BMW iX M60 | The Frustrating Future of EVs

The BMW iX. This marks a new direction for the brand. It's all electric. A few years back when I drove the 8 Series, I said to myself, this car is not special enough. Every BMW feels the same. And it's one of those cases, be careful what you wish for, because now BMW has torn up that sheet and gone to extremes to make sure that they're not left behind as the commodity brands up their game in terms of styling or over styling. One thing I will say about this video right up front is every single BMW video or article you see about their new cars is always talking about how styling. It is so polarizing, people do not like it, and it's dominated the discussion completely. And what I will say is when you spend so much money and effort, you have such talent behind you, and you can clearly see there's a lot of talent behind this car, that when the entire discussion is focused around how people don't like the looks, you're doing something wrong. That's all I will say. So I'm going to focus on the technical parts, what they're doing right, and the amazing things that probably will be carried over into future vehicles. Let's start with the exterior briefly. Again, because this is all electric, they can do different things. They have decided to try to make this a little bit more slippery. These are very aerodynamic cars, and a lot of it has to do with the smooth lines across the side, the way they flow the air over it, and the underbody is completely flat. You're going to spend most of your time on the interior space. When you look at what they've done here, they have added more eco-materials, like the inside parts of the door panel use recycled material. The way that they're doing the tanning of the leathers, if you option that out, is more eco-conscious. They're trying to use more recycled materials where they can. If you choose the lower trim level, you can get fabric seats, or microfiber seats, versus the upper trim. You're kind of stuck with leather. There is a good use of fabrics. Depending on how you option this out, you can choose blue, you can choose like black, or in this case, you have this brownish red. So there's a lot you can do, and it does feel a lot more special. Namely, when you look at, if you option out like the copper accents, or the crystal design on the upper trim, on the doors for the seat adjustments, and the crystal knob that's here in the center console, and of course the reclaimed, or not reclaimed, but the responsibly harvested wood panel that's on the center console, all of this makes it feel far more special. Also with the addition of alloys, there isn't any gimmicky materials in here that are going to look horrible, like piano black everywhere, so they've moved outside of that. I will say for $105,000 where the M60 starts, there's a lot of hard plastics. And this fabric that they've chosen to coat the under panels with, and on the doors, feels almost like the old Chevy Cruze dashboard. And, you know, obviously you don't have to have this, but in some cases the materials feel very cheap for what it is. The other thing I'm going to talk about is the fact that they mentioned this is the same size as the X5, and I'm going to get this out, get this out here. This is called a SAV, a Sport Activity Vehicle. It is not trying to replace the X5. Even though it is the same proportional size, it is far less usable. And all you have to do is park it next to an X5 or an X7 and look at the hatch design, the cargo space, it's nowhere near as good as that. But they have done some great things, so let's detail that. Because this is now an EV platform, they have more room to work with. They don't have to worry about where they're going to run exhaust pipes, they don't have to worry about transmission tunnels, so the floor is more flat, there's more room in the front half of this. The dashboard is smaller, so you feel open area. There's a lot of front occupant room. The big thing that BMW has done is they wanted to declutter the interior. They wanted it to be far more clean looking, which means removing a lot of the physical buttons and knobs and controls. And it is a blessing and a curse. When you look at it, if you've never been in a BMW before, you're going to think this is a damn clean aesthetic, and it is very well executed. They haven't removed all the physical controls, of course. Your window switches are all physical, your seat adjustment, your door locks, like your shifter here still has mechanical controls. But then you get to the things with the electronics, and they've gone to this threaded screen, this curved display, which after a while of looking at it, you think it's pretty nice. It really is nice, and granted, it could be far more integrated into the dash other than having this strut that holds it up that's very plasticky. It does look tacked on, but when you're sitting in front of it, you're like, there's no stress. There's no stress of clutter, and they did a great job with that until you start using it daily. Because now that the HVAC controls are gone, now that you've gotten rid of the memory buttons that you can program certain things into it, and all of your center console switches have all this haptic feedback, they're kind of electromechanical, which means there's delay to push down, like the iDrive knob is now all electronic. There's no physical detent for it anymore, and it's only activated when the screen's on. So there's always this delay in selecting it, and it's far more error-prone