BMW iX revealed

UPDATED 12/11/2020 4:00pm: BMW Australia has confirmed the BMW iX for local release in late 2021.

ORIGINAL ARTICLE 12/11/2020 12:01am: The electric SUV concept previously known as the BMW iNEXT has finally become reality with the world debut of the 2021 BMW iX, as the production version of the German car-maker’s first long-range, high-output EV will be called.

Loaded with every piece of driving, connectivity and autonomy technology in the Bavarian brand’s talent pool, the BMW iX will be released globally in the fourth quarter of 2021.

While full details haven’t been announced, the five-seat luxury SUV will be around the same length and footprint as the successful BMW X5, and will offer more than 600km of EV range on the WLTP cycle.

The BMW iX is slated to compete against the Audi e-tron, Jaguar I-PACE, Mercedes-Benz EQC and Tesla Model X, while booming (at least in share value) Chinese start up Nio has made its ES8 a BMW target as well.

“The BMW Group is constantly striving to re-invent itself. That is a central element of our corporate strategy,” BMW Chairman Oliver Zipse insisted. “The BMW iX expresses this approach in an extremely concentrated form.”

The extra weight of a battery pack exceeding 100kWh of energy storage will not hurt its acceleration, with BMW claiming a sub-5.0sec figure for the sprint to 100km/h.

It shares much of its powertrain technology with the iX3 SUV, but it doesn’t share its mostly steel platform.

Instead, the BMW iX shows its affection for the seven-year-old i3 by using an aluminium spaceframe architecture and a carbon-fibre cage (Carbon Cage in BMW-speak), which is visible when the doors are open, as in the discontinued BMW i8. While expensive and extravagant, it’s not as overtly done as the i3’s chassis and body.

There’s no frunk, either, and because the washer fluid is topped up via a neck beneath the BMW badge on the nose, BMW has opted to give it a fixed clamshell bonnet.

While BMW’s full-frontal EV surge began with last month’s iX3 SUV, which arrives in the third quarter of 2021, the iX is the car BMW has promised would deliver the total measure of its EV abilities.

Developed from the concept car known as the iNEXT, the BMW iX will launch with 370kW of power from a pair of iX3 electric motors, delivering it more than 600km of range. That will translate to more than 300 miles of range on the US EPA’s FTP-75 test cycle.

That’s not all, because BMW has tested the powertrain with three motors from the 210kW iX3, delivering up to 530kW of power in prototype form, with two on the rear axle.

It doesn’t stop there though, because the iX will be capable of charging at up to 200kW, delivering a 10 to 80 per cent charge in under 40 minutes, or 120km of EV range in around 10 minutes.

The BMW iX takes the powertrain of the iX3 and lifts it further, because the iX3 has an 80kWh battery pack and the iX’s pack is “more than 100kWh”.

The downside of the bigger fuel tank is that the battery will by necessity weigh at least 650kg by itself, with BMW admitting the car will weigh at least 2.5 tonnes.

The upside is that the batteries are modular and at least 96 per cent recyclable, with each individual cell able to be accessed easily.

The all-wheel drive BMW iX uses a pair of the modular integrated power packs that debuted on the iX3, with the electric motor, power electronics and the single-speed gearbox all squeezed inside a single housing and mounted on the driven axle.

With the iX, that means one at the front and a more powerful one at the rear to retain a sportier, rear-biased feel in cornering.

With no rare-earth minerals in the lithium-ion batteries (and Australian- and Moroccan-sourced lithium), BMW has forced its suppliers to use green power to produce its batteries, saving 10 million tonnes of CO2 a year.

“Technology is driving the advances we need to tackle even the greatest challenges. This applies in particular to climate protection,” Zipse said.

“We are firmly convinced that mobility has to be sustainable if it is to represent a truly outstanding solution. For BMW, premium mobility is not possible without responsibility.”

Like most BMWs, the iX will come in two different customer ‘packs’, and there will be either standard or sports styling, with its more bravely structured front bumper.

It will use a similar wheel and tyre package to the gigantic X7, plus a host of aero-optimised rims, so 22-inch alloys with 275/40 rubber will be the dominant set-up.

The styling is intentionally calm and “monolithic” on the outside and it has clear links to the ground-breaking BMW i3 EV (and the REX range-extender, which is no longer available in Australia), with the glasshouse tapering off to a tab on the C-pillar.

