BMW iX vs Polestar 3: battle of the posh electric SUVs

It’s called a Life Cycle Impulse. Facelift, in old money. The iX has been trolled mercilessly by the online commentariat but that hasn’t stopped BMW from shifting more than 130,000 units since it arrived in late 2021. Healthy business for such a polarising machine, in a global car market that has collectively taken fright at upmarket EVs.

Here goes, then: I like the iX, and always have. The ‘impulse’ gets new air inlets instead of the challenging DRLs and they’ve rearranged the panels on the nose. The elongated BMW double kidney grille now comes with the option of the ‘iconic glow’ illumination. Yep, you have to pay extra to emphasise it. New colours and wheel combinations definitely help, and the iX remains the category buster that it’s always been. An EV SUV that doesn’t go off-road with an interior that’s a million miles away from utilitarian.

Whatever it is – or isn’t – the Polestar 3 is having some of it. It’s similarly sized to the BMW, which is to say bigger even than images on a page can convey. Polestar’s travails have been well covered, the removal of boss Thomas Ingenlath and the departure of design lead Max Missoni undermining its alt-Nordic approach to, well, everything. Hopefully the foundations are sufficiently resolute to see the brand ride out the financial wobbles and maintain the necessary headroom as the Chinese EV invasion gathers momentum. Sales in the UK are up 203 per cent year on year so far.

Photography: Mark Riccioni

The 3 is certainly a looker, and manages its size more adroitly than the rather lumpen BMW. Is this the best looking SUV of the lot? Could be, although much of the visual drama comes from the tapered rear roofline and its 1,614mm height. That hurts versatility, but if you want more of that there’s always the related Volvo EX90. (They both use the EV-only SPA2 platform.)

This is Polestar’s range-topping power play, and a car that’s within spitting distance of £100k if you get busy with the configurator. (There’s also a newly introduced single motor car, costing £69,910, and finance deals to be had.) The one you see here is a long range dual motor version fitted with the Performance Pack, so it’s as racy as this particular model gets. Outputs here stand at 510bhp and 671lb ft of torque, figures that would have embarrassed a high-end sports car not so long ago.

The facelifted BMW iX is here in xDrive M60 form, nomenclature we still can’t fully get our heads round. BMW has reshuffled the model hierarchy, so that the xDrive 45 is the new entry point, the M70 sitting top of the tree. On paper the M60 is the sweet spot, a suspicion we’ll interrogate here. Tellingly, it’s more powerful and better equipped than the outgoing car but it also costs less.

It still rocks up at £92,100 and our test car is fitted with £14,800 of options. The revised car maintains the dual motor setup, but receives updated power electronics, a revised inverter and more energy dense cell chemistry. The usable battery is smaller (105kWh versus the 3’s 107kWh from identical 111.5kWh gross figures), there’s a 536bhp power output and, most eye-catchingly, a claimed range of up to 426 miles. It can charge at speeds up to 195kW, although vanishingly few public chargers we’ve used have actually achieved that.

Key to the appeal of both these cars is the degree to which they embrace their EV-ness, and both posit a paradigm shift in terms of a holistic digital environment. Which is to say they’re connected up the wazoo. Step into the BMW and its space age lounge ambience is as appealing as ever (once you’ve got over the cheap clang of the frameless doors). Note, though, the carbon fibre reinforced plastic that’s part of its construction.

Occupants sit high on big, sculpted front seats whose headrests are integrated so they look and feel different to the norm. The floor is flat and the footwells are open to deepen the sensation of extra space. That’s a commodity the iX is not short of throughout – in the rear, it could give the 7 Series a run for its money, although the seating position isn’t as elevated as a traditional SUV’s. Charging ports are cleverly incorporated into the seatbacks. It also now gains a round M Sport steering wheel rather than the previous square-ish one.

The iX’s ‘Curved Glass’ display remains a paragon of interior design, and integrates the main display and a 14.9in touchscreen. The facelift brings an upgraded operating system, which means revised graphics and menus, as well as improved voice command and various gaming and video streaming apps. The iDrive rotary input controller remains, so there’s a degree of physical control of which we heartily approve. But the climate control is now only accessible via the screen, and the menu tabulation is overly complex. Fortunately, there are shortcuts for the lane assist and speed limit warning.