in terms of choosing things on the screen. Like when I select down, it often goes up. I'm also misselecting things, and it wouldn't be so big of an issue if not everything was in here. Like, if I just had my old physical HVAC controls, I could just, I wouldn't have to go menu jumping for all of that. Now, as a previous-gen BMW owner, the one of the things I got used to, because this is a menu-driven system, is having the shortcut buttons 1 through 7, or whatever it is. I could physically hold and program things like Screen Off, Android Auto. I could turn, hit a button to go into my sound profiles, or my ambient lighting setting, one touch. I didn't have to go through the menus. So getting rid of that here is largely very cumbersome, because now I'm having to menu jump and touch the screen and navigate with iDrive far more than I used to. But a lot of these decisions to remove physical controls wasn't just arbitrary. It's because BMW has one of the longest histories of doing data collection inside of the cars. Under the privacy menus, data collection is usually enabled by default. So what they're doing is they're able to upload user commands, things that people are doing in the infotainment, and logging what people use, and what they don't use on a daily basis. So some of these decisions are driven by actual customer use, not just they wanted to get rid of everything. But aside from the electronics, there's other things that are here that are frustrating. Like now the door handles, or to open the door is a physical button, a digital button. And you push that to unlock or get the door open. But then they have to have a redundant physical handle underneath. And it's like, why do you have the complication of having that electronic actuator than having to have a redundant physical switch to open the doors? The other thing is they've gone to these frameless doors, which kind of look cool. And when you look at it, it's very clean, and it allows them to clean up the outer edge. But when you shut the doors, it's far more rattly because that glass is rattling. The door frame structure is really solid, but there's always this rattle that comes from it. The other things to talk about that they've changed here in a negative way are the seats. The old BMW seats had thigh adjustment. They had headrest adjustment or true headrest. In this case, the headrests are now integrated into the seat. And really what they did that for is because they wanted to put headrest speakers in for their 3D sound settings. So now you don't have the adjustability and the passenger seat does not have a massage function. And truthfully, the BMW massage function is not that great. It's just a lumbar bladder that inflates. So it's not like you're losing much here. But again, when you're talking about a hundred plus thousand dollar car, it's weird to see certain things that are stripped off that are there in their commodity SUVs like the X5 and the X7. Now getting around the infotainment is pretty clean. You do have something they've adopted here to get rid of like all these M settings where you're changing suspension, stability control, and all that. All those menus are gone. And they basically just move them to the my modes. So in my modes, it's kind of like presetting your mood. So you're choosing like expressive, you're choosing efficient, you're choosing sport, or you're choosing like relax or kind of your personal setting. And what it does is it changed the display, the way that it looks, the wallpaper changes, the gauge cluster mode. And then if you have the iconic sounds package, or you've either downloaded or bought it as a part of the car, it adds the Renzo Vitale and Hans Zimmer design sound profiles when you're driving. And I kind of played them during the intro of this so you can see what that sounds like. And essentially, it's a synthesis. It's a synthesis of sound to kind of connect you to the electric car experience. In some cases, it's relaxing. In other cases, it's very dark. Many of the tones that are created here are deep bass. And some people may find them unsettling. And most of the time, I find them to be very interesting because there's a musicality to it. There's bass sweeps, there's kind of these hidden beeps in it. They use the shepherd tone and sport mode and expressive mode to create this loop build sound to it. And it's a part of this new experience. Now the problem is, is it's not adaptive enough. It's not adaptive to know when you have your music on, it still plays over that. So if you have your music on still hear this sound. If you're on a phone call, you still hear this sound. And it's not adapting enough to make it fresh. It's always the same based on throttle input or throttle release. And it always has this faint drone in the background. It's not changing its notes. It's not able to adapt itself to different environments. So most of the time, you're probably going to be annoyed by it after longer term ownership. I will say it is a cool new direction. And it's something that I've spent a lot of time listening to and recording and kind of dissecting. One of the last things you're going to talk about is storage capacity is pretty good. You can fit a lot in here despite it not being like their SUV platforms. It's pretty easy to get in and out of this thing. And there's a ton of headroom in the back. And granted, it's a breadbox, it should. So you should not have any issue regardless of your size fitting in here. The last thing to talk about, and it's a big one, is