Teeth-chatteringly cold outside? The heated seats and steering wheel will come on instantly when you start the car, or it'll blast cold air as soon as it can if it's stifling. Probably our only real complaint is the lack of physical switchgear for the climate controls, but it's relatively minor as BMW counteracts this with a properly sophisticated automatic system for it. But we found it slow to respond and quickly stopped bothering to try – using the iDrive wheel or even tapping the screen didn't really make many functions that more difficult anyway. The BMW voice assistant is supposedly smarter, too. The screens themselves have such an impeccably high resolution, the colour scheme changes with what drive mode you're in. Which is as complex or as easy to master as a modern phone, depending on your perspective, and responds smartly to touch input as well as the now crystal iDrive puck. Beside the dials is the infotainment screen for the new BMW Operating System 8 iDrive system. The daft shape doesn't really matter, though – perhaps because the now remarkably intuitive variable-ratio steering means you rarely have to move your hands once you start holding it.īeyond this is a customisable set of digital dials, above that a customisable head-up display – which prompts you with warnings such as 'dangerous bends ahead'. yes it's quite odd, complete with a pared-back amount of buttons compared to BMW's norm and Tesla-aping scroll wheels that can control many functions at once. Some of you will probably be screaming at your browsers, and. The steering wheel is a highly shaped hexagon. The latter are mounted on the door, which is unusual for a BMW and slightly unwise for this material, as when the sun hits them they send weird, trippy colours scampering about the cabin. There are stark joins between materials, and a fusion of soft quilted surfaces with hard, faceted crystal control elements for the iDrive and the electric seats. The curving slither of display screen on top of the dash – actually two screens joined – is de facto EV to the point of near cliché, but elsewhere it gets really wild. General consensus suggests the inside is more universally successful, although also far from ordinary.
If you're at all interested in machines, the iX has a distinct air of intrigue. The recessed door handles look like horrible dirt traps open the car – for which you need only your phone, rather than anything as old-fashioned as a key – and you'll see the bare carbonfibre reinforced plastic that makes up the bodysides. The grille is made of 'self-healing' plastic and has a heated element to make sure the sensors – including long-range radar and a forward-facing camera for the augmented-reality nav-guidance – keep working even in the snow. The wheels are aerodynamically optimised, and designed to break predictably in an accident. That shape may appear ungainly, but it has a drag coefficient of 0.25. We could, but let's just cover a few exterior details.
Can we skip the outside and go straight inside, then? You can probably already guess what they are from looking at the interior. On the other hand, there are some daft indulgences. And while all-round air-suspension and a very stiff structure were always going to be great for comfort and refinement, it rolls on minimum 21-inch wheels so surely it shouldn't deal with bumps quite so unflappably? With this form-factor and a kerbweight in excess of 2.5-tonnes, I wasn't anticipating it to be quite so immediately agile.
No-one is really surprised by this, are they? I mean, the latest M4 looks gopping in the wrong finish but that's bloody magic to drive, so BMW wasn't about to make a mess of what it's describing as 'the pinnacle' of its new electric vehicle technology.Įlements do still come at you unexpectedly.
0 kommentar(er)
