BMW has finally unveiled the iX3 SUV, the company’s first all-electric vehicle to achieve 200 miles of range, and the brand’s first since the i3 was launched in 2014. The iX3 will be made in China and sold both there and in China. in Europe, but will not come to the United States. Deliveries will begin later this year and will sell for around € 68,000 (around $ 77,500).
The iX3 is, in many ways, a BMW X3 SUV with an electric powertrain, making it the first normal-looking electric car that the German automaker has released. While that may help standardize the technology, it also means that BMW had to compress the battery-powered transmission into a vehicle design that was originally developed to run on an internal combustion engine. This leaves less room for batteries, motors, and other technologies than you would have in something specifically designed to be electric.
BMW still found room for an 80 Wh battery in the iX3, which the company says will get approximately 285 miles of range per charge under the European WLTP standard, which produces slightly more optimistic results than tests from the Environmental Protection Agency. While there is a single electric motor to move the SUV forward, it produces adequate power of 210kW (286 horsepower) and can take the iX3 from 0 to 100 kilometers per hour (62 mph) in about 6.8 seconds. The iX3 also has custom driving noise that was jointly developed by Hans Zimmer.
The iX3’s battery can be charged at a speed of 150kW, which means it can go from 0 to 80 percent charge in about 34 minutes and can take 100 kilometers (62 miles) of range in about 10 minutes. While none of these specs is the market leader, BMW at least appears to have done a better job of squeezing a reasonable range of electric road technology into a vehicle originally designed to use gas than Mercedes-Benz made with the EQC. (The EQC range is closer to 200 miles.)
The iX3 will be an interesting test for BMW in several ways. It offers the first real-world operation of the new generation of electric vehicle technology that will power the next i4 sedan and iNext SUV. And it will be made in China and sold in Europe, not the other way around, as things usually are.
Ultimately, however, it is a vehicle long overdue by an automaker that once considered itself a leader in electric vehicles. BMW wowed the world just a few years ago with the i8 hybrid supercar and the surprisingly rugged i3 electric vehicle, but the years have passed since it practically ignored EVs, except for the new Mini EV powered by i3 technology. Like many of its peers, BMW is now catching up with a market that Tesla has somehow turned upside down.
