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00:00G'day, I'm Paul. So, it seems like every week there's a new EV rolling out from a manufacturer,
00:06and this is the latest one. It is the BMW iX3. Well, when I say latest, latest to Australia,
00:12because this has been out for a little while overseas, but we finally get the facelifted
00:16version here in Australia. Now, this competes with things like the Mercedes-Benz EQC,
00:22the Jaguar I-PACE, the Audi e-tron, and this is priced from just under $115,000,
00:28and it's only available in one specification. Now, the price is pretty sharp when you look
00:32at the rest of the competitors, which are all much more expensive, but admittedly,
00:36most of those offer all-wheel drive as well. Today, we're going to do a detailed review of
00:41this car, so if you do want to skip ahead to other parts of the review, you can use those
00:44time codes on the screen, or if you're on YouTube, scroll down and use the chapters below, and if
00:48you haven't done so already, subscribe to our channel and press the bell icon. That's going
00:52to tell you every single time we drive a car with blue highlights. Now, let's talk exterior
00:57design. You've got six external colours to pick from, and thankfully, they're all free. Also,
01:02thankfully, all of the blue highlights are a no-cost option, so you don't need everyone
01:07to know that you're driving an EV if you don't want to, so that's good news, I reckon.
01:11Now, what about the design? Well, this looks very much like an X3, and I think that's probably one
01:16of the best things about this, because I think the iX, which we just reviewed recently, you can
01:20watch our review of that by clicking up here, it was probably just a little out there in terms of
01:24design, whereas this, I think, is still a very smart-looking design. The latest facelift to this
01:29brings with it just a bit of a nip and tuck in terms of the way that it appears out on the road.
01:33So, you do get this front section that looks a little bit different to the regular X3,
01:37because behind here, you've got a set of louvers that open and close for cooling, and that means
01:41that when the car doesn't need that additional cooling, they just crack open, and when it doesn't,
01:44they close up. The interesting thing here under the bonnet, in the iX, the bonnet doesn't open.
01:49Here, it does open, but it's got this giant plastic cover on it, and there's room under
01:53the cover, so I don't know why they didn't install storage there, so it is kind of a weird one.
01:57Down at the bottom here, you've got a radar, and then a couple of slats there for redirecting air.
02:02More of that blue highlight down the side there. Sort of full LED headlights, they're matrix LED
02:08as well, really good at night time, give you excellent vision down the road. Around the side
02:11here, we have a set of 20-inch alloy wheels. For Australia, the iX3 comes with the M Sport package,
02:17so you'll see the M badge here and here, and also a very cool-looking aero wheel, so this is designed
02:22to reduce the amount of drag that the alloy wheel surface creates when it is just powering down the
02:27roads. Now, you're thinking of off-roading? Well, get that idea out of your head. It has a 179mm
02:32ground clearance, which is kind of okay, but it is just rear-wheel drive here in Australia. Also,
02:38made in China, which is where they build the Tesla Model 3 for the Australian market.
