It’s not the car’s greatest dynamic strength, though, and its sheer size and preference for wide lanes and smoother surfaces means you have to pick your moments to go looking for it.
Ride comfort and isolation
This is where the iX really excels. So it should, you might think, as a luxury car with no combustion engine to rumble or vibrate, as well as big wheel arches to help quell road noise, and air suspension to smooth over bumps. But many high-end EVs have failed to bring really revolutionary rolling refinement to the table over the past
decade, for one reason or another. The iX nails its potential, and then some.
Even though our test car rode on 22in alloy wheels, it admitted just 58dBA of ride and wind noise into its cabin at a 50mph cruise on the Millbrook high-speed bowl: the same level as Rolls-Royce’s Cullinan Black Badge recorded in 2020, and fully five decibels less than we witnessed in the Jaguar I-Pace two years earlier.
From the driver’s seat, you’re aware of a slight wind rustle around the car’s door mirrors, but very little road roar over well-sealed surfaces. Higher-speed, long-wave inputs are dealt with supremely well without disturbing the car’s level calm much at all, and sharper and more sudden ones are rounded off surprisingly well, too, considering the car’s wheel specification. There is no resonance, hollowness or ‘sproing’ in evidence from the air suspension, and wheel control is consistently good.
This isn’t a wilfully soft-feeling, wafting car; it’s a shade tauter and more poised-feeling than that, but it’s very supple and settled. You’re made aware when the iX’s axles are busier on one side of the car than the other as the chassis jostles and rotates around its roll axis just a bit, but that’s mostly because of the nature of an SUV in which you sit farther above that roll axis than in a lower saloon. For the most part, the iX’s ride is well beyond reasonable reproach.
Assisted driving notes
The iX’s mock radiator grille, or ‘intelligence panel’, is one of the places where its various sensors (12), cameras (five) and transceivers (12) are housed. The upshot? That, but forthesoftware(whichcan,andmost likely will, be updated over the air – for a fee), this car might already be ready for level-three, hands-off autonomous driving once it becomes legal.
As it is, the car’s front collision warning system is sophisticated enough to detect oncoming traffic when turning right across a live lane, as well as pedestrians and cyclists. Its lane control assist and active cruise control systems also have extended sensory functionality and greater operating reach than other BMWs’.
Our testers found the lane keeping, blindspot warning and cross traffic alert systems somewhat risk averse andoverlyintrusivewhenturnedupto their most sensitive, but the forward crash avoidance and active cruise control systems both worked well.
