Review: BMW iX3 2026

To say the iX3 is important to BMW is as unassailable as asserting Elon Musk prefers having different women bear his children to preserve the human race. This EV represents the single biggest financial investment in BMW’s history—and considering the parlous state of the Western auto industry right now, it had better pay off for the storied German automaker.

The iX3 is the first of six cars based on BMW’s much-trailed new modular EV platform, the “Neue Klasse,” that arrives with new motors, new inverters, new batteries, new charging tech, new interior display wizardry, and, perhaps most importantly, a fancy new central computer brain designed to make these latest electric Beemers drive better than anything on the road right now.

The Neue Klasse range uses the sixth generation of BMW eDrive tech, boasting “cell-to-pack” batteries with liquid-cooled cylindrical cells consisting of higher nickel and less cobalt content for a 20-percent bump in energy density.

A lighter 800-volt electric architecture boosts charging speeds by a third, and at up to 400 kilowatts. This means 200 miles can be added in just 10 minutes in ideal conditions. Efficiency is a claimed 4.1 m/kWh. Now the headline stat: the iX3 has a 500-mile WLTP max-range figure, or 400 in the more realistic US EPA test.

Courtesy of Fabian Kirchbauer/BMW

But it’s not just about efficiency and range (even though it really is primarily about efficiency and range these days). The iX3 50 xDrive, for example, can manage 407 bhp between its front and rear motors, seeing this electric SUV good for a sub-5-second 0-to-62 mph time.

Then, once you’re parked up (which the iX3 can handle for you, should you wish), BMW’s shiny new electric architecture offers up vehicle-to-load (V2L) to power household appliances from the car; vehicle-to-home (V2H) where energy from the battery can be fed back to your house; and vehicle-to-grid (V2G), which let’s you “actively participate in the energy market,” if you want to turn your EV into a possible revenue generator as well as a domestic power generator.

Big Beautiful Brain

As electric cars are now, in some sense at least, rolling smartphones, it’s shrewd that BMW has put a great deal of effort (and money) into a complete overhaul of how, and how quickly, the EVs on its new platform think.

At the core of this revamp is a fancy new central computer controller for driving dynamics, which BMW has unforgivably nicknamed the “heart of joy.” It works like this: All the iX3’s dynamic functionality—braking and stability, traction control systems—are governed by this one electronic brain rather than multiple sub-processors. Conventional ECUs suffer a time lag of 10 to 20 milliseconds—here, BMW’s new proprietary box of tricks reduces this to just one millisecond.

The iX3 has a dual-motor system and a completely new “cell-to-pack” battery setup that helps stiffen the Neue Klasse chassis.

Courtesy of BMW

Now, the important thing to get your head around here is that this digital leap should supposedly give the Neue Klasse cars a more old-school analog feel in terms of handling smarts, adding back in a bunch of ICE traits many feel EVs lack right now.

As well as acting practically instantaneously, that single processor can also integrate signals from multiple sensors and shunt instructions out to steering systems and the motors, which, being electric, can react far faster than any ICE powertrain.

Yes, yes—but what does all that really mean? Well, on, say, executing a corner, if the iX3 senses it is losing grip, it can set just the right torque from the front and rear motors, adapt the steering weight, and even brake a specific wheel if necessary. Not only can the car, or rather the “heart of joy” (or HoJ), do this instantly, it can do it predictively.

As the driver, of course, you have no idea this is all taking place. What you feel is the car behaving in a stable, intuitive and responsive way. And, thanks to this HoJ sorcery, most impressively the car feels remarkably like it weighs more than a half ton less than the iX3's 2,300 kg.

Magic Ride

Which brings us to how the Neue Klasse-powered iX3 drives. Very cleverly, is the answer—which is not surprising considering the tech at play here. The HoJ really works, tricking you into genuinely thinking you're not in a lumpen EV crossover at all. It's smooth and responsive, a pleasure to be behind the wheel.

Relaxed driving is where this car lives, but push things and you won't feel the least bit concerned as the iX3 seemingly takes everything in its stride. Despite its weight it doesn't really understeer, and if you concentrate you can feel the power shifting around the car and the steering adjusting on the fly. And remember it is doing this all without active anti-roll or adaptive damping (which can be added thanks to the modular nature of the new platform).

What's more, you simply cannot tell when the car switches between brake and recuperative braking. And, as the car can instantly switch between regen braking and power on each wheel, this adds further to the EV's stability on the road. Indeed, at its brand-hosted launch event (the company paid for a portion of my travel expenses to attend) BMW's head of driving dynamics tells me that the recoup braking on different wheels effectively acts a yaw damping, “making the car agile through recuperation.”