02:42You've got a set of Vaux vents just tucked into there, indicator built into that wing
02:46mirror with a little camera there for the 360 camera, privacy glass. Around the back here,
02:50you've got these giant blue scoops, which is where the exhaust used to be. LED taillights,
02:56these look really nice and smart, and I love that frosted finish on those as well. Another set of
03:01those fake vents, and then iX3 badging just here with a shark fin aerial up the top. Now, what do
03:08you think about the design? Do you think that it's good that it looks just like an X3, or do you
03:11think it needed a futuristic new design to match its EV presence? Let me know down there. So, we're
03:17in the iX3. We'll start off with the keys. So, you've got unlock, lock, boot, the roundel that
03:23you can configure, a little bit of metal trim around the outside there, and then blank on the
03:29back. Now, this is a proximity sensing key, so you can just grab the door handle, and then once
03:33you're inside, you press the very blue start button to kick things over. Now, the interesting
03:38thing with this car is BMW was boasting about the sound being sort of orchestrated by Hans Zimmer,
03:45so there's a little bit of cool stuff to know about the car. In terms of the design, though,
03:51it looks very much like an X3, and that is a really good thing in my opinion, because I think
03:55the X3 is beautifully presented inside. You can see there's materials they've used along the dash
03:59there, the big infotainment screen up the top there. There is a fair bit of piano black around
04:04here, which is a little unfortunate, but for the most part, I do like the way that they've shown
04:08it here, and this car really doesn't have that many options, so when you do buy it from BMW,
04:12it comes fully loaded with virtually every single thing that you need, so it is a pretty sort of
04:17impressive setup as standard. Now, what about your touch points? So, that is firm-ish, and then on the
04:23door, it's firm-ish as well. How firm are they? Well, we've got our durometer, we've tested the
04:27main surfaces in this cabin. If you want to see how this car compares to others that we've tested
04:31before, have a look at the link in the description. Build quality. So, I mentioned earlier this is
04:36made in China. A lot of our other BMWs that come to Australia are made in South Africa,
04:41the US or Germany, and this feels built like a tank, all nice and solid. What about our door?
04:50It sounds really nice and solid. Now, infotainment. So, it's driven by this
04:54big screen up the top here. It's a 12.3-inch display. This still runs OS 7, so we recently
05:00reviewed OS 8 in the new BMW iX, so this is the previous generation of iDrive. In my opinion, OS 8
05:06is a huge step forward compared to this version here, but this is what you've got to work with
05:12here in the iX3, so we'll have a quick look at that. You have shortcut buttons down the side
05:15there. It's all driven down here by the iDrive controller, which also has shortcut buttons,
05:20and then finally, you have configurable controls down the bottom that, as you hover over them,
05:25they do different functions, and then when you push them in, it goes to that function.
05:29It's also capable of doing gesture control, so you can do stuff like that,
05:36but as you can see, it sometimes doesn't work, and I think it is such a pointless feature,
05:40but anyway, it does it, and it is there. It also acts as a touchscreen as well, so you can just
05:44press this to start moving between those menus, and then you can, of course, configure all of the
05:48cards here on the main screen to do whatever you want them to do. On the radio front, you have AM,
05:53FM, DAB plus digital radio. This car comes standard with a 16-speaker Harman Kardon sound
06:00system. Excellent sound system, very nice quality, and it's cool to see that this comes with literally
06:05the bee's knees of sound systems as standard fitment. Then on your smartphone mirroring,
06:09you have both Apple CarPlay and Android Auto. Apple CarPlay is wireless. Look at this. That is
06:16very quick, very sharp, and takes up that entire screen, which I think is really impressive,
06:22and this is what Android Auto looks like. Android Auto is also wireless, and then it is nice and
06:27fast. Have a look at that. Very, very impressive. This, of course, also has satellite navigation
06:33built into the native infotainment system, and also voice recognition, which you activate here
06:38on the steering wheel. Ahead of the driver is another big display, and also a head-up display.
06:43Now, with this display here, you can change through all of your menu items on the right-hand
06:47side using this little button. It'll take you through trip computer, audio, and all that kind
06:51of thing. It's a pretty basic setup. It's not quite as advanced as something like the BMW iX,
06:57and then when you switch through drive modes, you can see how the screen changes there depending on
07:01which drive mode you choose, and then with the head-up display, all of your functions are
07:05controlled here, so you can easily select different radio stations just by sliding up and down and
07:10then clicking on the station that you're after. Now, moving on to safety technology. So, you have
07:15autonomous emergency braking that works both forwards and reverse. You have rear cross traffic
07:19alert and auto-dimming rear vision mirror. Radar cruise control. You have a blind spot monitor
07:24built into the wing mirror. You've got lane departure warning and a lane keeping assistant,
07:29along with a semi-autonomous steering function. Works okay, nothing amazing, and then on the
07:33parking front, you have both front and rear parking sensors and a 360 camera. I'll show you
07:37what that looks like. There it is there, so that's your view out the back, and then you have the top
07:41down view. You can then select different angles there depending on what you want to look at.
