[JonoNZ]

     Featured on BIMMERPOST.com

A bit of background first…I’m an owner of an Audi Q7 and RS 3, I’ve had BMWs before but not for a few years, the last one was a BMW F30 335i M Performance. I live in Auckland, New Zealand.

The iX caught my interest as it seemed like a significant new model. One that is built on a purpose designed electric platform, excellent range, excellent performance, exciting new interior design, and extremely good build quality.

We’re looking at replacing the Q7, so this will be a brief summary of a few my feelings on how the Q7, iX40, and iX50 compare.


The cars

Q7 (4MB): MY2017, 200kw Diesel, Air Suspension, Rear-Axle Steering, Bose Audio, 7 Seats.
IX40: Harmon Kardon, Leather Amido, Glass Roof, Clear&Bold, 22” wheels
IX50: Fully optioned including B&W, Leather Amido, Clear&Bold, Rear Axle Steering, Electric Towbar, 22” wheels, Sun Protection Glazing, Comfort Package, etc

I had the iX40 for 3 hours, the iX50 overnight.


Overall impressions of both cars

- Exterior: All of our models have Sport trim. Love the front, love the rear, I find the side view the least cohesive to me. The black strip along the bottom of the side doors makes the car look elongated. Would love to see what it looked like with door colour extended further down. I feel it may have made the car look shorter in length and therefore better proportioned. Overall, the car looks fine to me, and the front especially looks great and really dates all the other BMWs in the showroom, in my opinion anyway!
- Interior: We’re coming from a Q7 so used to excellent interiors and excellent build quality, and the iX is right up there, if not better. Lovely materials, everything is super well put together.. There is no movement in the centre console or any other parts no matter how much you try to move them. There are a couple of areas of hard plastics (underside of the centre console, etc), but those familiar with how interiors are built will know they’ve been chosen for durability and scratch resistance. Love the Amido leather, it feels super soft and high end. The openness that is created is by the generous amounts of glass, open floor in the front, rear seat space, and no transmission tunnel in the rear is truly wonderful. It strikes the sweet spot for me, modern and somewhat minimalist interior, but without the starkness and low build quality of a Tesla.
- iDrive 8: It’s come a long way since my F30 335i, it’s definitely got a steeper learning curve but overall I like it. The screens are stunning, great resolution and easy to see in all lighting conditions I tried the car in. CarPlay integration is excellent with navigation directions appearing in the main instrument display and also in the HUD. Really great.
- Driving impressions: Overall great to drive, acceleration is insane for such a heavy vehicle, air suspension smooths out speed bumps at least well as the Q7. On the twisty roads there was slight but noticeable body roll, that combined with minimal bolster support on the seats meant I felt I was sliding around a bit. Our Q7 has sport seats, flat bottomed steering wheel, so a reasonable sporty setup for such a big car.
- Rear axle steering: Really amazing in the iX. Rear axle steering in the Q7 was one of the deciding factors in choosing that vehicle over others when we made that purchasing decision. The iX is even more impressive than the Q7 making what would be many multi point turns into a single movement. I think the rear wheels may turn a degree or so more than the Q7. That means we can manoeuvre in and out of our garage much easier on a daily basis. It’s also incredible out and about, doing U-turns, navigating building car park ramps, or other tight car parks. Absolute must-have to me.
- Reversing assistant: I’ve never had a car with this feature so this was fun to try out. It worked as advertised, could reverse out of any parking space I’d driven into including reversing all the way back through a building. I can’t wait to see what the new 5DW Parking Assistant Pro brings and how well it works.
- Bowers & Wilkins audio: I fancy myself as a bit of an audiophile, and spend enough time in my car that I value the quality of the sound I experience in it. The B&W system is a noticeable upgrade from the HK system I tried the week earlier. There is an impression of sound from literally everywhere, including in the seats etc. I thought it might be too much, but I have grown to like it a lot. The bass is very tightly delivered, not boomy at all, even at high volume levels. The soundstage is complex and you definitely don’t feel like the sound is coming from any particular speakers or direction. It sounds good to me and is pretty impressive. The included sound presets where interesting too, I could not decide which I liked the most but settled with ‘On Stage’ the fairly often. The system is significantly better than the Bose in the Q7 and the Bang and Olufsen in my RS 3. Although expensive, I’d probably go for this if audio is really important to you.
- Standing up to wear and tear: The iX50 I had was a BMW NZ car, and had been doing the media/press circuit for a while. It has approx 7000km on the clock. The car has stood up very well to a lot of drivers, and likely people who had not taken exceptionally great care of it. There was no noticeable wear on the plastics, panels, leather, switches, gloss black plastic, upholstery, steering wheel, etc. This bodes well on how the car will look in a few years and great to see.

The iX40 and iX50 drive pretty much the same to me, although the iX50 is a bit quicker. The main differences are that in NZ that you can’t get rear axle steering on the iX40, and the range is significantly different. The iX50 range means we can get to a regular holiday destination we go to on a single charge and still probably have over 120km range left before requiring a recharge.

Will we get the IX? We’ll see, it’s very expensive here in NZ, but there are very few viable alternatives available here. A heavily optioned iX50 is pretty close to the price of an M60, and by all accounts the M60 can be delivered a lot quicker than an iX50. It would be great to get some comprehensive reports on the real world range of the M60.

[hugo_nz]

Originally Posted by JonoNZ

A bit of background first…I’m an owner of an Audi Q7 and RS 3, I’ve had BMWs before but not for a few years, the last one was a BMW F30 335i M Performance. I live in Auckland, New Zealand.