the Bowers and Wilkins audio system, if you opt for it. In short, it's the best audio system we've ever objectively and subjectively tested in a car. It's the closest thing you're going to get to being in a studio space, something that musicians and artists really intended on people. This is a dream for them to listen to this. And that's because they started from a very neutral, accurate place. If you're in studio mode, and you have all the 3D stuff, it disables the 3D stuff. If you have the 4D stuff turned down, and you have the EQ basically equalized neutral, it's amazing. You might have to roll off the bass at 100 Hz to get it a bit more accurate, but it has such a perfect starting point. And that's because the audio engineers were involved in the interior design, and BMW didn't sheep out in terms of speaker budget. There are diamond tweeters in the door. According to Bowers, there's a diamond tweeter in the center. They have headrest speakers. They have transducers in the seats. They have headrest speakers. But a lot of that is really unnecessary, because when you're in studio mode, a lot of that is turned off, and that's where the joy is. But the beautiful part of having a neutral system like that in studio is you can go, if you're a user and you want more bass, you can switch it over to the 4D or the 3D mode. You can turn this into an echo chamber. You can literally probably loosen your vowels with all the bass that it's going to produce. They started accurately with a great cabin, and then it allows the user to screw around with this, which is what I really like in an audio system. It transcends this car from being kind of a luxury EV into a place that you could spend a lot of time and just get lost in the sound of this car. But let's head into the shop, where we're going to talk about the mechanical stuff, because there is a lot. Mark, we're underneath the BMW iX, and for once, you know everything and I know nothing. The only thing I know about the iX M60 or 50 M Sport is that it looks like a general award. It is horribly ugly and about the same size as something like a BMW X5. So, tell me about it. Walk me through why I would spend $115,000 on this beautiful looking automobile. Well, first off, you're not going to spend $115,000. I'm going to spend more? No. $150,000? No, that's the extreme end. I mean, honestly, you can get this pushing like $80,000 to start. Oh, okay. And then when you go up to the M60, you can push it up to like $113,000 to $115,000 like this is. You really got to push it to do that. So, really, what you're looking at here, Jack, is their next generation design. As a brief history lesson, BMW started in electrification in the industrial market or fleet market a long time ago in the early 2000s. And then they spun up the i brand, which you know them from the i3 and i8. Correct. That was the first real foray into a production high-end like EV. They had a great idea, but we weren't in the economy where that made sense. People don't buy small premium commuter cars in the i3's case, and nobody wanted a three-cylinder supercar out of the i8. This looks like a mix of both familiar and foreign things. It looks like there's bits of clar in the suspension, and the body structure looks to be a mix of carbon fiber, which they've worked on in the past and or used in the past, and aluminum. So, walk me through that. So, this is the first brand new ground-up architecture that they built for an EV platform since the i3, and that's going back to 2013. It's been a long time, and that's because BMW as a brand has kind of been on again, off again. Like, we put a ton of money in EV. We don't think it's going anywhere. Now they're like all in with it again. So, there was this huge gap. But the thing is, because they worked on those cars, they had a lot of know-how on how to this work. So, now this is the next generation product. Aluminum space frame, largely aluminum. There is steel in the roof area for that huge panoramic glass that, you know, you can change it to dim out light and all that. So, there is steel where it needs to be to reinforce it. They do CFRP in the ring area of the door rings and the trunk area. Now, when you look at the body in white as it goes down the line, you can see there's an open space for that. And one of reasons why they didn't use aluminum or steel in the ring area is one weight. And they found that the CFRP technology that they had, it's all done by robotics, that it does shave off a lot of weight and does increase, like you talked about earlier, torsional rigidity of the car in a great measure. So, this is a very almost exotic style body structure for what it is. And to your point earlier, they can still bolt up different types of suspension architectures based on when they scale this out. So, if they want to do a double wishbone or a multi-link front like they have here, they can. If they want to put up a strut, they can do that as well by popping in different subframes and same with the back. So, theoretically, this could be like the future 3 Series or the X3. This is currently sort of that X5 and they want to lengthen out the vehicle to make like an X7, they could as well. That's absolutely correct. So, in terms of battery packs, this is on their fifth generation architecture, which is a little older to be honest. Why? Because they're still working on their sixth gen architecture, which I know that sounds like a bad thing, in some ways it is. This has their last generation motor design, front and rear, and they are