BMW iX2 Review 2026

The BMW iX2 is an all-electric version of the X2, a stylish take on the compact SUV, just like the German firm has peddled in the past with its larger coupe-SUV efforts such as the X6 and X4. The iX2 is good to drive, beautifully finished and more practical than you might think, but there are a number of undoubted compromises to be made. Find out what these are, and how severe they are, in our BMW iX2 review.

Coupe-SUVs are nothing new these days, with numerous carmakers peddling such models in an effort to offer even more style in the already style-conscious SUV market. What’s more, coupe-SUVs are certainly nothing new to BMW – the German prestige firm has been trawling them out for years, with models such as the larger X6 and X4, along with the first-generation X2, a more compact take on the formula.

With the advent of the second-generation X2 in 2023, though, a couple of important changes were made. First of all, the styling was made a lot more radical and distinct from the closely related X1 SUV. Where the first X2 merely looked like an X1 with the square edges smoothed off a wee bit, the second-gen version looks like a whole different car to the latest X1. In fact, despite the similarities underneath, the door mirrors are the only external parts shared by the two cars. Whether or not you find the look appealing will be entirely up to you, but there’s little doubt that the gen two X2 stands out.

The second important change - especially in this day and age - was that the new X2 would be offered in all-electric form, known as the iX2, as well as with combustion engines. And that all-electric iX2 is the car we’re talking about in this review. If you’re interested in the combustion-engined version, we’ve written a separate review of that. For the rest of this particular review, though, we’re zero-emissions all the way.

Two distinct flavours of iX2 are offered. There’s the more modest front-wheel-drive eDrive20 version with 204PS, while the xDrive30 is rather more hardcore, with 313PS and four-wheel drive. Regardless of power and performance, all iX2s have sporting intentions, and so are offered exclusively in M Sport (or M Sport-derived) variants that include racy styling, large alloy wheels and adaptive suspension.

Both versions of the iX2 have the same 64.8kWh battery pack, giving a range of up to 283 miles in lower-powered form, or up to 268 miles with the pokier powertrain. Both can accept DC rapid charging at a maximum rate of 130kW, but for the most affordable running costs, you’ll want to charge your car up at home. Neither version is especially cheap to buy, mind. Far from it, in fact. What’s more, some desirable items of equipment are left on the options list, and adding them will push the price of the car up still further.

Being reassuringly expensive, though, and also coming with that blue-and-white BMW roundel on the nose, you can be sure that your money gets you exemplary interior quality, an effortlessly desirable image, and a decent amount of tech. And while the slinkily styled iX2 isn’t intended to be the most practical car of its type, it does a better job there than you might expect, albeit with some obvious compromises.

All in all, the BMW iX2 will be the perfect car for a very specific type of EV buyer looking for style, desirability, quality and driver satisfaction, along with just about enough practicality to satisfy a young family. For most other, more conventional EV buyers, there will probably be better solutions out there for them - such as the iX1, for example - but there’s no arguing with the iX2’s appeal.

BMW iX2: Range and charging

Both versions of the BMW iX2 have the same 64.8kWh (usable capacity) battery pack. The car’s maximum AC charging speed is 11kW, and so BMW quotes a 0%-to-100% charging time of six and a half hours. However, don’t expect to get that sort of charging performance at home, because very few UK residences have the three-phase electrics necessary for that speed of connection. Your average home wallbax charger operates with a flow rate of around 7.4kW, and at that sort of speed, you’re looking at a recharge time of around ten or eleven hours, still easily manageable for an overnight juice-up.

Both versions are also rated to accept a DC rapid charge at up to 130kW, meaning a 10%-to-80% top-up in around 29 minutes at an appropriately powerful public charger (provided that it’s running at full capacity, which they often aren’t). Charging this way will be very expensive, though.