It’s a lovely place to be yet the Polestar feels more contemporary. The textures and materials are exemplary, this particular car benefitting from ‘animal welfare’ Nappa leather with a black ash trim on the dash and doors. Some may find it a little sparse but the 3’s minimalism is a big USP. Polestar also separates the displays, minimising the driver’s one so that it prioritises range and battery percentage, with the speed readout a little smaller. There’s an optional head-up display. The graphics are all crisp and prettier to look at than the BMW’s.

The 14.5in central portrait screen does most of the heavy lifting, and on this car there’s a lot of digital exertion. Android Auto provides the operating system, so Google functionality is fully integrated. This includes Google Assistant voice control, access to Google store for myriad apps and games, while Google maps encompasses battery-minded route planning. Home integration means you can even turn on the lights in the hallway as you pull up to your house. Really?

The iX is as deeply persuasive an EV as exists. It’s hugely comfortable, clever, and, yes, characterful

Best of all is the Bowers & Wilkins audio system, a phenomenally powerful 25-speaker setup that includes a mode co-developed with Abbey Road studios. It’s astoundingly good, an OTA update that’s part of the £5,000 Plus pack. Download the Tidal app and you can also run Dolby Atmos. As in the BMW, the screen is configurable, and once you’ve lived with it for a while, certain routines are established. So it really does become easier to use.

That said, the credit car key is fickle, and Polestar definitely wants you to download the app so that you can turn your smartphone into the key, and control and monitor charging remotely. The BMW has a regular key though it can be operated remotely, too. With so much going on, it’s easy to forget that the iX and Polestar 3 are still, in fact, cars. Rather expensive luxury ones that use all that electrical energy to deliver peerless forward progress and refinement. The question of driver entertainment is a little more contentious, although they’re both supremely well engineered.

The Polestar is certainly fast – 62mph takes just 4.5 seconds in this iteration – but there’s a slight pause before it gives you all the juice. It’s a well calibrated and fluid thing to drive, more responsive than you might expect once its dual-chamber air suspension and active dampers are in their most alert settings. Rather than a conventional limited slip differential, the 3 has a ‘dual clutch’ mechanical torque vectoring unit on the rear axle developed by BorgWarner. Mechanical? It says something about the company’s aspirations.

It can send the rear motor’s torque to either wheel for more traction if you find yourself on the sort of road that encourages exuberance. That said, you’d need Harry Potter grade wizardry to fully manage its 2.6 tonne mass. The steering’s good, though, with natural feeling weightiness in its most driver-oriented setting, and accurate off-centre response. The Polestar 3’s primary ride is compliant but on the sort of gnarly stuff that bedevils so many of our roads it transmits sudden bumps into the cabin. You can have single pedal braking but we preferred to leave it off for more authentic feel.

The BMW is the superior driving machine, which is no slight on its rival – the Germans have been at this rather longer, after all. In fact, the iX is superior to lots of other BMWs, and delivers that precise, imperious feel that’s a signature of all the company’s best products. Its controls are superbly calibrated, it’s fabulously refined, and its air suspension does a fine job of managing its 2,580kg weight. Despite its pace – 62mph in 4.6 seconds – it’s not a car you’d choose to hoon for the sake of it, but it’ll do it should the mood arise.

Movie soundtrack maestro Hans Zimmer’s suite of sounds are available to enliven the process but you can turn them off if they prove irksome. We rather like the rising sci-fi whoosh, and it’s far better than the nonsense others provide. It raises an important point, though: neither of these cars offers what you’d call genuine interaction, to the extent that they shun brake regen paddles in favour of a drive select mode in the BMW and a menu tile push in the Polestar. They work very hard indeed to counter the gripe that EVs are one dimensional, but there’s still a slightly synthetic sensation.

The Polestar, somewhat surprisingly, doesn’t have an 800V architecture, but it can still charge at speeds up to 250kW, faster than the iX manages. It also has a heat pump as standard, its slippery shape and aero numbers (it has a drag coefficient of 0.29) helping overall efficiency. Polestar claims 348 miles for the Performance Pack car but 280 is more likely. Experience with the iX tells us that its range display is usually bang on. This latest version should deliver in excess of 350 miles easily enough.

The Polestar 3 is a highly accomplished machine, and a seductive choice if design is one of your lodestars. Inside and out there’s an air of calm reassurance, a feeling that’s replicated in its polished dynamic demeanour. As expensive as it is, especially with some of the option packs added, it still undercuts the BMW. But the iX is as deeply persuasive an EV as exists. It’s hugely comfortable, clever, and, yes, characterful. Put simply, it’s now more impressive than ever.