We’re now getting into our second 12 months of iX possession, which implies the start of our second winter with the automotive. Final 12 months, we acquired by way of the winter with out difficulty, however the automotive simply by no means felt notably snug in low-grip situations. So, that is been excessive on my listing of issues to handle earlier than the snow begins flying this 12 months.
The iX has all-wheel drive customary due to its dual-motor configuration. That’s an enormous asset when the roads are lined in snow, however the BMW nonetheless has some substantial issues working towards it for low-grip driving. The most important difficulty? Weight. The iX weighs someplace round 5,700 kilos, and occasion probably the most superior stability management and braking methods cannot compensate for mass.
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The opposite massive difficulty was tires. The all-season Goodyear Eagle Touring tires present an excellent mix of grip, low noise and low rolling resistance for on a regular basis driving. Nonetheless, in tougher situations, they proved constant however lower than stellar. I wished one thing a little bit extra confidence-inspiring.
I handled the same state of affairs with our earlier EV, a Tesla Mannequin Y, by going to a devoted set of snow tires for the winter months. With the iX, I hoped to keep away from the effort of swapping wheels and tires twice a 12 months.
After I discovered of the Nokian Treatment WRG5, it appeared like an ideal answer. Nokian dubs this an “all-weather” tire, one thing completely completely happy driving all 12 months lengthy on roads moist or dry. But it surely presents a extra aggressive tire compound and tread sample to take care of the types of low-grip situations that Nokian’s winter tires are identified for.
The Nokian (left) in comparison with the Goodyear (proper)
The corporate was type sufficient to supply a set for testing, however there was an issue: Nokian does not make a Treatment WRG5 within the 235/60R20 measurement that the iX xDrive50 rolls on by default. The closest they’d was 255/55R20, considerably wider and barely shorter.
Understanding the iX was designed for tires as large as 275 for the M60 trim, I knew that becoming 255-section-width tires could be no difficulty within the fenders. There’s additionally the priority {that a} wider tire would possibly really be worse for winter grip, as the traditional perception is that slim tires are higher. Nonetheless, I have been assured up to now by tire engineers that—in most non-race conditions—wider remains to be higher, even in a low-grip atmosphere.
So I put within the order, and certainly, the tires match on the iX with no difficulty. What was shocking was how a lot tire put on had already taken place on the inventory Goodyear tires. The rear two have been noticeably extra worn than the fronts, to not the purpose the place they wanted changing, however actually to the purpose the place a lot of their finer tread was gone. My tire tread gauge exhibits they’d about 1/4 of an inch of tread remaining after 12,500. Most consultants suggest changing tires as soon as they get under 4/32 of an inch for wet or winter situations, so it isn’t nice to see them this worn after solely a 12 months of driving.
The previous tires. You possibly can see that the rear tires (left) have been significantly extra worn-out than the entrance tires (proper), possible as a result of the iX sends extra energy to the rear wheels.
That is regardless of this factor principally being pushed for informal commuting and relaxed road-tripping. BMW really does not have a really helpful tire rotation interval, however when you’ve got a jack and the requisite instruments, I’d counsel doing it each 5,000 miles or so.
Regardless, given the discount of tread on these two tires, I used to be completely happy to be swapping on the extra aggressive Nokians earlier than the snow began flying.
Noise and Vary
Past the dimensions considerations, I used to be additionally frightened that these extra sipes would lead to extra noise on dry asphalt, so I took some in-car recordings of the automotive on the previous tires earlier than swapping them out. On the identical stretch of dry asphalt, the Nokians measured constantly inside a decibel of Goodyears.
After which there’s the vary query. Absolutely a extra winter-friendly tread and tire compound will lead to decrease effectivity, proper? Preliminary assessments really point out the opposite. On a 220-mile freeway check loop, the iX really used barely much less vitality than it did when working on the Goodyears on days with related temperatures (between 40 and 50 levels F), averaging 2.7 miles per kWh on the Nokians and a pair of.6 on the Goodyears.
Vary testing like this in the true world is fickle at greatest, so I am not going to say the Nokians are literally extra environment friendly. Nonetheless, that put to relaxation my concern that I might see one thing approaching the ten to fifteen p.c vary lower I’ve seen up to now when working a devoted snow tire.
Lastly, I used to be additionally a bit frightened about how far off the speedometer could be, given the outer diameter of the brand new tires is barely smaller than the previous one. I might carried out the mathematics utilizing on-line calculators however was very glad to see that the GPS-measured distinction at freeway speeds was lower than 1 mph.
Reboot
As we have been executing all this testing, we observed one thing was amiss with the iX: The hands-off Driving Help Skilled system wasn’t working. It did not give any errors or throw any alerts, it merely did not work on the freeway.
We additionally observed that the automotive refused to acknowledge any distant instructions. The iX had already confirmed fickle in coping with preconditioning requests or serving up details about cost standing and the like. However now the factor was useless to the world so far as the MyBMW app was involved.
Picture by: InsideEVs
The iX’s software program expertise is generally good, but it surely is not good.
I used to be a bit frightened that there was one thing fallacious with the automotive’s onboard modem, however after some Googling, my spouse learn of different folks fixing related conditions by forcing the SUV to reboot itself. The method is not fairly so simple as the ol’ three-finger salute that Home windows customers will probably be accustomed to for rebooting, but it surely’s not far off: Faucet the engine begin/cease button thrice to enter diagnostic mode, then maintain down the quantity button for 30 seconds.
Just a few moments later, the automotive was again on-line and fortunately cruising up the freeway hands-free.
Now it is time to see how the brand new tires address the white stuff – assuming we get some this 12 months.
