BMW iX3 Review & Prices

The BMW iX3 is one of the most exciting electric cars in years - it’s such a big deal that we named it Tech Trailblazer in the 2026 Carwow Car of the Year Awards. It’s a large SUV with an innovative interior and a range of 500 miles on a charge - the first time this milestone’s been broken.

The iX3 also showcases the direction BMW’s taking its electric cars in - the new i3, the all-electric version of the iconic 3 Series, will share its tech and features with the iX3, so consider this a preview of the shape of things to come. It’s like the first in a promised series of blockbuster films - it’s high-budget, flashy, and designed to hook you in so you’ll stick around to see what comes next.

With a price starting at just under £60,000, it’s a direct alternative to other posh electric SUVs such as the Audi Q6 e-tron, Polestar 3 and Mercedes GLC Electric, but you could also compare it to high-end versions of lower models such as a Tesla Model Y or Hyundai Ioniq 5.

The exterior design of the iX3 can definitely be described as striking. It’s not exactly pretty, but it definitely stands out with its distinctive front end incorporating a new interpretation of the brand’s ‘kidney’ grilles in the centre. On mid-spec cars and above, this is even illuminated for even more visual drama.

BMW iX3: electric range, battery and charging data

Range: 420-500 miles
Efficiency: 3.8-4.1 miles per kWh
Battery size: 108kWh
Max charge speed: 400kW
Charge time AC: 11hrs, 0-100%, 11kWh
Charge time DC: 21mins, 20-80%, 400kWh
Charge port location: Left Side Rear
Power outputs: 469hp

Across the car there’s a real focus on clean surfacing - the seams and shut lines are very tight and BMW’s even gone to the trouble of hiding things like the window seals for a really uncluttered look. At the sides there are the suggestions of boxy wheel arches, rather than ugly plastic cladding, while the rear gets wide and intricate LED taillights. It looks like nothing else on the road, and compared to the drab Audi Q6 e-tron or ugly Mercedes GLC Electric it’s rather appealing.

The interior is just as dramatic, and different to anything else on sale. Instead of a traditional instrument panel you get what BMW calls ‘Panoramic iDrive’ - a full-width display running just underneath the windscreen, which is intended to give you all your information without having to take your eyes too far off the road. It’s ultra-customisable and works really well.

Even the regular infotainment screen is a bit different, being a strange rhomboid shape - but it’s highly responsive and positioned really well for easy operation. There are an awful lot of menus, though, and even some well-chosen shortcuts can’t entirely fix this. Unlike BMWs of old, you don’t get a rotary dial to control the screen without having to touch it, either.

Most things inside do feel high-quality befitting the price tag and BMW’s premium positioning - though some areas, like the column stalks and the door bins - don’t feel quite up to snuff.

You can’t complain about space, though. Passenger room in both rows is great, and the rear occupants in particular enjoy a flat floor and a high enough seat that they won’t have their knees around their ears like they do in some EVs. The boot’s also a good size at 520 litres - smaller than the Mercedes GLC, but still a good size for a family SUV.

Where the iX3 plays its trump card is range. It has a big battery and proves very efficient in use - meaning this is the first electric car that can claim a 500-mile range on a charge. That’s the official figure, but in the real world you’ll still be able to exceed 400 miles, which is hugely impressive. It beats all of its key alternatives and we likely won’t see a higher range in a family SUV for quite some time.

Out on the road, the iX3 is also very good. It might be immensely heavy but BMW has managed to make it feel much lighter - a trick the company’s already employed with the sporty M5. In the iX3, it manifests with light controls in town and a general feeling of agility in the corners.

It’s not perfect, though, because the suspension can feel a little crashy on rough roads and it’s not as refined on the motorway as a Polestar 3. But if you want an electric SUV that’s enjoyable to drive, the BMW iX3 should be at the top of your list.

Verdict

The BMW iX3 is a game-changing electric SUV, with major improvements in range and driving ability over all of its alternatives. It’s a car where you barely have to compromise compared to the petrol model - in fact, considering how close in price it is to the petrol-powered X3, it makes that car look rather silly. Certainly, the iX3 is a car you just have to shortlist if it’s even tangentially related to the vehicles you’re looking at - it’s better than many much more expensive EVs, and worth upgrading from cheaper ones for.

Check out the latest BMW iX3 deals available through Carwow. You can also lease an iX3, or browse our range of used BMW electric cars to find a second-hand bargain. Looking to sell your car? You can do that through Carwow quickly and for a fair price.