The breaks with BMW traditions continue, with no L-shaped tail-lights (unless you squint into the LED lights) and no Hofmeister kink.

There is a version of the polarising grille language that the iNEXT debuted, then transferred to the 4 Series, though this one is far higher tech than the combustion-powered 4 Series could imagine.

Almost totally closed over, the grille is at once a radar receiver as well as hosting cameras and other sensors, and even has a self-healing technology that can repair minor scratches in 24 hours at room temperature.

A lot of that technology is aimed at edging drivers close towards being able to relax while the car does the work.

The headlights are full LED as standard or Matrix Laser LED as an option, and they’re the thinnest headlights BMW has ever used.

The doors are frameless and there has been a huge focus on aerodynamics as much as styling, to the point where the improved aero (a drag coefficient of 0.25Cd, which is draggier than the Mercedes-Benz S-Class) saves it 65km on the WLTP test.

It all sits inside a body made from a combination of aluminium and composite plastics, with a wrap-around clamshell tailgate at the rear.

There are some neat tricks, too, with the washer bottle filler neck hiding beneath the BMW badge on the bonnet, and the reversing camera (and its cleaning system) integrated into the rear logo.

To be built at the Dingolfing factory on the same production lines as the 5, 6, 7 and 8 Series, it will also be built later on the same production lines as the X3, X4, X5, X6 and X7 models, giving a strong hint that it has been designed around suspension and hard-point modules from the BMW family.

The unique platform of the iX goes against BMW’s insistence that it could deliver petrol, diesel, plug-in hybrid and EVs on the same FAAR (front drive) and CLAR (rear- and all-wheel drive) platform architectures.

The BMW iX3 sits on the CLAR architecture, and so will the i4, which will be an EV that will look like the upcoming second-generation 4 Series GranCoupe.

After what seems like an eternity, a BMW is finally carrying on the interior work of the i3 EV, which boasts one of the most striking, practical and innovative interiors in the car industry.

The most obvious departure here in the full five-seater is BMW’s all-new hexagonal steering wheel.
BMW doesn’t say why it now uses a hexagonal steering wheel, but it does.

BMW says it will hold rocker switches for gear selection and to control the information in the new 14.9-inch curved instrument cluster that’s hidden from the front passenger. It even has three-stage steering wheel heating.

There is also a 12.3-inch touch-screen multimedia screen in the centre of the dash, along with an enormous head-up display.

It’s governed by a next-generation operating system that tilts in favour of simplicity and minimalism, even down to the operation of its 2.5-zone automatic climate-control system.

“No other user interface on the market can be operated as simply and as safely as ours,” BMW’s director of development Frank Weber said. “In the BMW iX we have taken this to a new level with a new digital vehicle platform.”

Weber keeps circling back to what he calls Shy Tech, which is (for zee Chermans) a clever play on words to allude to high tech that remains in the background unless it’s needed.

There is the largest glass panoramic roof in the BMW universe at the top of the cabin, and it’s uninterrupted by bracing (thanks to the strength of the composite safety cell) and can even be electro-chromatic as an option.

The omission of the centre tunnel delivers an airy cabin, with generous legroom and all the displays are stripped to their bare essentials.

The sound system is a huge step forward, with the options of integrating speakers into the seats and even hiding them invisibly in the interior panels.

The top-level Bowers & Wilkins surround sound system delivers 30 speakers into the iX’s cabin, including eight in the headrests.

A whole new generation of computing has arrived in the BMW iX to go along with its advancements in AI and its data gathering.

The car’s computing power can process 20 times the data of the i3 or current BMW models, which it will need as it moves towards the self-driving that BMW hints at for the iX, but never reveals other than to say it’s Level 3-capable.

Its sensor suite has improved so much that the iX has to process double the amount of data than any BMW before it.

“The BMW iX has more computing power for data processing, more powerful sensors than the latest vehicles in our current portfolio, is 5G-capable, and comes with new and improved automated driving
and parking functions are maintained and used by the powerful fifth generation of our electric drive, ” Weber said.

Besides being 5G-capable, the iX’s computer system can process more than 30GB of data a second, and it has more than 30 antennae to send and receive information.

It’s capable of filling up a DVD with data every second, and it needs 5G to transmit that data to the AI swarm.