2023 BMW iX M60 | Drive

What is 2.3 seconds of your life worth to you? Does $87,000 sound about right? 

If so, then the 2023 BMW iX M60 five-door luxury electric SUV is what you need. You’ll also need at least $222,900 to park one in your driveway, plus on-road costs. 

This luxuriously appointed and extremely potent electric SUV hits 100km/h from standstill in a ridiculous 3.8 seconds. That is phenomenal for a vehicle weighing the same as two Toyota Corollas.

The BMW iX M60 is the first BMW M vehicle designed as an EV from the ground up. It’s also the fastest electric luxury SUV Australian money can buy right now. This makes it something of a groundbreaker, not just a ground-shaker.

The BMW iX M60 is the third – and most potent – of the iX SUV range that kicks off with the more mundane iX xDrive40 ($141,900 plus on-road costs). 

All iX SUVs are all-wheel drive, and all are electric, but the potency of the front and rear electric motors differ as you step up the price range, as does battery capacity.

The iX xDrive40 is priced from $135,900 plus on-road costs. Its front and rear motors combine for 240kW of power and 630Nm of torque. This is paired with a 77kWh battery pack (71kWh of which is useable) that BMW claims is good for 420km of driving range.

The $169,900 (plus on-road costs) iX xDrive50 steps up the electric outputs to 385kW and 765Nm and has a larger 111kWh battery (105kWh useable). BMW claims the iX xDrive50 will cover between 550km and 630km between charges. It will also leap to 100km/h in 4.6 seconds, which is not hanging around by anyone’s standards. 

But for some that’s just not fast enough, hence the BMW iX M60. The flagship iX M60 über mover has a combined 455kW and 1015Nm, which lowers the 0–100km/h time to 3.8 seconds. 

To put that in perspective, that’s four-tenths faster than the standard Porsche 911 (priced from $259,100 plus on-road costs), and the $223K BMW will do it while carrying four adults in comfort. And their luggage.

Now, of course, the BMW iX M60 doesn’t just give you 2.3 seconds of your life back for that extra $87,000. The iX M60 is loaded with trappings that owners of lesser siblings won’t get to enjoy.

First off, it inherits all the iX xDrive50’s goodies, including fully electric leather seats, panoramic glass sunroof that goes from clear to frosted at the touch of a button, adaptive air suspension, soft-close doors, and laser headlights. 

The iX M60 also gains unique 22-inch alloy wheels, dark blue metallic brake callipers, individual tyre pressure monitors, and a thumping 30-speaker Bowers and Wilkins Diamond surround-sound system. 

Our iX M60 also came with the $3500 Comfort Package, which not only heats the front and rear seats, but also heats the centre console lid and door armrests. All of which are a really nice touch. 

So, for $87,000, you get 2.3 seconds of your life back and a warm backside and arms!

Before we jump inside, a quick word on the iX’s exterior styling. I wasn’t a fan when I test-drove the iX xDrive40 back in May 2022. I thought it was too bulky, too metal-heavy visually, especially from the rear three-quarter angle. 

The iX M60 is visually identical to the iX xDrive40, bigger wheels aside, so it hasn’t got anything that will influence my opinion. But I do think that time has softened my take. I wouldn’t go so far as to say I now like it because I still don’t. It’s more that I’m getting used to it. And I have to admit that the iX has a tank-like indomitable ‘presence’ that stands out on the road. 

Inside, however, the iX family wins me over big time. I love the iX’s interior treatment. BMW in my opinion has delivered a cockpit that is both wildly futuristic and wonderfully easy to use. 

The materials used throughout are next level and really highlight the luxury ambitions of this $230K vehicle. From the supple leather seat linings to the crystal glass buttons and iDrive controller embedded in a backlit walnut touchpad, everything here speaks to BMW’s care and consideration for interior design. 

