Trusting my car
 

While I've had my iX60 for a few months it has mostly been city driving. So, I was excited to do a day trip from Sydney to the Southern Highlands. All up a return trip of 360km.

Now a fully charged iX should eat this trip up with plenty of battery capacity to spare. That said, I was unsure as to the accuracy of the iX battery estimates on long trips.

The night before I charged my car to 100% and set a destination for the first major EV charging stop on the way, which is a new Ampol Station at Pheasant's Nest.

I wanted to charge on the way as I was expecting heavy traffic on the return leg and did not want to stop coming home. It was a Sunday, and I was expecting major delays getting back into Sydney on the M31.

As you can see below the BMW estimate said I would arrive at my first stop with 77% capacity.

Attachment 3637397

This was in fact exactly the state of charge when I pulled into the Ampol EV Bay. Plugged the car into a 150kw charger and then went inside for a toilet stop and to buy a tea to go.

In 14 minutes I had charged from 77% to 95% which I knew would be plenty to get me to my destination and then return to Sydney.

The car estimate for the remaining 257km of the trip, was to arrive back home with 44% battery level.

There were some major tail backs on the M31 which resulted in a 10 minute delay, however I still arrived home with precisely 44%.

So my take out, two extremely precise battery estimates, means I can trust the BMW tech. Additionally the charge time of 14 minutes from 77 to 95% on a 150kw charger was excellent.

Why not just trust the BMW tech? Well my EV before this was a Porsche Taycan and battery estimates had "degrees of variability". Also while the Taycan had a 800V charging architecture, it really made very little difference in charging times to the iX because of our charging infrastructure.

Last item from the trip is there was a 20km offroad section. Gravel, corrugations, pot holes and a lot of dust. The iX was brilliant. Amazing ride quality, excellent driveability and just a lovely place to be inside the cabin.

I'm enjoying the iX more and more.

Well … the charging stop kind of ruined it for me.
Ozzie summer and 360km should be easily doable on a single charge.
;-)

Most folks will be using the in-vehicle charge routing, not the app. The app routing is there for convenience, but I've found it to be quite inaccurate on the routes I travel. In-vehicle routing calculates consumption on-the-fly and re-routes as necessary to make sure you reach your destination.

Well he did not really need the charging stop, did he ?
If he had not stopped for charging he would have arrived back home at 44 - 23 = 21% charging level.

The only reason he charged is because he entered a charging station as destination to charge, which was unnecessary in this case ofcourse.

But as it was Ozzie's first longer trip with a car that he did not yet know it is understandable to be a bit on the safe side at first.

To @[chris_1M](contact:198999) and @[frank70](contact:554143) I admit that I acted like a yellow-bellied charging wuss and I have limited defence for my actions. But let me have a go.

I owned a Porsche Taycan for 15 months. It was a complete lemon.

On the return leg, there was only one convenient (without a massive detour) charging location, which was Ampol Pheasant's Nest Northbound. The tailback that I experienced on the M31 was largely due to the queue of cars trying to get into this particular service area from a two lane highway. Expecting some sort of tail back at this location prior to the trip, I anticipated a battery hit of unknown proportions. I now understand a large tailback delay may not lead to a material battery hit as the speed of the vehicle is a major factor in battery usage.

Spurred on by this forum, I will be doing the same trip again very soon and commit not to charge at any point and see how close I get to the @frank70 forecast.

I have road tripped with my iX 50 for a year now in weather from 5F to 90F (-15 to 32C). I have been amazed at the accuracy of the remaining SOC when I put the destination in the navigation system. Always within a percent. Some of my trips are 500 mi (804km).

As NomoTesla said, there is an advantage to putting the destination in the car when you are ready to go as there must be some real-time evaluation of the weather and traffic. This has been by biggest surprise with owning a BEV for the first time.

I should really try that some time to see how it works. I figured nobody would use the in-vehicle routing given they’d know where they are going ahead of time and plan their stops. However it has gotten to the point where I almost don’t have to plan, there are so many locations along the freeways. It then comes down to real time availability.

I think for your first long trip in a new car it’s completely reasonable to be a….

Yellow-bellied charging wuss.

As your title says, now you’re more trusting of it.

I want to revise my forecast a bit as i made a calculation error. You did not charge from 77 to 100 % as i assumed but only to 95 %, so you added only 18%. My new forecast will also be 44 - 18% = 26% remaining when you would not charge.

No guarantees obviously as energy consumption is highly dependent on weather and driving style.

But when driving normally you can trust your BMW's predictions even more then my predictions ! It will only be off by a couple of percent maximum.