07:45It's okay, it's not amazing. You can see a little bit blurry there when you try and actually get a
07:48better view. I do love this feature though. The reverse assistant remembers your last 50 metres of
07:54reverse travel, and what it's able to do is navigate that route on your behalf. So, if you do get stuck
07:59in a narrow one-way street, it will get you out of there. We actually shot a video explaining how
08:03that works and demonstrating it. You can watch it by clicking up here, but on the parking front,
08:08it's a pretty straightforward setup. Righto, let's chat about practicality, and we'll start off with
08:13your connectivity. So, you have one USB-A port down here, and then in the centre console, you
08:19have a USB-C port. There is also a 12-volt outlet hidden just in there. In terms of your phone, where's
08:25it going to live? Well, you've got wireless phone charging down there, so you can whack the phone
08:29down there if you want to. The phone can kind of squeeze into your cup holder as well a little bit.
08:33Speaking of cup holder, coffee. Does it fit my coffee? Yes, it does. It fits my little baby
08:39coffee, and the lid does not come off. As verified this morning, I didn't spill a drop. It's got
08:43teeth on the side there as well, so that will hold our bottle in without any dramas. This can fit
08:48inside the door too. Let's try our big bottle. Look at that. That is a big old door bin. Very
08:55impressive. Other storage, you've got your centre console here, reasonably sized, nothing sort of too
09:00crazy, and then you have a glove box as well. And your comfort. So, you have dual-zone automatic
09:07climate control. You have heated seats for the front row. On seating comfort. So, the seats
09:13actually look pretty cool. I quite like this design. You've got the blue stitching inside,
09:16stitching across the centre there, and they're quite sort of huggy in terms of the way that
09:20they're set up. In terms of seat adjustment, both the driver and front passenger have electric seat
09:24adjustments, so the seat goes forwards and backwards. The base lifts up and it goes down,
09:29so does the entire seat. You have electric adjustment for your bolsters to hug you in.
09:34You have a manually extendable front section, and then memory for the driver's seat. In terms
09:40of the steering wheel, it's manually adjustable, offers both tilt and reach adjustment, and then
09:45on our reach test, all of this stuff is easy to reach while you're driving. So, second row of the
09:50iX3. Look, knee room is reasonably good. Toe room is good. Headroom is excellent. Love this panoramic
09:57roof, so it's a sunroof as well. Looks really nice, and plenty of vision out of that. What about
10:02your other creature comforts? Well, you've got these little nets in the back of the seats to hold
10:06your documents in, or whatever you want to carry. You've got a third zone of climate control down
10:10here, two USB-C ports, air vents. Then in addition to that, you have a centre armrest here. When that
10:17rolls out, you've got two cup holders, so I'll show you how that works. Bang, one goes in there,
10:22and then one goes in there as well, and then in addition to that, you have a little hidey hole
10:27just there. Your bottle will also comfortably fit inside the door. This also comes down as well,
10:33so if you do need access to the boot, it's a clever little setup, and in addition to that,
10:38you have ISOFIX points on the two outboard seats, and then top tether points as well. So,
10:43really nice place to be seated, and like I said before, it just feels like any other iX3, which is
10:48one of the big advantages. The downside, though, is that you still have this
10:51driveline hump. It doesn't need that because it is electric, but anyway. And finally, our window test.
