review Ordering and quick review of iX Xdrive40

[Hugo_za]

Very nice and average cost of a full charge?

Mostly free actually since there's free charging all over the place (gym, shopping malls, etc). At home a full charge would cost $11-ish

 

[Spanky]

Any further updates or insights now that you've had her a decent while?

 

[Hugo_za]

Any further updates or insights now that you've had her a decent while?

Yup it's been almost a year now (her production birthday was 02/03/2023) and I am about 13,000km in.

Positives:
* Range is better than BMW claimed, and the 40 should be sufficient for most people. I have zero range anxiety and we have done plenty of long trips. Naturally our decent charging infrastructure helps with this
* Comfort is top notch. There are so many people complaining about the lack of adjustment in the seats. I have done several trips that saw me behind the wheel for 8 hours and I had zero comfort issues at all. I would go so far as to say that the IX seats are more comfortable than the traditional multifunction seats found in top of range cars like 7-series
* Ride and handling are excellent for the size and weight. It's no sports coupe but it does go really well, and the instant torque remains addictive
* It's a head turner. There are less than 70 on the road in NZ and it gets plenty of attention
* Material quality is holding up superbly, and the car looks brand new. No issues with interior surfaces or leather at all
* BMW has continued to add new functions like remote control parking and additional drive modes OTA which are welcome little additions

Not so positives:
* BMW kept shifting the goalposts with L3 autonomous driving. Originally IX was going to get this via OTA, but that ship seems to have sailed, with i7 now being the poster-child for L3
* iDrive 8.5 has just been announced and there's a big question mark about existing IXs being updated OTA. There's plenty of unhappiness about this in the community, and BMW has not done much to give a clear answer
* Software issues, hardware and recalls plague this model range, but that is to be expected from a 1st run production model. My personal IX has been pretty flawless, but others have had really bad luck. It does seem though that the issues are affecting the 50 and M60 models more than the 40
* The navigation in NZ is rather poor. Not so much the maps and ability to route you from points a to b, but more around searching for chargers and doing EV routing. In other markets this function is much better developed. BMW has not been able to give a satisfactory update on this

Overall I am pleased with the IX. It does exactly what I expected. I guess it's been a little less "wow" than I would have liked, but then again I spent plenty of time in dealer demos before getting mine so there was not much for me to discover when I finally took delivery. I was debating between IX and IX3 last year, and were I faced with the same decision again today I would probably take the IX3. It does most of the same things for around $60k less.

IX remains a better purchase than Audi e-Tron and Jaguar iPace, even if you have to pay R70,000 for the leather interior option. Reviewers have also rated it better than the Mercedes EQE-SUV and even in some ways the EQS-SUV, but those two Benz models are essentially vapourware since they remain basically unavailable in most markets.