The BMW iX3 starts from just under £60,000, meaning it’s slightly less expensive than the Audi Q6 e-tron and the Mercedes GLC EV. It’s also around £8,000 less than a Polestar 3.

You also get a lot of equipment as standard. All cars get that impressive panoramic infotainment system, wireless phone charging, adaptive cruise control, heated front seats and LED headlights with automatic high beams.

As is usually the case with BMW, there are also plenty of optional extras which push the price up. The £1,700 Technology pack adds things like a head-up display, Harmon Kardon sound system and tri-zone climate control, and an auto park function will set you back a further £775.

The iX3 is both comfortable and fun to drive, but the A-Pillar blind spot is annoying in town

In town

Most electric cars work well in town, and the BMW iX3 is no exception. The suspension does a decent job of soaking up speed bumps and potholes (though it's not quite as cushy as a Polestar 3) and the surround-view camera is really clear and high-definition to make tight car parks less stressful.

You also have something called soft stop, which uses a high-powered computer to prevent jerky braking at low speeds. It feels natural and easy to control, and the steering is also light without feeling numb.

Forward visibility is decent, although you do have quite a large blind spot in your A-pillar which isn’t helped by the Panoramic iDrive display. You find yourself peering around it a lot at junctions.

If you’re not a confident parker, the iX3 is available with plenty of tech to help you out. It’ll park itself in bays and parallel spaces, and you can even park the car remotely from an app on your phone. You just pick the space you want to park in, get out and press a button on the BMW app. It may come in handy if you’re parking in a tight space where there’s not enough room to get out of the car, and you can also summon the car out of the space on your return.

On the motorway

At motorway speeds the iX3 is very quiet. It has active noise cancellation which uses microphones to listen for unwanted noises, then it plays opposing sound waves to cancel them out. The system works really well, because you hardly get any wind or tyre noise. It’s more refined than an Audi Q6 e-tron.

BMW also offers a Highway Assist function which can pretty much drive for you on motorways. The car can even perform lane changes automatically just by looking in the door mirror - it takes a lot of the stress out of long drives.

After a few hours behind the wheel we were relaxed and comfortable - it’s a great long-distance cruiser.

On a twisty road

On a twisty road the BMW iX3 goes from being impressive to incredible, because you’d never guess that it weighs 2.3 tonnes.

It feels nimble and agile, with responsive steering which makes it really easy to place on the road. You get almost zero bodyroll through the corners, and it only starts to run wide if you really push it.

It’s a really easy car to drive quickly down a country road, and even if you’re not in the mood for larking about it’s still supremely comfortable over bumps and uneven surfaces. The Audi Q6 e-tron doesn’t hold a candle to the iX3.

The iX3 offers plenty of interior space and there’s decent storage, but the boot is only average

The BMW iX3’s driving position is spot on. There’s loads of adjustment in the seats and the steering wheel, and you can get nice and low if you prefer a sporty vibe. The standard seats are also excellent, offering enough support while still being soft and cosseting. The sports seats you get in some models are a bit more grippy, which is ideal for spirited driving but they’re not quite as comfortable for long-distance cruising.

Once you’ve got comfortable behind the wheel, there are plenty of cubbies to store your bits and bobs. The two cupholders in front of the gear selector are a good size, and there’s a place to store two phones under the touchscreen with wireless charging for your devices.

There’s also space for some odds and ends under the armrest, and you get a place for a small bag under the centre console. The door bins will swallow up a large bottle, as will the glovebox. It’s a really practical cabin.

Space in the back seats

Moving to the rear, kneeroom and headroom are both generous. A Tesla Model Y is a bit more spacious, but the iX3 will still take a 6’3” motoring journalist in comfort. You can also add three-zone climate control as an option so the rear seat occupants can set their own temperature.

Fitting a child seat is easy thanks to the wide-opening rear doors, but you will need to remember to lift the leather flap covering the ISOFIX points before you plonk the seat down. Once you have done this, the anchors are really easy to locate.

There are a couple of USB-C ports in the back so the kids can keep their devices topped up, and you also get two cupholders in the fold-down armrest. The rear door bins are big enough for large bottles, too.

Boot space

The iX3 offers 520 litres of boot space, which is pretty much exactly the same as the Audi Q6 e-tron and the Mercedes GLC EV. It’s also 36 litres bigger than the Polestar 3’s boot.