10:59See if it goes all the way down. Oh, Bob's your uncle, look at that. Very impressive. Now, let's
11:05talk cargo space. So, you've got a power tailgate. Once that gets out of the way, you are exposed to
11:11a little over 500 litres of cargo space. Beneath the cargo floor, you have storage for your cables,
11:16and then a little storage nook just a little further in there as well. There is no spare
11:21tyre here. Over to the sides, you have a little bit of extra storage with netting on this side,
11:26and then in addition to that, you have hooks down the bottom here and also at the front of those
11:30seats. 12-volt outlet, and then a hook off to the side as well. I'll show you what it looks like
11:34with our bags in there. Now, our suitcase. I don't know where it is. It has been stolen, lost,
11:43something. So, this is going to be our replacement for the moment until we get a new one. It is
11:46around the size of a carry-on bag on the plane, so it gives you an idea of how much room you have.
11:51Not a bad size boot there in terms of the available space. What you can do to increase the
11:57space just a little bit more is drop your second row, and that cranks it up to a little over
12:021,500 litres of cargo space. Now, let's talk charging. So, it has an 80-kilowatt-hour battery,
12:08usable is around the 72-kilowatt-hour mark. You have both AC and DC charging. On the AC front,
12:14it'll do three-phase charging at up to 11 kilowatts, which is pretty good, and then on the
12:18DC front, it will charge it up to 150 kilowatts. Now, I mentioned this in our review of the BMW iX
12:25that I just don't understand why Tesla, with like the Model 3 Long Range, can do 250 kilowatts of
12:31charging, yet here they're limited to 150. So, and then in the iX, it was like 190 or 195. So,
12:37I don't know, given there is faster technology out there, I don't know why we can't just do
12:40faster charging. But anyway, that's what you have for charging your iX3.
12:47So, we've hit the road in the iX3. Now, I did mention earlier, this is just a single motor
12:53setup, and because BMW, it is a single motor attached to the rear axle. So, this is a rear-wheel
12:59drive electric car, which I think is kind of cool because you're getting the funness of a rear-wheel
13:04drive in a, you know, BMW iX3 package. So, that means it produces 210 kilowatts of power and 400
13:13newton metres of torque. So, it's a decent helping of power and torque there, and I think it really
13:17sort of sits in that good middle band of enough to sort of get up and go, but not enough to sort
13:23of pull your face off too much. So, if we feed on the throttle here, yeah, look, it feels really
13:28good. You can tell, again, because it's rear-wheel drive, you can tell as you get to the upper end of
13:34the throttle position there that it tries to limit how much torque it's sending to the rear,
13:39and earlier today when it was wet, I had everything sort of switched off to see how it would work.
13:43It acts as an open differential effectively, so it won't let you do anything too silly because
13:48it's only sending torque to one side as it goes. It's not really set up as a limited slip differential.
13:53So, it's not a car that you can drive to sort of to drift and have fun with, but it is a car that
13:58has adequate power to sort of get up and going, and then it does all the EV stuff, you know, when
14:02you plant the foot down, there's that instant torque available across that rev band.
14:06Let's talk about economy. So, BMW claims just over 20 kilowatt hours per 100 kilometres.
14:12We are currently sitting on 18.8. Now, that is a really impressive figure, and I'll tell you why.
14:19I'm used to, you know, my Model 3 doing something like 17 kilowatt hours per 100 k's, and that is a
14:24lighter vehicle than this. That's actually a really good number there, and quite efficient for an SUV.
14:30So, it does show you that when they do put effort into it, they can actually bring the
14:34economy of these right down. So, I mentioned earlier, 80 kilowatt hour battery, and it gives
14:39you a driving range of WLTP, a little over 450 kilometres. That's not a bad figure in real life,
14:44you'll probably be getting closer to that 400 kilometre mark in terms of your usable range,
14:48which I think is pretty decent. So, given it is a BMW, is it sportier than the iX feels? Well,
14:54let's pop it into sport mode, so immediately I can feel the ride get much firmer there.
14:59Steering is heavier as well. We'll put it through our corner here.