very compact. When you look at the motors, both of them together is like the size of, but they're still smaller than one of their V8s. They are highly efficient, they do not use permanent magnets, so they can turn on and off magnetic field of the motors, which gives them explicit control of how that on and off state works. So, it's more efficient in terms of no parasitic loss, they don't always have to be on, and the beauty of it is they can control without using ABS, without using stability control system, when the motors turn on and off. So, if it detects wheel slip inside the motor, that module, it can turn on and off power instantly because it doesn't have the permanent magnets in there. That's why these things feel different than a lot of the commodity products that have permanent magnets, they don't have to lean on stability control to make everything work. Like you get in the Genesis products, we talk about it all the time, the problem with the Genesis products is the chastity control of those vehicles is horrendous. The one benefit BMW has as well, is we talk about this with the modern M cars, you look like an M3 or even an M5, those things weigh in like an absurd amount, and they've managed to find a good way to mask that mass, and this is one of those vehicles as well, while it does weigh like 6,000 pounds. It's like 5,800 pounds, it's a lot. It doesn't feel like it behind the wheel. It doesn't, and the large part is because of the way they've done their motor electronics and the stability control system as a secondary layer, but they don't have to wait. That reaction time is like 100 milliseconds for that motor to turn on and off, so it does that pulsing without having to have that braking and all the systems that come in and make you feel like... It still feels organic, it still feels like a BMW product, albeit devoid of what you would associate as feel. Correct. They are open differentials though, they're not limited slips, so again, this is kind of new generation, old generation. They use prismatic cells for their battery packs. They are co-developed with CATL and there's a couple other battery suppliers, but BMW is involved in developing the chemistry for these batteries. They don't just like, hey, we want this size battery pack with this chemistry, and then the battery supplier comes off and ships themselves. They are involved in the development of the cell, including the shielding or the casing of the battery packs, or the pouches. They're involved in the battery pack design itself, how it's integrated with the software, and BMW manufactures their own battery packs, so they get the cells that they specced out from the supplier, comes to one of their multiple factories. Now they're building them in China, in Mexico, they have one in Germany, so they are exclusive control of those packs. There's no supplier involved, other than the cell. So they can't pull a GM or Hyundai. We got a fire, it sits these guys. I mean, they could still technically blame one of their battery supplier if there was a cell problem, but they have their hands on even in the supply chain of mining materials, so they know where their batteries, the internal parts of the battery, from cobalt to lithium to nickel, they know where that material is coming from and where their supplier is getting it from, so they can rule out the fact that there's child labor or slave labor. They're really trying to get their hands on the supply chain of it, but there's a big jump between the 50, I'm sorry, the 50 and the 60 versus the poverty spec trim level. Now the difference in terms of power, they're the same battery pack between the 50 and the 60, but there's more power in the 60, of course, because you're paying more money. That's where you get the dual motor. In sport mode, it ramps up the power to like 800 pounds of torque and almost 600 pounds or 600 horsepower, so there is differences, and we'll talk about that in the drive, but the main thing is the 50 is the sweet spot because you get the bigger battery and you get more range. The 60 loses some range and it's somewhere between like 320 to 350, and I approximate that because it's never going to be the same depending on how you drive. Does this get rear steer or any of like the stuff they've taken from the X7? So you're getting VGRS and then you're getting a rear steer module on the M60, this version. So you're getting the shorter turning radius, you're getting all the things that you get in a traditional M car, although this is not really a full M car, it's just bits and pieces of it. It's still the same motors that you find like in the i4, it's the same like architecture for those electric motors, same power front and rear. The main difference is just the battery back size. So the fine print is this is the fifth gen and the sixth gen is coming out. Their new factories are coming online, their new battery technology is coming online, which makes the cells closer to Tesla, and they have two cell sizes, a higher height, and they can double stack the new generation, which means they have better battery density, they have more capability in terms of power, they're more efficient, the electric motors are going to be more efficient. So what you're looking at is a very here and now product. And the second piece of fine print to this is, well, they have advanced materials like CFRP in these structural areas. If you get hit, you know, you might ask, well, why don't more manufacturers do this? Like why doesn't Toyota have one or Hyundai