The HoJ is even brought into play at the end of rides with “Soft Stop,” affording the iX3 with “the smoothest stop in the history of BMW,” using recuperation to bring the car to a standstill with the least jerking or pitching possible. It's so smooth, BMW claims, you're meant to be unable to tell the car has ceased moving if your eyes are closed. I tried this. It's not the case. But it is very, very smooth. Smoother, even, than the group's $420,000 Rolls-Royce Spectre—which, along with the fact the iX3 has better charging and V2L as well, is somewhat embarrassing for the BMW-owned luxury brand.

The iX3 lets you operate L2 hands-free freeway driving, and includes clever operations such as just glancing in the mirrors to change lanes automatically. This works surprisingly well, and in no time at all I found it almost second nature to use. But surprisingly this new platform cannot support L3 hands-free and eyes-off driving, not even via a future tech upgrade. BMW, then, is betting on this tech not being commonplace in the near future.

New Views Inside

The new angled central screen and Panoramic iDrive at the bottom of the windscreen remove the need for a driver display on the iX3.

Courtesy of Alex Rank/BMW

The cabin of the iX3 is also all new. A panoramic glass roof provides ample light, but most of the attention has been paid to the front, where an angular central screen that supposedly “leans towards the driver” controls most of the functions, including, sadly, even the air.

This screen is one of the most responsive I've tried in a car, but I'm not sure the angled design offers any advantage, and I even found that my right hand, when on the steering wheel, completely obscured the hot keys on the far left of the display that are specifically placed there to be easier for fingers to reach.

While driving, my hands blocked out the hot keys on the central display.

Jeremy White

The menu system, as with so many auto brands, remains overly complex, requiring you to learn where functions are buried. The fan graphic you use to direct airflow from the air-con system is confusing and unintuitive. And, just in general, the interior is more than a little too “male” for my liking.

What does work well is the Panoramic iDrive. This thin display runs across the entire bottom of the windscreen, showing all the important driving data, such as speed and navigation, as well as some far less important info (elevation, battery temperature, etc). Other car brands will doubtlessly copy this display, (which is actually a reflected image onto a blacked-out strip of the glass) because it looks good and is much better as your eyes stay on the road for longer.

Courtesy of Fabian Kirchbauer/BMW

Where Panoramic iDrive falls down is, again, common for car companies. Right now, although you can customize the display to a small degree, picking from a limited range of options to show on the passenger side of the windscreen, BMW is not letting third-party apps into this space. So, no version of CarPlay, and no message nor phone notifications will pop up here where you'd far prefer them to appear. What a missed opportunity to make the most of this fantastic new display—and how sadly typical of a car company to not allow such a potential boon for users.

The less said about the woeful Alexa assistant, the better, which pipes up when it's not supposed to and often ignores you when you want it. It falls over at anything beyond the simplest requests. I asked it to move the map nav from the cabin screen to the Panoramic iDrive display. What it did was instead cancel the navigation entirely, without checking it is was OK to do so, then set a new destination some 500 miles away. Not helpful. When the system gets upgraded to Alexa+ next year BMW claims it will be much improved. We'll see.

Thanks to that Panoramic iDrive, however, BMW has managed to get rid of the driver display, and so has had fun redesigning the steering wheel options for the iX3. One has the spokes at 12 and 6, rather than either side, specifically because this is now possible as you don't have to look through the wheel to see any data. To be honest, I'm not sure I prefer this look, but I applaud BMW for at least trying to shake things up a bit when the opportunity arises.

More Than a Car

BMW chairman Oliver Zipse has said Neue Klasse “is redefining the BMW brand,” and this gives you more than an indication of how proud the company is of its new EV platform, and you can see why. The ride is simply great. The exterior design is improved, though I'm still not keen on the rear. The computing power under the hood has been massively improved, as has the battery and charging capabilities.

Range is the killer battleground, of course, and starting at 99 percent after 4.5 hours of driving and 155 miles, I was left with 55 percent charge and 3.3 mi/kWh efficiency. This means a real-world range with normal rather than careful driving of more than 350 miles, so not that far off the 400-mile EPA figure.

What's more, this range is mighty competitive against rivals such as the Audi Q6 e-tron, Cadillac Lyriq, Porsche Macan Electric, and revised Tesla Model Y—and, by the time it arrives next year, it should best the Volvo EX60, too.

BMW has made the iX3, and the Neue Klasse platform, not only drive like a BMW, but a very good BMW. It bodes very well for the next five cars, including the i3, which is coming right after the iX3.

But here's the problem that all Western auto brands are wrestling with: Is it enough to take on the China EVs coming in cheaper than BMW, and with much better autonomous tech than this brand new platform? I'm not sure. They likely won't be able to beat BMW's driving dynamics wizardry, though. Yep, a lot is riding on the Neue Klasse's ride.