In terms of driving range, a full charge will give you a range of between 273 miles and 283 miles in the eDrive20 according to official WLTP figures, while the extra poke of the xDrive30 means you get slightly less at between 259 miles and 268 miles.

As a sporty offering in the BMW model line-up, the BMW iX2 comes as standard with sophisticated adaptive suspension across the range. This varies the behaviour of the adaptive dampers according to the driving mode you select.

Stick with one of the comfier modes, and there’s enough compliance to comfortably deal with most of the ruts and ripples in the road surface that you’ll encounter on a daily basis. Yes, there is still a rather firm edge to the ride, so rival SUVs without such a sporting bent will ultimately be more cosseting, but comfort levels will be easily sufficient for most drivers.

Switch to one of the racier modes, and things instantly become more focused. The ride takes on a firmer character, and it can feel a little jittery and unsettled at times, especially over mid-corner bumps. However, the payoff is improved body control, which means the car leans less in corners and stays flatter and more assured.

Regardless of the mode you select, though, the iX2 is a very crisp-feeling car, with strong grip, good balance and accurate responses. Is it the ‘Ultimate Driving Machine’ that BMW’s advertising bangs on about? No, not really: it’s rather too heavy to feel properly agile, and the steering feels a little too remote and uninvolving. That said, among small electric SUVs, you won’t find many sweeter-handling cars than this.

The BMW iX2 is offered with two all-electric powertrain options. First up is the eDrive20, which has a single electric motor delivering 204PS to the front wheels through a single-speed transmission. Then there’s the xDrive30 version, which adds a second motor to the rear axle, resulting in four-wheel drive and a maximum combined power output of 313PS.

For most drivers, we reckon that the eDrive20 will be plenty. It feels really eager and responsive at low speeds, and while it’s not massively quick ultimately, it does feel brisker than its official 0-62mph time of 8.6 seconds suggests. What’s more, while in many EVs, the acceleration levels tail off quite a bit at higher speeds, that effect isn’t as marked in the eDrive20, so it feels perfectly at home in all sorts of driving environments.

The more powerful xDrive30, meanwhile, is a different kettle of Koi Carp altogether. Yes, the accelerator pedal is easy to modulate, but press it with any proper venom, and you’re rewarded with a borderline-ballistic surge of forward momentum. That's especially the case if you tug the paddle behind the left-hand side of the steering wheel, which is marked ‘Boost’: this unleashes the full force on the powertrain’s twin motors for a temporary ten-second period, making your acceleration even more barnstorming. With everything hooked up to the max, the 0-62mph dash can be dissipated in 5.6 seconds, and again, it feels even quicker than that. And happily, the high-speed muscularity experienced in the eDrive20 is even more muscular in the xDrive30.

The refinement in the iX2 is a bit of a mixed bag. You hear very little noise from either powertrain, and wind noise is well suppressed at high speed, but road noise does become a factor from fairly moderate speeds, although it’s not ruinous to the car’s overall level of tranquillity.

Go for the xDrive30, though, and you get something called BMW Iconic Sounds. This subjects you to a variety of futuristic whooshing and wailing sounds being piped into the cabin through the stereo speakers, and the precise makeup of the noises is supposed to correspond with the driving mode selected and how the car is being driven. It’s all meant to make you feel more relaxed or more excited depending on the prevailing situation. Some will find it entertaining and novel, while others will find it intolerably gimmicky. If you fall into the latter camp, it can be turned off, mercifully.

As standard, the iX2 comes with a suite of driver assistance aids that includes the usual electronic traction and stability management systems, and automatic emergency braking, as mandated by law. However, getting a lot of the other driver aids that come as standard on most new cars these days requires dipping into the options list and paying extra: these options aren’t that expensive, but you have to know that you have to add them proactively.

The Driving Assistant package gives you blind-spot detection, lane-change warning with active steering correction, and rear cross-traffic alert with collision prevention. The Driving Assistant Plus package, meanwhile, adds in adaptive cruise control with stop and go, plus speed limit recognition. The Driving Assistant Professional pack adds on automatic speed limit assist and no-entry sign detection.

