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The BMW iX3 has just won a straight fight against the two rivals it was built to beat, and it did so by being thriftier rather than bigger. YouTuber Kris Rifa and a group of drivers took the Neue Klasse SUV up against the electric Mercedes GLC and the Volvo EX60 on a motorway loop north of Oslo, targeting a steady 120km/h. Conditions were mild at 14 to 17 degrees Celsius and mostly dry. Every car set off at 90 per cent charge in its most efficient mode.
The method was tighter than most. Drivers rotated between cars and through the lead position, so nobody spent the whole run tucked in someone else’s slipstream. Running the same route in both directions cancelled out the worst of the elevation and wind. An Xpeng G9 tagged along as well, though it sits a class above and is only really comparable on battery size.
The numbers went BMW’s way. The iX3 returned 19.4kWh per 100km, or about 3.2 miles per kWh. The Mercedes managed 20.3kWh per 100km and the Volvo 21.1kWh per 100km. That makes the BMW roughly four per cent leaner than the GLC and eight per cent leaner than the EX60, which is a meaningful margin between three cars this closely matched on paper.
Pair that economy with the largest usable battery in the group, 108.7kWh, and the gap widens dramatically. The iX3 worked out at 338 miles of motorway range, against 279 miles for the GLC and 260 miles for the EX60, with three per cent already deducted for heat and discharge losses. There is an asterisk on the Volvo. The car present was the P10 with its smaller 91kWh pack, not the flagship P12, and it was the only entrant rolling on draggy 22-inch wheels while the Germans wore 20s. Even so, applying the same efficiency to a P12 yields roughly 320 miles, still 18 miles adrift of the BMW.
Range is not the whole story, mind you. The Volvo topped the drivers’ subjective rankings for motorway manners, praised for its hushed cabin and supple ride, while the Mercedes drew compliments for its seats, steering and general polish. The BMW simply refuses to waste electrons, a trait it has shown before when a hypermiling run stretched an iX3 to 626 miles on one charge with three per cent still in the tank. On a long motorway slog, that is the quality that counts.