It’s not the perfect interior; I still think the placement of cupholders on the lower tier of the centre armrest is inconvenient, and the doorhandle buttons take some getting used to. The phone charging mat is also in a hard-to-get-at place, but that might be deliberate to save easily distracted drivers from themselves.

Beyond that, there’s a lot to like about the iX M60’s interior, including the truncated centre console and armrest that stops short of the dashboard, thus providing ‘walkthrough’ capability between the front seats. This came in handy when I returned to a public charging bay to discover a Polestar whose driver had ignored the white lines and parked about three inches from my driver’s door.

There is loads of room for two adults in the back seats – both legroom and headroom. A third adult in the middle will be snug, as in most five-seaters these days. You’re better off stopping at four-up and enjoying the fold-down armrest, or playing with the quad-zone climate control, or plugging devices into one of the four USB-A ports aimed at back-seat occupants.

Parents with young kids will be pleased to learn that the iX has ISOFIX latches in both outer back seats, hidden behind cleverly retracting leather flaps. Another nice touch. If you have a rear-facing baby seat, you’ll find the big C-pillar somewhat intrusive, meaning you have less of an opening to slot Junior through. 

That said, we fitted forward and rearward-facing baby seats in the second row without compromising front-seat space. 

As for the boot itself… You’d be expecting a big one from the exterior photos, but you’d be wrong. The iX has just 500L of space in there, which is less than a number of mid-size SUVs, and is not wide enough to take a set of golf clubs. 

The back seats do fold down 60/40 – and there are buttons in the boot to do that in a flash – so you can expand the iX’s carrying capacity to 1750L, albeit at the expense of human occupants. 

The iX does not have a spare wheel under the boot floor – or anywhere – because it rides on run-flat tyres. Instead, that’s where it houses the charging cables.

Perhaps my biggest complaint about the iX M60’s interior is that there isn’t enough immediately obvious differentiation to lesser iX variants. There are not a lot of cues to the extra $93K spent to buy the car, beyond the telltale ‘M’ graphic in the driver’s instrument cluster.

The BMW iX features two huge screens (14.9 inches and 12.3 inches) melded together to give the impression of one sweeping cinematic masterpiece that stretches from above the centre stack right through to the driver’s door.  

This touchscreen’s graphics are crisp and classy, and easy to navigate. There’s a massive depth of functionality here, yet the layout and menu-tree make it simple to find what you’re looking for. 

Wireless CarPlay and wireless Android Auto are included. Android Auto worked faultlessly during my week with the car, which is not something I say about all cars. I’ve had dropouts and freezes in cars ranging from Volkswagens to Hyundais to Mercedes-Benzes. 

Satellite navigation is built in, as are climate controls for all four zones. There’s digital radio, full multimedia playback capability – at incredible fidelity through the 30-speaker Bowers and Wilkins sound system – and even a searchable digital manual for the car.  

BMW has also paid attention to the detail in the digital displays. For example, there are six different screens to cycle through in the instrument cluster; some showing active safety systems, others showing cruise-control settings and another with trip computer details. But no matter which screen you’re in, the image of the car integrated into each one changes to show open doors and tailgates so you can see straight away which portal is provoking the beeping.

The iX M60 also has what BMW calls Natural Interaction that allows some audio functions to be operated using gestures. Point at the screen and spin a finger clockwise to increase the volume, anti-clockwise to decrease. A swipe of your hand one way skips to the next track, the other way back a track. 

Honestly, though, it doesn’t work well. It’s hard to know if the camera has picked up your spinning digit, so inevitably you spin longer and the volume goes too high. Or it doesn’t sense your track-skipping wave so you do it again and again, feeling more foolish every time. 

These systems put me in mind of Volkswagen’s capacitive touch sliders that were also meant to be an advance in human-machine interaction, but VW has agreed it was a mistake and is going back to buttons for the future. I guess it’s hard to beat the simplicity and speed of the humble button.

Now, one cool feature of this car (and others in the BMW range) is the BMW smartphone app, which means you’ll never lose your car in a carpark again because you can get the car to take a photo of what’s around it.