and Kia use advanced materials? If you get in a side collision, or you get in it, the rear gets tapped, and you crack the CFRP, the repair costs, not only the battery pack getting damaged, worrying about that, you're talking about literally almost totaling out these cars because the repair costs are going to become so high. And this is one of those things, your insurance costs are going to be higher on these cars. It's not like a small impact. Yeah, I mean, it's one of these things you're going to start to pay attention to when you're going from $600 every six months for insurance up to like $1,200. And as more of these things get balled up, I mean, it could be even higher than that long-term. You know, we joked around with the LC500, which has a carbon CSMC trunk and door panels, which this is even more ridiculous than that. It was $5,000 for a trunk, $3,000 for a door on that car. I didn't look up the prices for this, but I mean, you can assume that a minimal impact is going to cost you anywhere from $5,000 to $10,000 easily. This is a disposable product, not only because it's basically impossible to fix if you get hit, but it also because it's a beta product. This is, as you said, a here and now vehicle. So in three years, let's call it the residuals on this thing are going to be nothing because the next variant of this, which isn't going to be a minor improvement, a massive improvement will be out. Well, and it's not so much that they're going to improve this stuff. They're going to be improving this, right? The heart of the car. And then once this battery pack, right now, it's not integrated into the chassis. It's not a core structural piece yet. That next generation, the plan is to make it a core structural piece of the car. So you're talking about a massive switch in terms of the way the car is designed. So, you know, there's that part of it. The last part, before we take this for a drive, is I had a brief text conversation with Scott. He's got all these cars coming in now that are, you know, partial hybrid. Not only are they having problems getting things apart, the carbon buildup from DI systems across the board is a major issue. It's so expensive to repair things, all the control modules, like minor jobs that used to cost like six, 700 bucks are now like $3,000 because it takes 12 hours labor to pull something apart. The internal combustion process, the last generation of it to meet efficient, you know, emissions and regulations has gotten so out of control. And as every car goes, mild hybrid or plug-in hybrid, this car does not have those issues. Because really, once you pull down these panels, getting at that electric motor, and when you look at the assembly, like what you look, what goes into this electric motor, it's nothing compared to these modern internal combustion engines. So servicing this is half the amount of energy. The main complication really is all the cooling system, because you do have a heat pump. You have cooling that runs through the battery packs to monitor and keep that temperature at control for fast charging and all that. Other than the cooling system, there's not a lot of complication here in terms of repair. So while the body structure is more crazy and insurance might go up when you have to fix these things, if you do, it's not going to be such a catastrophic bill like it is with some of these newer cars. My argument against that though, is this now is becoming more and more like one of these. Yes, yeah. Where it becomes hyper disposable, like a consumer electronic, and there is a shelf life for the battery pack. So in 10 years, or however many miles, how big is that bill going to be? Well, it's going to be huge. And Scott, that's what the other conversation, Scott said, the guy he knows that works at Cadillac, they have to get a forklift license because of the battery packs. For the Hummers. For all their cars to even get the packs in. And he was like, how do we even get the batteries? How do we get them in the cars? Well, it's almost like cab off now. You know, like that concept, it's a different shift of how you have to service these things. And yes, you're going to have to evolve service centers. And I don't know where they're going to get the packs from. I mean, a normal shop, like probably 80% of normal shops are not going to do a pack on these. So it's really right now. It's great for the manufacturers and the dealerships because they're like, oh, they have their nails into all these cars. But I think long term, once they figure some of this stuff out, not today, so we're talking 10, 15 years at least, it will become much easier to service, assuming that's still allowed. All right, Mark, with that, let's go take this thing for a quick drive. Jack, we got the, whatever it is, IX M60i. Are you ready to feel some seizures from the rear wheels before we launch? I'm ready to hear Hans Zimmer at his finest. Man, this car is, okay, it is really fast. Okay. Like most electric performance cars, you would expect it is very fast and it's largely fast without being overly nauseating. There are certain things that we talked about in the shop that BMW has been able to do with their calibration of the electric motors. And that is because they don't have permanent magnets, like we talked about, they can pulse and turn that system on and off. So the first line of defense against wheel slip is actually in the electric motor. They don't have to stabilize traction stability with the brakes like traditional systems. So it has that