.... And a few of the companies I've been sub-contracted to demand backing in when at a company parking lot
I would have thought that most people actually reverse into any given parking spot, hence the charging ports at the back??
While I'm not in love with the looks, I don't find them as offensive (whatever that means in car styling context) as others and I give BMW credit for at least trying something different. As well as being super refined by all accounts the iX rides very well too. As highlighted by Harry, the issue for me - which is shared with most EVs - is the weight of batteries and therefore the whole car, impacting only the dynamics, but also its efficiency.
In Germany the majority of houses have 3-phase so 11kW is standard and if you are luck (and ask the local electricity supplier nicely) then one can have 22kW. (Or charging 2 cars at 11kW... 😁)
…and about all the people who happen to be living in apartments?
@@thesaint2700 they also have 3-phase and therefore 11kW
115,00 pounds FOR THAT!!!!!......I mean , would one look back at that after parking with pride or horror. A six year child could draw that shape , and as for 3 tons.........Ridiculous!!
Agreed. I think this "vehicle" is far too expensive and there is no justification whatsoever in needing to buy something like this.
This could seriously finish BMW if they aren't careful.
Harry, I bet the bonnet does open. Check in the front passenger footwell and I bet you’ll find a removable panel that has the hood release hidden behind it, most likely painted bright red trying to make you scared of pulling it. The ESQ Merc also has an un-openable bonnet and what I describe is how you get into it.
you can actually open the front end of it, they just make it as hard as possible. Similar situation with the Mercedes’ EQS in the footwell there is a small panel that unscrews and then there is a handle to pop the bonnet.