Range Buster Extraordinaire – by Yves de Contades
The Tour
L
e Touquet, a chateau in Fontainebleau, Chateau de Chambord, Chaumont–sur–Loire – I drove 1,400 miles across France in four days in an electric car, and the most stressful moment was choosing between the macarons and the cake in the Le Shuttle Flexiplus lounge.The queue for the lounge told its own story. McLarens, Ferraris, Lamborghinis, all idling politely like schoolboys waiting for the tuck shop, their owners doing that studied nonchalance only a man leaning against half a million pounds of carbon fibre can manage.
Among them, our ride for the next 1,400 miles: the BMW NA5 iX3 50 xDrive M Sport, humming silently and looking, it must be said, like an angry camel flaring its nostrils at the exotica around it. What follows is the story of the car that finally made me stop thinking of electric motoring as a compromise conducted at 60mph. This is the car where the electric revolution truly begins.
The Brief
The itinerary was not modest: the seafront at Le Touquet, a tour of Macron’s old house (now the DAgArt Gallery), a family birthday at a chateau in Fontainebleau, a dash to Chateau de Chambord for my mate Robert Mann’s exhibition, Solaris, then Chaumont–sur–Loire before pointing home to Guildford.
Three big events, four days, well north of a thousand miles.
This was meant to be an eco tour, the exact combination that has historically reduced electric touring to charger roulette. We plumped for the iX3, and we were spot on.
Let me save you the suspense: I forgot it was electric. My range anxiety was so absent that I had to force myself to stop and plug in, the way you force yourself to eat vegetables you don’t actually need. It never seemed to run low. Ever. And at 4.9 seconds to 62mph, it’s nippy with it.
Specs
The numbers matter more here than usual. 463hp, 645Nm, 0 to 62mph in 4.9 seconds, top speed 130mph. Consumption a competitive 15.4kWh/100km, and the headline act: WLTP range up to 795km, extending to 994km in pure city driving. Five seats in comfort within a 4,782mm frame, and a hushed 65dB, quiet enough to hear yourself gloat as you sail past yet another charging station.
Exterior
Here comes the wry bit, so BMW may wish to look away. The iX3 looks like a flat–faced pug with a camel’s nostrils. Slick and streamlined,which in practice means it doesn’t stand out; aerodynamically efficient but fairly typical for the class. Function over form, and as we shall see, the function is extraordinary.
Ours wore Polarised Grey (£875) with 20” M aerodynamic wheels in M Bicolour (£1,047), doing their best to lend some élan. But the looks disappoint for a BMW, a marque that has spent decades making machines you’d cross the street to admire. My unsolicited advice to Munich: lose that flat front bonnet and I reckon you’d add another 100km of range. That one’s free, gentlemen.
Interior
Step inside and normal BMW service resumes. The M Black interior is fitted to the micrometer, solid as rock, no rattle, no flex. It exudes the sort of confident engineering that makes you sit a little straighter and drive a little better.
I love the thick–rimmed sport steering wheel, and here’s a small detail that earned an outsized place in my affections: the charge flap closes itself automatically. No walking round in the rain to snap it shut. It’s precisely this kind of thinking, the quiet elimination of a hundred tiny irritations, that separates the great cars from the merely good.
Tech
The tech suite is comprehensive and, unusually, all of it earns its keep. Our Technology Plus Pack brought a Harman/Kardon sound system and BMW’s 3D Head-up Display, alongside Parking Assistant Pro, M Sport brakes, 3–zone climate, heated steering wheel and a panoramic sunroof.
The layout deserves praise: the big infotainment screen commands the dash centre, while the instrument cluster runs as a wide, narrow strip beneath the bonnet line, meaning your eyes travel from road to information and back faster than with a conventional binnacle. The touchscreen is instant, with none of the lag that plagues lesser systems.
The sat nav is best in class. I am about the only person I know who trusts built–in navigation over his phone, and even then only in this car.
Then the active cruise control: steering, accelerating and braking to a stop, adapting automatically to each speed limit change.
On French autoroutes, with their enthusiasm for speed cameras, this is worth its weight in gold. Between this and the range, all the anxiety is taken out of long–distance touring, which is how 1,400 miles in four days, across three events, became a genuine breeze.
Performance
On the road the iX3 is sure–footed: fast and steady at any speed, composed from Le Touquet’s narrow streets to a brisk autoroute cruise. One minor grump: the drive setting isn’t easily reached on the wheel. But I kept it in Eco throughout and never found the performance wanting. With 463 horses on call even in the frugal setting, sport mode becomes academic.
And then the range. Mon dieu, the range. The iX3 50 does 400 miles at 100% on Eco, and the figure is bulletproof. Almost no other car has given me this kind of range confidence. BMW claims 493 miles; we didn’t get that, but I believe it’s achievable driven with care.
The proof came repeatedly. Guildford to Le Touquet, the car showed more range remaining at the end than predicted at the start, driven fast. Le Touquet to Fontainebleau, it predicted 150km remaining; I arrived with 200km. Every other electric car I’ve driven promises the earth and delivers rather less. An electric car that underestimates, so you always arrive comfortable: now that is revolutionary.
At Le Touquet we stayed at the Novotel Thalassa, swam in the sea, watched the sunset from L’Impasse Beach Bar. On the beach I met Rémi the fisherman, cleaning his tide net (his son, a chef and sommelier, the family trade elegantly evolved). “On se nourrit de la terre et la mer,” he told me: we feed ourselves from the land and the sea.
Afterwards, thirty–odd chars à voile racing up the sand. Quelle joie de vivre. At Fontainebleau, a family birthday on the terrace before the chateau, conversation running until 3am. Next morning, a swim upstream in the Seine to Thomery: herons standing sentry, transparent water, the most tranquil spot I know.
At Chambord, Robert Mann’s exhibition Solaris: pinhole photographs exposed for months, each line the sun’s path across a single day, recording every clear and cloudy day from solstice to solstice. The chateau’s double helix staircase, one spiral for men and one for women, still the cleverest piece of architecture I know at five hundred years old.
At Chaumont–sur–Loire, the day ended with frogs singing by the Loire at sunset, a chorus no Harman/Kardon system can quite match, though the BMW’s comes close.
Then the long run home: 375 miles to Guildford not counting the Shuttle. In most electric cars that final leg brings nerves. In this one, my faith became almost reckless:
100 miles to go, 68 showing, and I still stopped to charge only out of caution, half convinced the car would have got me home regardless.
The performance is sweet–spot good: quick enough to entertain, never savage enough to exhaust. The interior is superbly finished, the tech is the best in the business, the ride is exceptional. The looks disappoint for a BMW, a very average SUV, but the range and battery performance are world–best, and that alone makes this a brilliant electric car worth choosing over any other.
The iX3 finally makes electric motoring superior to ICE. Not equal to it, superior. And I could not care less that it lacks a throbbing engine. The frogs of the Loire provide the soundtrack; the BMW provides everything else. Chapeau, Munich.
Base price: £60,250.00
Our model with extras: £68,387.49
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