To be honest, it’s a little galling that the car’s standard safety roster needs augmenting with optional extras for best effect, especially at this money.

It’s the same story with the regular combustion-engined BMW X2, but nevertheless, Euro NCAP saw fit to award that car the full five-star rating in crash tests carried out in 2022. The iX2 has not been tested specifically.

Electric cars don’t usually have the best towing figures, and so is the case here. According to figures we’ve seen, the eDrive20 variant can only tow a trailer of 750kg whether it’s braked or unbraked, which is pretty useless. The xDrive30 can pull a braked trailer of up to 1200kg, which is a little better, but still no great shakes.

If you’re buying a slinky iX2 over the more boxy iX1, it’s more than likely that you’re prepared to sacrifice a bit of practicality in the pursuit of style: that’s what this car is all about, after all. And yes, you will indeed have to make sacrifices, but perhaps not as many as you may think.

Let’s start with those sacrifices, shall we? Well, predictably given the car’s dramatically swooping roofline, rear headroom is pretty compromised: there’s much less than you get in the iX1. Six-foot passengers will find their scalp pressing into the ceiling in an uncomfortable manner, and if you’re any taller than that, you might not fit at all. The iX2 is fine if your kids are toddlers, but if they’re teenagers, then forget it.

It’s a shame, because rear legroom is actually pretty good. However, you won’t want to try carrying three in the back - regardless of the height of your passengers - because shoulder room is too tight for comfort. The middle seat is also hard, narrow, and raised, which makes the tight headroom even more of an issue.

The other sacrifice you must make at the altar of style is rear visibility. That sloping roofline means you get a tiny rear window that’s steeply angled and has chunky bits of bodywork on either side, and all this means that your over-the-shoulder view is truly pitiful. It’s a good job that parking sensors and a reversing camera are provided as standard. 

With those shortcomings highlighted, though, the rest of the story on practicality is reasonably positive. Things are comfy up front, with lots of adjustment in the driver’s seat and steering column, plus plenty of space and that high-up driving position that SUV buyers love. Storage is pretty good, too.

The boot is bigger than you might think, too, bigger, in fact, than the boot in the iX1. That’s because the iX2 is actually 54mm longer than the iX1, all of which is housed in the rear overhang. You get 525 litres of volume, and the space is well shaped, and easy to get at thanks to the wide boot opening and standard powered tailgate, although there is a lip at the entrance that you’ll have to muscle heavy items over.

There’s a handy underfloor compartment for stashing your charging cables out of the way, and when you need to carry bigger loads, the rear seats fold down in a versatile 40/20/40 split, leaving you with an impressively flat and level 1400-litre load area.

You’d expect any BMW – even a relatively small one – to dazzle in this area, and the iX2 certainly doesn’t disappoint. Every interior surface you encounter feels high-grade and is finished with fastidious attention to detail, and the overall impression you get is one of effortless plushness and quality. You could argue that this should be a given, considering the price of the car, and that’s not an argument we’d quarrel with, but you still have to admire the execution by BMW. This really is a lovely thing to sit in.

Much of the cabin’s wow-factor is provided courtesy of the twin-screen infotainment layout. There’s a 10.25-inch digital instrument display behind the steering wheel, and a 10.7-inch central touchscreen in the middle of the dashboard, and both are housed within a single unit that curves around the driver.

It looks brilliant: the screens have a posh glossy finish, the graphics are sharp and modern, and the screen transitions are as slick as you like. You also have all the functionality you expect, with Bluetooth, DAB, native navigation, wifi, and wireless Apple CarPlay and Android Auto.

