It has been a month since i took ownership of a BMW iX3.
This is my first BMW, and I come to the marque after a long relationship with Citroën. This latter point is not insignificant because it speaks to what I look for in a car, and – if one were to lapse in to stereotype – the two marques have traditionally appealed to quite different clienteles.
On the face of it, my particular unit of the iX3 falls squarely in to stereotype, with its Sophisto Grey Brilliant Effect paintwork, its M Shadowline trim (including the consequent absence of chrome detailing), and its 20-inch alloy wheels. The latter are noteworthy because they are shaped for low wind resistance but are of a ride-destroying diameter.
Yet they are not.
The iX3 continues to surprise and delight me, most notably in the quality of its ride comfort. With adaptive dampers under the moniker of Adaptive M Suspension, the iX3 has a pillow-soft ride and an imperious waft. There is a hushed absence of noise, vibration and harshness, aided no doubt by its double-glazing.
The supremely serene ride quality of the iX3 is at odds with the general thrustiness of its Calvin Luk-penned proportions, and I still scratch my head at how it has been achieved without being suspended through a pneumatic medium.
Beyond the enigma of its ride quality, there are many other aspects of the car which delight.
I am not generally a fan of facelifts, but I do think the tail lamps have been particularly well interpreted. Visibility from the cabin is very good, in large part due to the proportions of the glasshouse and the properly large side mirrors. These seem mundane things to discuss, but they do contribute to the overall feeling of securité de conduite.
One cannot talk about the sense of driving security the iX3 imparts, without an extensive discussion of the degree of intelligent assistance the car affords. This manifests itself not only in the headline act of Level 2+ autonomy (through the Driving Assistant Professional suite) but also through more subtle means. Two examples to do with navigation are first the way the routings on the (properly-sized) Head Up Display dynamically orientate their position to give the driver a more holistic understanding, say, during roundabouts, and second the way the oral delivery of the estimated drive time is given not immediately upon setting off (which is a time of high cognitive load on the driver) but shortly afterwards, once the car is en route and the driver has more bandwidth to deal with the provision of secondary information.
As for autonomous driving once underway, the AI is truly well calibrated. I have not encountered false positives, unlike during my test drive of the Mercedes EQC. Autonomous driving on the iX3 can cope with vehicular traffic cutting in to one’s lane, and with motorbikes weaving in and out.
As a geographer, I love that the car is not only locationally aware, but locationally aware at different scales. At the regional scale, the car is aware of its location through GPS. Such awareness is tapped by battery management and adaptive recuperation with respect to topography and the road network. The excellence of the adaptive recuperation has helped me match the official WLTP energy consumption figures. Second, at the hyperlocal scale, the car is aware of its location with respect to other vehicular traffic, using its combination of cameras and radar. Its location awareness at this scale of operation allows the iX3 to achieve its afore-mentioned degree of autonomy, including lane-changing without driver intervention.
I use autonomous driving on the iX3 on a daily basis, and it just matches the wafty demeanour of the automobile so well.
The iX3 appeals on so many levels. The petrolhead in me loves its 43 : 57 rear-biased weight distribution and the fact that it is rear-engined, rear-wheel-driven. The physicist in me loves that its centre of gravity is lower than other X3s due to its full-electric architecture. The data scientist in me loves the excellence of calibration of its AI. The geographer in me loves that its current-excited motor contains no rare earth elements.
But most of all the philosopher in me is enthralled by the enigma the BMW iX3 represents. On the face of it, this is the most powerful, most torquey, most accelerative automobile I have owned. Yet it is also the most cosseting to drive. The sheer serenity of its passage over the vilest of road perturbations is astounding. This is an automobile which weighs 2.3 tonnes yet wafts like a cloud. There truly is some magic in this magic carpet.
[with deep gratitude to Patsy Chua, Eddie Ho, and the team at Performance Motors Ltd. thank you for going above and beyond.]
