Video: 2026 BMW iX3: The Most Important BMW in a Decade!

The inside is definitely showcase here on the new iX3. More specifically, it's gonna be on this trapezoidal center infotainment screen here, and this over a meter long projected display on the lower portion of the windshield. And I say projected because that is not a screen that is definitely kind of like a heads up display. It's projected there on the bottom and that is configurable. And you're gonna see how that is configured here in a moment. Now this is absolutely considered a software-defined vehicle in that the overwhelming majority of vehicle functions and well features are all embedded digitally. We got a lot to talk about. I've got a ton to show you. So let's just see some of the highlights of this new system. All right, a good place to start is with this very long display here on the bottom of the windshield. So to configure this, you're gonna swipe down from the top and you're gonna hit Panoramic Vision display and we'll configure and it is just so customizable. All these little widgets and readouts here are very impressive. So you've got a wide range of them. Right now it shows altitude up there on the right along with the air quality index. I'm gonna get rid of the altitude and I'm gonna put the date and the time. So you long press and you drag that up there. And there it is. Take note about just how fast the reactions are. Very impressive, I'm gonna get rid of the air quality. I'm gonna put up DC fast charging indicator. There you go, done. So that is quite quick and it's quite easy to customize it as you go. Now, as you might have noticed when I swiped down, you also have a series of shortcuts you can add here. So I just added two random ones. We've had a radio station and stability control if you wanna use that. But you can preset this to a whole wide range of functions and media shortcuts and all that kind of good stuff. Speaking of functions, we have some digital interactive controls for the vents and the air conditioning. So as you see this one, you have to click this to open it up and you can drag this. This is not necessarily something that is brand new for the market, but this is, please take note of it, just how fast the reactions are here on the screen. And it's very configurable. You can also save these profiles, so you can hit that and that will activate what is already saved there and you can sync it with driver profiles and it's saved to your phone and digital key and all sorts of stuff like that. And again, this is a highly configurable vehicle that has tons of personalization features packed throughout the entire system. You have all your requisite embedded media apps like Spotify, Amazon Music, Audible, and as you can see, you can also do stuff, like Disney+ and YouTube, not when you're driving, but helpful when you're charging, but you interact with it on the screen as you'd expect. I'm a button guy, I'm a physical controls guy. I always have been, I've not been the biggest fan of these software defined vehicles, but BMW, this is a really quick and reactive and very clever system. And thank goodness we still have a volume knob or roller as it were, right here on the center. And you can click it to mute and to unmute. And you've got the most basic of necessary controls, physical hazards, this is your physical drive selector. Although for this, as with most EVs, it's get in, put your foot on the brake, it automatically turns on, so that there's no power button. But yeah, I do like that there is at least a little bit of physical controls here on the center console. Now, keeping with the physical controls theme, these panels here on the steering wheel are not physical controls, but they're touch capacitive. And while that's usually not great, these work quite well because they basically are only hard press in the sense that if I just kind of swipe around, nothing's really act activating if for the most part, these control what's visible here on the panoramic display. So for example, if I hit the hamburger button, the three line button, you come up and you've got personal BMW maps, trip, and dynamics. Let's go over to dynamics. And you press on the center there, and again, you can, the only swipe motion or swipe function is here, kinda like a scroll wheel. But for these buttons you must press, which is got a nice haptic feel to it. It's a bit of vibration feedback. So that works quite well. And again, you're not gonna run into it or kind of activate it while you're driving with your hands on the wheel, which is very nice. And honestly, it feels satisfying. They're not buttons, but they kind of have that fake haptic. They have an actual active haptic that feels quite nice to interact with. One of my favorite bits of personalization is the image you can add to kind of the home screen. So here if you want, it's very helpful to have navigation as the kind of the native thing here, but if you long press, it brings up, you can scroll down to My Modes and hit OK. And I have this kind of set to a blue or kind of, I guess, it's graphite. Usually it's blue, but if you hit here, you can go to Personal, you can Configure and you can do Display Style, Image. And I've already picked, this is the embedded in here, the old BMW 2002 classic. I'm a classic car guy, very cool. So now when you go Home, aha, I like that quite a bit. And that is a Neue Klasse just like, well, this is. And other than the tech, well, it's a kind of a standard funky BMW interior that we've come come to know and somewhat enjoy on BMW's existing products. But this is definitely a step forward. We've got this nice textile dash, which that has, you can't really see it in the daytime, but it has lights and kinda ambient colors embedded in the material there. Standard center console here, bunch of phone charging and just phone holders. This side is for wireless device charging, this side just for kind of a phone holder. You've got dual USB-C charge ports there. You've got a standard air vents that's very funky, vertical spoke steering wheel. You have physical seat controls here on the door. Those can be of course further configured on the center screen here. I'm not gonna get too much into that. You get the point. I really do like the this floating console design with extra storage down below. And, ah, physical glove box access. That's nice, you don't have to press a button here on the center screen. And well, for the most part, driving position is what you'd imagine. You've got a panoramic glass roof, that's a nice place to spend some time. And as I've shown, very, very easy and lovely to interact with, at least from the digital side. So what about the powertrain? Well, we're still waiting on official US market, EPA rated range figures. But BMW says it expects over 400 miles from the 111.2 kilowatt hour battery pack. At launch, dual motors are standard on the iX3 50 trim, which is good for a stout 463 horsepower and 476 pound feet of torque. A Tesla supercharger-compatible NACS charge port is standard and that is gonna reach up to 400 kilowatts of charge rate. That is pretty darn good. And that allows a 10 to 80% charge in just 21 minutes under ideal circumstances. Now, we haven't discussed the exterior primarily because it's quite secondary to that radical digital architecture, but stylistically, it's very much the production translation of the BMW Vision Neue Klasse X concept from 2024. The big visual standout you'll notice is, of course, these smaller kidney bean front grill. That recalls the face of past beamers. And I think it's far more elegant than what we see on the automakers recent and more current lineup. Now, as you can probably tell, there is just so much more to talk about with the all new BMW iX3. But for my full thoughts and up close, you gotta go to cars.com/news.