As flash as the system looks, though, there are a few issues with its ergonomic performance. On the plus side, it’s good that the touchscreen interface is very sensitive to taps and swipes, and as far as these things go, the arrangement of the various on-screen menus is pretty logical. However, the sheer amount of these menus can become rather bamboozling, and unlike in some other BMW models, there’s no iDrive controller  - essentially a rotary dial and a small collection of shortcut buttons - to act as an alternative to the touchscreen interface when navigating the various menus.

It’s also the case that physical buttons and knobs within the cabin have been minimised to the point where the majority of functions - including the air-con system - have to be controlled through the touchscreen. And touchscreen controls are inherently more distracting than physical ones. Okay, the temperature controls are a permanent fixture along the bottom of the screen, along with a few other shortcut icons for often-used functions, but if you want to do anything more complicated with the ventilation system – such as change the fan speed or airflow direction – then you have to delve deep into the climate submenu, which is a right faff.

If you’re buying a brand new BMW iX2, then prices start at around £50,000 for the eDrive20 M Sport, rising up to around £54,000 for the xDrive30 M Sport. For either powertrain, you can chuck on another couple of grand if you want to go for the limited-run Shadow Edition.

This is not a cheap car then, but that’s no colossal surprise given that it’s a sporty offering from a premium German manufacturer, and one with an electric powertrain to boot. Yes, mainstream electric SUV rivals will cost you less, but premium rivals with similarly sporting intentions will cost a broadly similar amount. The cheapest Audi Q4 Sportback e-tron, for example, is just over £48,000.

As usual, significant savings can be had if you shop on the used car market instead. You’ll find that the cheapest pre-owned examples are actually the more powerful xDrive30 version – that’s because the more humble eDrive20 variant didn’t join the range until a while after launch, so the oldest examples out there are the more powerful variant, and so these have had more time to shed their value.

Around £30,000 should get you a choice of 2024 examples with around 25,000 miles on the clock, or you pay a smidge more - a grand or so - for something with a lower mileage. You can have a slightly later eDrive20 with even lower mileage for a similar sum.

The most affordable way of running an electric car is to charge it at home, and if you pay the UK’s national average rate for your domestic electricity, a full charge of your BMW iX2’s 64.8kWh battery will cost around £18. If you’re a bit canny, however, you can reduce your outlay even further by getting yourself on a variable home power tariff that charges much less for off-peak power, allowing you to charge your car overnight for much less. You can cut that £18 figure down to around £6 without breaking a sweat, and that’s when EV ownership becomes properly affordable.

Other running costs will be a little punchier. This is an expensive car with a not-inconsiderable amount of power, so insurance premiums won’t be cheap. The eDrive20 sits in group 31 (out of 50, 50 being the most expensive) for insurance, while the xDrive30 sits in group 38.

Electric cars are no longer exempt from VED car tax, and what’s more, all versions of the iX2 cost well over £40,000 when brand new, so you’ll also be stung for the ‘luxury car surcharge’. On top of the £195 annual flat rate that you’ll have to pay each and every year, you’ll also be required to pay an additional £425 per year between years two and six of the car’s life.

Because the iX2 is intended to be a sporty offering in the BMW range, the base-level trim that it’s offered in is M Sport, a high-end sporty spec option for other BMW model lines. BMW also occasionally offers limited-run special edition models, and one such offering with the iX2 is the Shadow Edition.

The standard equipment you get included in the price of the BMW iX2 M Sport comprises:

• 19-inch alloy wheels
• Adaptive suspension
• LED exterior lighting
• Parking sensors
• Reversing camera
• Powered tailgate
• Heated sports seats
• Imitation leather and suede upholstery
• Dual-zone climate control
• Cruise controlAutomatic lights and wipers
• Leather steering wheel
• 10.25 digital instrument display
• 10.7-inch central touchscreen

. Upgrading to the BMW iX2 Shadow Edition adds the following: 

• Various exterior and interior styling enhancements
• Power folding exterior mirrors
• Adaptive LED headlights
• High beam assistant
• M Sport brakes with red calipers