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BMW‘s new all-electric iX3 is the marque’s most important car in years and the vanguard of a new class of EVs from the automaker that are supposed to transform the marque, full stop. That’s still in a work-in-progress, but in the meantime, BMW is proving that the iX3 is up for the challenge, recently going more than 600 miles on a single charge in Germany.
The company took the car from a plant in Debrecen, Hungary, where the iX3 is built, to Munich, Germany, where the BMW headquarters is, making a video (of course), to document their efforts. That route takes them 1,007 kilometers, or 625 miles. The drivers had to make a series of sacrifices to get there, including no highway driving, since higher speeds increase air resistance and require more power to push the car forward.
BMW had to organize the trip a bit like the Cannonball Run: There was lots of pre-planning, including looking at road conditions. They had to minimize stops and starts since that also wastes battery power, which meant trying to find fewer stoplights and as little traffic as possible.
Sometime after they got on the road, they realized that the low-beam headlights were on, too, which they hadn’t considered in their original calculations. The heating and air conditioning was kept off, obviously, as was the radio. The drive was a silent, all-electric drive of the damned.
BMW definitely would have had an easier time accomplishing the feat on a track in completely controlled conditions, but the company said it was important to do it on public roads, since that is where the iX3 is intended to be used, after all. Six drivers took part and stopped at the marque’s buildings along the way in Steyr and Landshut.
With 78 kilometers, or about 48 miles, left in the journey, the iX3 had 11 percent of its battery power left. When they finally got to Munich, they were greeted by cheering BMW employees. The iX3 also had 2 percent battery left, so it could’ve gone even further.
This is not, of course, the typical drive for anyone who isn’t a BMW employee, and while the iX3 is rated at 497 miles of range by European WLTP standards, it’s expected to get something closer to 400 miles of range rated by the EPA. That’s in part to account for Americans driving faster and on more highways. Still, it’s an impressive feat, and a good reminder that, if you’re in an EV and running out of juice, pull off the highway, turn off all but essential systems, and hope for the best.
Erik Shilling is digital auto editor at Robb Report. Before joining the magazine, he was an editor at Jalopnik, Atlas Obscura, and the New York Post, and a staff writer at several newspapers before…
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