The load lip is low, and the opening is wide, making it easy to chuck big, heavy items into the boot. The back seats also fold pretty much flat with no hump in the floor, so sliding an IKEA chest of drawers to the front won’t be an issue.

Under the floor there’s a big space to keep loose items hidden away, and there are some handy hooks to stop bags from rolling around.

Under the bonnet you get a further 58 litres of space, which is perfect for storing your charging cables.

The iX3’s interior packs impressive tech and it feels posh, but some of the controls are awkward

The iX3 is the first BMW to use the new Panoramic iDrive infotainment system, which is basically a massive display which runs along the base of the windscreen.

It’s projected onto a black strip which is right in the driver’s eyeline, so you don’t have to look away from the road to see key information like speed and navigation directions. It’s split into three sections, with one display in front of the passenger, and you can choose what you see on each segment of the display.

It looks very impressive when you get behind the wheel, and it’s easy to use as well. It does feel a bit under-utilised in some ways though, especially on the passenger side. You can have things like your elevation and air quality index there, but not third-party apps like Spotify or Google Maps.

Below the panoramic display you have a 17.9-inch touchscreen which is oddly cantered to the side. It looks pretty cool when you’re using BMW’s own software, but once you load up Apple CarPlay you end up with a strange border around the screen.

The screen itself is bright and extremely responsive to your inputs, but there are quite a lot of menus to learn your way around and it can be quite overwhelming at first. Once you’ve learned your way around the system it’s pretty easy to use on the move, with handy shortcuts for your driver assistance systems at the driver’s fingertips.

The final screen on offer is the optional head-up display, which seems pretty redundant when combined with the Panoramic iDrive beneath the window. We ended up switching it off midway through our test because the amount of information in front of the driver becomes a bit much to process. You end up not knowing where to look.

The buttons on the steering wheel aren’t great either. They’re weirdly recessed within the rim of the equally strange steering wheel, making each button seem like a stretch for your thumb to reach. They’re also quite small and tightly clustered together - making them uninviting to interact with.

Small gripes aside, the iX3’s interior looks fantastic and the material quality is excellent. It’s miles better than the petrol-powered X3’s low-rent cabin, and it feels more posh than a Polestar 3 as well.

The door tops, dashboard and centre console are all covered in lovely soft leather and squidgy plastics, and all the switchgear feels reassuringly solid as well. You can find some harder plastics if you dig down to the lower door cards and in the footwells, but you really need to be looking for it.

All versions of the BMW iX3 come with a 108kWh battery, and BMW claims it’ll do up to 500 miles between charges. The car we drove was fitted with 21-inch alloy wheels, which drops the claimed figure to 470 miles.

We took the car on a 154-mile test drive taking in a good mixture of city streets, country roads and wide open highways, and it averaged 3.3 miles per kWh. That works out to a real-world range of almost 360 miles.

That’s some way off the claimed figure, but it’s still mightily impressive for a large SUV - and efficiency was higher when we tested the car in the UK, with more conventional acceleration and braking. The Polestar 3 managed 438 miles before conking out during one of our range tests though - we’ll look forward to seeing what the iX3 can manage when we do a long journey.

If your journey does span further than this, you can charge the iX3 at up to 400kW at a DC charging station. That allows the car to go from 10-80% in just 21 minutes. An 11kW AC home charger will take you from 0-100% in 11 hours, and this drops to five hours and 45 minutes at a 22kW station.

All versions of the BMW iX3 will attract the luxury car tax, meaning you’ll pay £620 per year in tax for years 2-6. The first year’s tax is still just £10, because this is an electric car.

At least company car drivers will be able to enjoy low Benefit in Kind rates. The iX3 falls into the lowest bracket of just 3%.

The iX3 comes with loads of safety kit as standard. All cars come with adaptive cruise control, blind spot monitoring, driver attention alert and autonomous emergency braking.

This car hasn’t been through Euro NCAP’s crash testing yet, but no BMW tested in 2025 so far has scored less than four stars. Given the iX3 debuts the latest versions of BMW’s driver assistance systems, we’d be surprised if it didn’t get the full five stars.

The only thing which could hold this car back is its interior controls, because Euro NCAP is now scoring cars for ease of use. There’s no denying that touchscreen controls are more fiddly to operate than physical knobs, so the iX3 could lose a few points here.

The BMW iX3 is a brand new car, so it’s too early to say if it’s reliable or not. All signs point towards this car being dependable though, because BMW came eighth out of 31 manufacturers for owner satisfaction in the 2025 Driver Power survey.