more natural state of kind of getting on and off the throttle a bit more natural than some of the other EVs. And that's kind of the magic in their chassis tuning as well, because it feels more natural to turn in, to accelerate. And that's what I get mostly from driving this compared to like the EV6s of the world, the Ioniqs and some of the other EVs that we've driven, where it just feels disconnected and unnatural. To me, my expectations for this are different than the i4. The i4, I had higher expectations for because it was built on a car chassis. Admittedly, that was a compromised EV where this is a ground-up, but I don't expect this to handle or drive anywhere as well as a 3-series or 4-series based car. But clearly, you and I both spent time with this, it's a much better thought out product than the i4 is. It feels more complete and, you know, we can talk about this forever of how the development cycle was from the early 90s, or I'm sorry, the early 2000s all the way to now. So they have the cycles of learning to figure out how to make this a really good handling car versus just a generic EV, and they're still not there yet. But, you know, just throttle application and cornering, you don't get like this bobble effect. You don't feel like that we laughed about with the Hyundai, where you literally obliterated one tire turning. They have so much control over the front and rear motors that it feels very, very connected. But I'm not gonna lie, this is a very heavy car. You definitely cannot get away from the weight as much as they've done a great job with the suspension tuning here. To me, it's interesting how they were able to blend like old car feel with next generation feel and still having the front and the rear connected. It is BMW, and this is probably what they're best at doing, taking very now heavy products and getting them to handle exceptionally well given their limitations. That said, this is an SUV, not a sports car. It's an SAV, a SAV. All right, this is a big box with a lot of power that you're supposed to be able to put people and ---- in. How does it do as a X5 or X7 replacement? Those cars are exceptional vehicles. We spent an ass load of time in them, and this is X5 sized. It is. And it is $115,000 or $16,000. Yeah, but see, this is the thing, right? They're not trying to make it an X5 replacement. While it has the same proportions as an X5, it's not an SUV. It's trying to be like, like I said, an SAV, which is a sport activity vehicle. So it's more like a hatchback slash like car thing. So it's not trying to be that, but in that quest to do that, I feel like they've lost something because there's still, and I talked about this on the interior part, right? You're losing the usability of the X5. You're losing the luxury features of the 7 Series, but yet you still have this high price tag. And in the driving experience, I think that's less noticeable. I'll be, I'll be honest. I think it really does drive great. And it's a car that blends some gimmicks with actual utilization in terms of driving performance. The all-wheel drive system seems to work well. The, the damping is really good without being too firm. Your drive modes aren't crazy like an M car. Like when you have 20 different settings, like literally all this is, is my modes. That's it. There's no like traction stability control switch. You don't have all of those settings. So it is, you get in and you drive it. It is a consolidated, well thought out process from interior and the drive train. And you feel like you're in Doom 3. All right. So while I agree with you that it is very well thought out, it drives well, it's exceptionally quiet. It is one of the more quiet, if not quietest EVs I've been in. I think it is on par with like a fully loaded Taycan like we had. Yeah. It's very, very, very quiet. And it rides well. I just, who is this for? I guess that's the question. Cause your X7, while it is not as fast as this, has like a 500 mile range, though this range is 300. That X7 does not have a 400 mile range. It has more like a 250 mile range. With you driving. Yeah, with the twin turbo V8, dude, it's like. So you got an X7 with a V6. It probably has a 400 mile range, just like the X5 has. And those cars are less money than this. Who is this for? You have to be an early adopter. You have to really like EVs and you have to prioritize what the interior has to offer in this. OK, so who this is for is this has decent range. It has over 300 miles. Yes, very good. OK, it's very good. You have an exceptional interior build quality. You have exceptional build quality from the chassis. So when you look at a Tesla, a Model S or a Model Y or whatever. What's the one with the X, right? The Model X with the doors that go up. Those things literally feel like they were built in the Walmart factory. If they make some photos of the one I saw at AFA where it was like look like it was put together by a drunk person. Yeah, they're not there yet. And build quality BMW doesn't have to worry about that. This car is a prime example of how you do a full blown high end, almost exotic luxury car build with a hundred thousand dollar price tag. And this was my question at the start of the video. Like, why is this the same price as like an X7 or an X5 with less usability? Well, we talked about it in the shop and in the driving experience, you really start to realize those advanced composites, that aluminum space frame, the double wishbone suspension, all these high end things that they've integrated here make the