The all-electric BMW iX is a fascinating car, one that’s unlike any BMW before it. Its exterior styling, interior design, and innovative cabin tech make it one of the most intriguing Bimmers ever made. However, none of that matters if it can’t deliver a good enough electric range. Range is what EV customers live and die by, so if it can’t hang with the big shots from Tesla and Lucid, the iX might not sell well enough. This is why I decided to see just how far I could get on one battery charge, in real-world conditions, and without any fancy testing procedures; just me, the car, and a long journey.
Sure, I could have created a perfect loop, with the exact same amount of highway and city driving, perfect weather conditions, and average and exact 75 mph, or whatever. However, I always find those tests silly because no one drives that way. To test how real customers will see their range deplete, it’s best to just get in and go somewhere far, just like any normal human would in their gasoline car.
That’s what I did with the BMW iX a few weeks back. In fact, I used the iX to go buy a car. The car I wanted to buy was in Reading, Pennsylvania, about 125 miles from my house in central New Jersey. That totals 250-ish miles of driving and the BMW’s claimed max range for the iX is around 300 miles (for the record, my trip computer said I had 288 miles of range before I started the journey). The goal was to drive all the way to the seller, buy the car, drive all the way back in the iX, and go pick up my new-to-me car the next day.
In this video, I document the trip there and back; my range, efficiency, how the car performed, what I liked about the car, and any complaints I had. It was an interesting day and the iX continued to surprise me. I won’t spoil the end, whether it completed the journey in one trip, or how efficient it was. However, I will say that it was one of the more interesting tests I’ve ever done with a car. Check it out and don’t forget to subscribe to our channel!