It also has BMW’s Intelligent Personal Assistant, which can answer your questions about servicing requirements, fuel level, vehicle functionality and more. If set correctly, the driver need only say “Hey BMW, drive home” and it will find you a way home, or “Hey BMW I’m hungry” and it will find you a selection of restaurants nearby.

It’s worth noting that this feature is included with purchase for the first three years of ownership. If you want to continue using it after that, you’ll need to pay an annual subscription.

The same goes for BMW’s integrated news and weather service, and the Connected Package Professional system that includes map updates, real-time traffic updates, on-street parking information, and updates to the vehicle’s speech processing software.

Of course, you can always decline to subscribe and your vehicle will be less capable than when you bought it.

The BMW iX has been independently crash-tested by ANCAP and declared a five-star car. Adult occupant protection scored 91 per cent, child occupant protection at 88 per cent, vulnerable road user at 73 per cent, and safety assist packages at 78 per cent. All of those scores are very good.

BMW claims the iX comes equipped with the most extensive set of active safety features ever seen on a BMW. It has front collision warning that can also detect oncoming traffic as well as pedestrians and cyclists. It has lane-control assist and steering assist, active cruise control with stop-and-go function, safe exit warning, and 360-degree cameras.

A couple more technology highlights. Firstly, the iX has the biggest head-up display I’ve seen on any BMW to date. But that’s not the only boastworthy feature the next time you’re at the pub. The iX has a Reversing Assistant. Let’s say you’ve driven down a narrow laneway only to find you can’t turn around, and you’re not the best reverser in the world. Fear not, the BMW will faithfully backtrack the last 200 metres for you. 

The BMW iX M60 also has BMW’s Parking Assistant Plus software, which can park your car semi-autonomously in both parallel and perpendicular spots. We didn’t test it in angled parking, however.

BMW has finally made the move to five-year warranties, matching main rivals Mercedes-Benz and Audi. The warranty has no kilometre limit. 

The battery pack, however, is a different story. It carries an eight-year warranty but is limited to 160,000km.

BMW offers a pre-paid service package that costs $1520 for the first four years, or $2195 over six years. These prices are competitive. 

An indicative insurance quote for the iX M60 came in at an eye-watering $6298 per year. That’s $1500 more than the entry-level iX xDrive40, and presumably down to the extra performance potential (which insurance companies see as a risk factor) of the M60. This is a comparative quote for a 35-year-old male driver living in Chatswood, NSW. Insurance estimates may vary based on your location, driving history, and personal circumstances.

No prize for guessing that a vehicle packing this much performance has a hunger for energy. The best average I saw was 24.9kWh per 100 kilometres, which is high for an EV. Our average for a 600km+ week was 26.9kWh/100km, which is borderline excessive. But, in the car’s defence, it has a lot of performance and I liked unleashing that performance whenever safe to do so. After all, why have a thoroughbred and ride it like a donkey? 

In terms of recharging speed, the iX M60 can refill the 105kWh (of useable capacity) battery on an 11kW domestic charger in about 10 hours. 

On a normal domestic power plug trickling 1.1kW down the pipe, our testing suggests a four-day charge time. But, to be honest, if you can afford a $230,000 car, you can afford to put in the wall charger that goes with it. 

If you want the fastest charging option, that’s DC. This car can recharge at up to 200kW, and BMW claims it will go from 10 to 80 per cent in 39 minutes. 

As for how much all of that recharging could cost you… How does zero sound? BMW is currently packaging a five-year subscription to Chargefox with every iX sold, and there appears to be no limit on the distance you can travel in those five years. Well, none beyond the fine print that states your usage “must be fair, reasonable and not excessive”. It also says you can’t use your iX as a taxi, or for government or commercial purposes.

If you assume an average distance of 75,000km in those five years, then that’s a saving of around $15,000 compared to an X5 averaging 10L/100km.