The iX caught my interest as it seemed like a significant new model. One that is built on a purpose designed electric platform, excellent range, excellent performance, exciting new interior design, and extremely good build quality.

We’re looking at replacing the Q7, so this will be a brief summary of a few my feelings on how the Q7, iX40, and iX50 compare.


The cars

Q7 (4MB): MY2017, 200kw Diesel, Air Suspension, Rear-Axle Steering, Bose Audio, 7 Seats.
IX40: Harmon Kardon, Leather Amido, Glass Roof, Clear&Bold, 22” wheels
IX50: Fully optioned including B&W, Leather Amido, Clear&Bold, Rear Axle Steering, Electric Towbar, 22” wheels, Sun Protection Glazing, Comfort Package, etc

I had the iX40 for 3 hours, the iX50 overnight.


Overall impressions of both cars

- Exterior: All of our models have Sport trim. Love the front, love the rear, I find the side view the least cohesive to me. The black strip along the bottom of the side doors makes the car look elongated to me. Would love to see what it looked like with door colour extended further down. I feel it may have made the car look shorter in length and therefore better proportioned. Overall, the car looks fine to me, and the front especially looks great and really dates all the other BMWs in the showroom, in my opinion anyway!
- Interior: We’re coming from a Q7 so used to excellent interiors and excellent build quality, and the iX is right up there, if not better. Lovely materials, everything is super well put together.. There is no movement in the centre console or any other parts no matter how much you try to move them. There are a couple of areas of hard plastics (underside of the centre console, etc), but those familiar with how interiors are built will know they’ve been chosen for durability and scratch resistance. Love the Amido leather, it feels super soft and high end. The openness that is created is by the generous amounts of glass, open floor in the front, rear seat space, and no transmission tunnel in the rear is truly wonderful. It strikes the sweet spot for me, modern and somewhat minimalist interior, but without the starkness and low build quality of a Tesla.
- iDrive 8: It’s come a long way since my F30 335i, it’s definitely got a steeper learning curve but overall I like it. The screens are stunning, great resolution and easy to see in all lighting conditions I tried the car in. CarPlay integration is excellent with navigation directions appearing in the main instrument display and also in the HUD. Really great.
- Driving impressions: Overall great to drive, acceleration is insane for such a heavy vehicle, air suspension smooths out speed bumps at least well as the Q7. On the twisty roads there was slight but noticeable body roll, that combined with minimal bolster support on the seats meant I felt I was sliding around a bit. Our Q7 has sport seats, flat bottomed steering wheel, so a reasonable sporty setup for such a big car.
- Rear axle steering: Really amazing in the iX. Rear axle steering in the Q7 was one of the deciding factors in choosing that vehicle over others when we made that purchasing decision. The iX is even more impressive than the Q7 making what would be many multi point turns into a single movement. I think the rear wheels may turn a degree or so more than the Q7. That means we can manoeuvre in and out of our garage much easier on a daily basis. It’s also incredible out and about, doing U-turns, navigating building car park ramps, or other tight car parks. Absolute must-have to me.
- Reversing assistant: I’ve never had a car with this feature so this was fun to try out. It worked as advertised, could reverse out of any parking space I’d driven into including reversing all the way back through a building. I can’t wait to see what the new 5DW Parking Assistant Pro brings and how well it works.
- Bowers & Wilkins audio: I fancy myself as a bit of an audiophile, and spend enough time in my car that I value the quality of the sound I experience in it. The B&W system is a noticeable upgrade from the HK system I tried the week earlier. There is an impression of sound from literally everywhere, including in the seats etc. I thought it might be too much, but I have grown to like it a lot. The bass is very tightly delivered, not boomy at all, even at high volume levels. The soundstage is complex and you definitely don’t feel like the sound is coming from any particular speakers or direction. It sounds good to me and is pretty impressive. The included sound presets where interesting too, I could not decide which I liked the most but settled with ‘On Stage’ the fairly often. The system is significantly better than the Bose in the Q7 and the Bang and Olufsen in my RS 3. Although expensive, I’d probably go for this if audio is really important to you.

The iX40 and iX50 drive pretty much the same to me, although the iX50 is a bit quicker. The main differences are that in NZ that you can’t get rear axle steering on the iX40, and the range is significantly different. The iX50 range means we can get to a regular holiday destination we go to on a single charge and still probably have over 120km range left before requiring a recharge.

Will we get the IX? We’ll see, it’s very expensive here in NZ, but there are very few viable alternatives available here. A heavily optioned iX50 is pretty close to the price of an M60 here, and by all accounts the M60 can be delivered a lot quicker than an iX50. It would be great to get some comprehensive reports on the real world range of the M60.

Good writeup mate! I’ve compared the iX to pretty much every other EV SUV on the market and it’s second to none (imho). Pretty excited to get mine in little over a month :-D

[JonoNZ]

Originally Posted by hugo_nz

Good writeup mate!

Cheers, was fun to have more time to spend with it. I added in a bit about wear and tear (late edit) which you may be interested in too.

[hugo_nz]

Originally Posted by JonoNZ

Cheers, was fun to have more time to spend with it. I added in a bit about wear and tear (late edit) which you may be interested in too.

There are a few questionable materials like the phone holder in the passenger door that are going to show wear sooner than some others but overall it should hold up well.

[JonoNZ]

Originally Posted by hugo_nz

There are a few questionable materials like the phone holder in the passenger door that are going to show wear sooner than some others but overall it should hold up well.

Yeah those are made from a rubber type material, that stuff usually wipes down ok with a damp microfibre cloth, removes the scuffs that occur on it, and then looks like new. Hopefully they will too.