[Auto] BMW X3 xDrive30e M Sport 2020 UK review

[Agent47]

 

What is it?
Here's another review on a plug-in hybrid executive option from a German premium brand, I’m afraid. Apparently, everybody wants one. It must be true, otherwise why would there suddenly be so many?

For now at least, the BMW X3 xDrive30e may be one of the more significant examples of this new tax-efficient band of cars, however. It’s an SUV, which will make it appeal to a great many for its practicality; unlike some electrified luxury SUVs, it might just be cheap enough to sneak onto your company car scheme; but mainly because it’s one of very few cars of its kind that qualifies for a 10% benefit-in-kind rating.
Interested fleet ‘user-choosers’ who do some cross-shopping will notice that even the very latest versions of the equivalent Volvo XC60, Audi Q5 and Mercedes-Benz GLC ‘plug-ins’ don’t quite make it into the same tax bracket. The only other premium-branded, part-electrified, mid-sized SUV that does is the new Land Rover Discovery Sport P300e.

For private buyers, UK prices on the car start just below £50,000, making it a good chunk more expensive than any other four-cylinder X3 and about level on price with the six-cylinder 30d diesel. Like most other X3s, it can be had in SE, xLine or M Sport trim, and in all versions it gets four-wheel drive and an eight-speed automatic gearbox.

There are one or two technical distinctions and sti[CENSORED]tions associated with the car, though, of which canny customers ought to be aware. It uses the same combination of a 181bhp four-cylinder turbocharged petrol engine and a 108bhp electric motor for power as BMW's other 30e derivatives, plus the same 12kWh lithium ion drive battery, which in this case sits under the back seats.

Unlike in Volvo and PSA Group PHEVs, the motor is housed within the transmission and so drives through all four wheels, just as the piston engine does. But the X3's drive battery does displace the fuel tank, which is carried above the rear axle instead of in its usual berth, and that difference does adversely affect loadbay space just a little.

M Sport trim is likely to be the most po[CENSORED]r choice in the UK market, with its racier styling touches, and in this case you can have it without worrying that the extra rolling resistance of the bigger wheels and tyres or the weight of the extra kit will tip your optioned-up car into the next tax bracket.
The infotainment can be mastered via the iDrive scroller, via fingertip touchscreen input or by voice command, and its usability is very good. Customisable homescreens, whose layout you can adapt so that the information you refer to most often is always displayed, help a lot once you’ve figured out how to configure them.

There's a familiar degree of complication about the driving experience, too, but only as much as comes with the modern premium car territory, and you will have negotiated it long before the end of your first lengthy drive.  There’s the usual choice of driving modes (Comfort, Sport, Eco Pro and Adaptive), and the hybrid system adds only one more button with which you will need to fiddle, marked eDrive. It allows you to switch the powertrain between all-electric, hybrid and battery-save running modes, with hybrid being the default choice and the one the majority will use most often.

In hybrid mode, the car has a generally slick, well-rehearsed way of managing its power sources. Most town running will be done electrically. While the size and weight of the X3 clearly demand more of the 108bhp motor than the 30e versions of the 3 Series and 5 Series, it still copes quite well in urban environments, with enough pedal response and accessible power to make good progress through stop-start traffic.

As you leave the city, you will rouse the piston engine if you want the car to accelerate briskly, which it will certainly do. But it’s still easy enough to get up to 70mph without burning any hydrocarbons – and you won’t be holding anybody up while doing so.

Out of town, electric-only range isn’t quite worth the 31 miles in practice that the WLTP lab tests promise (although it might well be in exclusively urban running). On a typical UK office commute, you would probably see something between 20 and 25 miles of electric range on a full charge. Charging the battery back up to 80% from a 16-amp post or wallbox connection then takes just over two-and-a-half hours at a maximum charging rate of 3.7kW.

Even when the drive battery is depleted, the powertrain still runs and performs very satisfactorily. Our testing suggested that a ‘range-extended’ fuel economy return in the low-40mpg range should be easy to achieve. Moreover, the engine starts and runs smoothly even at high loads and revs, which isn’t something you can say about many PHEVs.

Because the car is clever enough to take data from the sat-nav and to decide for itself when to use its engine and when to shut it down, you can find that overall fuel economy is surprisingly good, even on longer journeys, only part of which can be powered electrically. Our test route was a 55-mile loop embarked on with 80% charge in the battery and concluded with just under 5%, which the trip computer recorded for fuel economy at just over 70mpg.

You can, of course, easily find fault with the logic of presenting information like this. It would be a lot more honest and informative if the car’s petrol efficiency counter simply stopped running when the engine was shut down and there were a counterpart for electric running displayed just as prominently, wouldn’t it? For the time being, though, (and for as long as the prevailing thinking is that electricity is free and petrol efficiency is all that matters) this is what we will likely continue to get. And not only from BMW, I should add.