15:06Yeah, look, it's okay. You know, it doesn't have that torque that you find in dual motor EVs,
15:13where it sort of pins you back in the seat. There's only so much you can send through the
15:16rear wheels before it sort of starts going sideways, but it is dynamic enough. The body
15:20doesn't sit super flat, but given you have the battery seated so low within the cabin,
15:25you do get a lower centre of gravity and it does feel sporty in that sense. It's just not going to
15:31light the world on fire in terms of dynamic response, but it does feel more BMW than the
15:36iX did in that sense. I'll also call out just while we're driving here, you've got a couple
15:40of different regen modes as well. So, in the sport mode, if I roll out of the throttle,
15:46it feels like it's slowing down more aggressively, but I do have the ability to slide it over into
15:52B mode. Now, in B mode, when I roll out of the throttle, it'll actually come to a complete stop,
15:57similar to the Nissan Leaf or, you know, Tesla products as well. It just comes to a complete
16:02stop and then it will just hold the car there for you until you're ready to take off, and then when
16:06you aren't in that B mode, it slows down, but it doesn't come to a complete stop, so it still sort
16:11of rolls along there a little bit and then you eventually have to take over and come to a
16:16complete stop with the car. BMW claims a 0-100 time of 6.8 seconds. This is how it went up against our stopwatch.
16:32Now, what about our road noise? So, we're on our country road here, let's dial it up to highway
16:37speeds. Look, it's okay, there is a degree of tyre noise coming into the cabin. It's definitely
16:43nowhere near as quiet as the iX, and we've got our sine waves here. Let's see what the ride's like.
16:50Yeah, that's really impressive. So, I did complain in our iX review that the ride was way too soft
16:55and it didn't feel very BMW. This, on the other hand, is the opposite. So, the ride is firm-ish
17:01in comfort mode. You've got to remember this is fitted with that M Sport package, so you do feel
17:04that, but it has adaptive damping, so as you move between the three drive modes you have there,
17:09you can feel a progression there in terms of ride firmness and also the way the steering feels.
17:13Now, let's roll this back into comfort mode. What's visibility like? So, the good news is
17:18it's exactly like any other X3. So, I can see clearly down the front of the car there, good
17:22visibility out the front of the cabin. Big wing mirrors as well, they've got a blind spot monitor
17:26built into them, and then visibility out the rear is excellent too. That's a big old envelope there.
17:30In terms of parking, look, this has all of those cameras that I showed you earlier, but the steering
17:35is super light at low speeds and you have a turning circle of a little over 12 metres, so
17:40it's a pretty chunky turning circle, but really isn't the end of the world.
17:46So, the BMW iX3. I was actually surprised by this. It's another one of these cars that is
17:52an internal combustion car that they've converted to electric, but they've actually done a really
17:56good job with it because it's efficient, it's fun to drive, and it just feels like any other BMW,
18:01which I think is important for a lot of consumers that aren't quite ready
18:04to do the leap to those sort of out there designs like the iX that BMW sells as well.
18:09It is significantly cheaper than things like the EQC, the I-PACE and the e-tron.
18:13They're its main competitors in that sense, but I think where it's going to stumble the most is
18:17when the Model Y goes on sale in Australia. At $115,000, that's probably going to get you
18:23something like the performance version of the Model Y, which will be similar in size to this.
18:27It'll be significantly quicker and probably have more range as well. So,
18:30that is worth just keeping in mind, but for the moment, I really just think that this is
18:34a compelling package, and at that price point, it delivers the perfect balance between
18:38a normal car and all the electric stuff that you'd associate with a good EV.
18:43So, let me know in the comments section, have you bought one of these? What's it like to live
18:47with daily, and did you option all the blue stuff so everyone knows that you're being green in your
18:51iX3? I'm keen for your feedback. If you did enjoy this video, please make sure you share it with
18:55your mates and hit the like button, and if you haven't done so already, subscribe to our channel
18:59and press the bell icon. Until next time, take it easy.