driving experience feel special. And while, yes, there's some gimmicks, I think they do blend a very consolidated interior, much like we talked about in the Volvo, right? This is minimalism. And I think people are going to love like the things they've done with the interior textures, the advanced fabrics, recycled materials, trying to go more green and kind of not just saying it, but actually trying to do some of those things. Those people are going to appreciate all these advancements that they made. But I will say they're not there yet. You're still on the fifth gen battery architecture. The next gen is coming out, which is going to make this largely irrelevant in many ways because it makes it hyper disposable. It does. And that's that's the problem with an EV of this generation. This is the first real to in my approximation compared to like the I3, which was an experiment. This is their first really I would buy this car or I would lease this car for three years. It's really, really, really good to drive. I've enjoyed it. This is the most compelling, long ranged, expensive EV we've been in. While I prefer driving the Taycan any day of the week because it drives like a Porsche product that has 225 miles of range. Right. It's a joke when you drive it. You don't really have the range and you don't have the usability of this. This car is far more usability than the Taycan. And it's way, way less money. And, you know, in the other thing is the power level, you know, whatever this is, like five, six hundred horsepower, it doesn't even matter. It's more than enough. You don't even need this. You can go for the lower trim level and spend less money. And it's way more power than you can possibly use on the street, because when you're done with all the gimmicks and mashing your foot down, you're going to put this in the efficient mode or relaxed mode and you're never going to be on and off the throttle. You're going to be getting a massage if this is your only if you're here as a driver. Yeah. And you'll be listening to one of the best audio systems, which you can't get for two years anyway. One of the best audio systems ever in a car. Absolutely. And that's the perk of this. But again, it is hyper disposable. This is not going to be on someone's bedroom wall. And in two to three years, if you're who bought this thing, you now have a giant hundred thousand dollar paperweight. Yeah, I wouldn't say it's going to be a paperweight. But, you know, when you're going to look at their next gen, what they're able to do with efficiency, battery efficiency and power efficiency, who's going to want to, you know, one of these products on the next? No, this is this is one hundred. I'm not saying you buy this. You have to lease this car and you trade it in for the next gen battery architecture that they're coming out with. I love I really do. If you want to lease it, there's almost zero. I would have zero regrets compared to EQS, EQE, even like Taycan. I would choose this over the Taycan ten out of ten times because it's it's a real usable car. As a transportation vehicle, it is better than the Taycan. So let's get into the final thoughts, Jack. We rambled on enough. All right, let's do it. Final thoughts on the IX. This was a very long video on purpose. This is a technology showcase. This is everything that BMW is putting in their new cars and the future of the brand. Sadly, we had almost zero information from them, which is a pity because there is so much talent and so much engineering behind every single corner of this car. So what I will say is I think there are great things that they're combining kind of with their old style technology and trying to blend the usability together. So it's not a shouty in your face car that is trying to overwhelm you. But at the same time, there are usability issues with removing removing some of the legacy features that I talked about in the interior space. One of the biggest deficiencies is this is built on the fifth gen battery architecture, which is a 400 volt system compared to the 800 volt system of the next gen cars and all the other EVs that are coming out. So that means when you go to an Electrify America station on a fast charger, it's going to take you over 30 minutes to charge this thing from like 10 to 80 percent. Your charging speed is always going to be capped by that as the charging infrastructure improves. And that's why when we talk about this stuff, these are very here and now cars. Most of the EVs, surprisingly or unsurprisingly, are all leased. So what you do is you create this image of sustainability and like future-proofing cars. And that's absolutely not true because this built on a last gen battery pack. What happens in 10 years if you want to keep this thing when the batteries are no longer available? Who's going to service it? Who's going to warranty it? So to me, you know, like you have to look at this and know what you're buying. And if you're okay with just throwing this thing out in three years, you're really going to love driving it. If you care about having something for a long time, that's not this car. And now that we're pushing a hundred thousand dollars for a lot of mainstream like luxury cars, I don't know who's going to afford these things long-term as the prices keep going up and up and up. And the real value and the real like core of these cars isn't like mind-blowingly amazing where you have to have it for that price. So it's just a mixed bag overall. I'm going to leave it at that. Thanks for watching.