Now here’s the one area that the iX M60 differentiates itself from its lesser siblings. Back in May I said this about the iX xDrive40: 

“This is not an involving or exciting vehicle to drive, but it is incredibly comfortable and cosseting. What it gives up in dynamic prowess it more than makes up for in isolating its occupants from the harsh realities of the outside world. 

“In everyday driving, there are few cabins that will make you feel as spoiled or comfortable. But if your perception of BMW is of ‘ultimate driving machines’ and ‘sheer driving pleasure’, the iX xDrive40 is not a vehicle that elevates those brand pillars.”

The iX M60 is a very different beast. A beastly beast to be sure, because it has the dynamic prowess the lesser iX xDrive40 was lacking thanks to smarter suspension and bigger wheels. In short, this vehicle is a true performance EV SUV, and loves to attack corners. But physics cannot be ignored; this is still a 2.7-tonne high-bodied SUV, so it is never going to carve up your favourite tarmac like a low-slung 911.

But still, there’s really a lot to like about driving the iX M60. A lot.

Ride quality is exemplary. No complaints, it’s absolutely plush despite the performance intent and capability of this vehicle. It’s also worth pointing out that, when you’re in commuting mode, the iX’s cabin is one of the quietest and most refined places to pass the miles.

The M60, like its lesser brethren, has modes – or moods, to be precise – accessed through the infotainment screen: Personal, Sport and Efficient. Unlike other iX variants, the iX M60 has two new modes: Expressive and Relax. 

Each mode not only changes the colour scheme on the digital displays, it also changes accelerator sensitivity and suspension settings. Expressive also gives the car an aural personality by playing spaceship sounds that lift in intensity as you accelerate harder. It’s fun like a computer game, but gets old quickly like a cheap computer game. Or maybe it’s just something owners trot out for first-time passengers. 

The iX M60 has intelligent regenerative braking, which adapts the energy regeneration function depending on its interpretation of the situation. 

For example, approaching a row of stopped cars at a traffic light, the iX will anticipate your desire to brake and invoke a more assertive energy recapture mode. But, lift off the throttle on a freeway and it will assume you want to coast a little, leaving the energy recapture system dormant. 

The problem with this is that its prescience is not perfect. Lift off approaching a speed hump and it doesn’t slow enough, meaning you will need to tip in some braking action yourself, if you don’t want to hit the hump too fast. 

This doesn’t sound like a huge problem, but it can lead to delays as the driver waits to see if the car is going to slow itself, before stepping in later than you otherwise would and having to brake harder than normal. 

Of course you should. Everybody should, if only to experience peak EV performance in an SUV body. But that’s silly, because not everyone can afford $250K on-road for an electric car that is just about moving five people from A to B.

To properly evaluate the overall merits of the BMW iX M60, we need to somehow ascribe a value to uniqueness. Marketplace competition influences the price manufacturers can apply to their goods. If you’re coming to market with a cool new smartphone, pricing it way above rivals from Apple, Google, Samsung and others won’t work because most shoppers will go where their money buys the best bang.

But, if you’re the only purveyor of a certain product – such as a large, high-performance electric SUV – then pricing is a less sensitive issue because buyers simply cannot cross-shop.

So, if you want the best electric performance SUV money can buy, the BMW iX M60 is it. In the coming months, rivals like the Mercedes-AMG EQE53 will challenge for the electric SUV crown. But right now, BMW is enjoying the spoils of being first to market. That’s ironic because BMW was actually late to market with the other iX models, following a path already trodden by Audi’s E-Tron SUV and the Mercedes-Benz GLC.

If you’re asking whether the iX M60 has what it takes to make $250K feel like money well spent, the answer is still yes. You’re getting a highly luxurious and cutting-edge interior, and peerless real-world performance. There’s nothing of substance missing that a $250K car – EV or internal combustion – offers that the BMW iX M60 doesn’t have.