That is very helpful. Thank you, as I am planning to pick up my IX50 in June in Idaho Falls and dive him 2000 miles through the country back home. I try to plan well.
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BMW iX Reservation Tracker: Add Yours Here!
Navigating a long trip
This is how it looks for us in the UK and I expect the EU - USA may be different but gives you an idea what to expect
I thought I'd set a long trip into Europe, it takes a while to suggest a charging route and if you accept this it drops in charging stations (car range was 240 miles when I did this on my50)
To view them iDrive knob right and move up to Current route guidance where you can see the selected charging stations and get fuirther info on them (facilities etc.)
the charging times seem to reflect the available kW
Drivers that might have driven to Munich in the old days would probably head through Belgium to hit the German border to take advantage of the no speed limit Autobahns but I like this route French toll roads are great nobody on them as they cost a fortune
![Plant World Map Gadget Output device]()
![Map World Gps navigation device Gadget Output device]()
![Plant Vehicle Output device Flat panel display Gadget]()
I thought I'd set a long trip into Europe, it takes a while to suggest a charging route and if you accept this it drops in charging stations (car range was 240 miles when I did this on my50)
To view them iDrive knob right and move up to Current route guidance where you can see the selected charging stations and get fuirther info on them (facilities etc.)
the charging times seem to reflect the available kW
Drivers that might have driven to Munich in the old days would probably head through Belgium to hit the German border to take advantage of the no speed limit Autobahns but I like this route French toll roads are great nobody on them as they cost a fortune
1 - 20 of 35 Posts
We've just completed a road trip from the UK (near Oxford) to Alpbach in Austria and back for a week skiing in our iX50. Yes, the iX in car route planner does recommend charging routes, however in parallel, we used the abetterrouteplanner.com (ABRP) website and app. I have to say I preferred ABRP.
The big advantage of the ABRP is that you can prioritise a charger network. In the UK a new BMW iX50 comes with 12 months Ionity & BP Pulse subscriptions. The Ionity network is superb. The chargers all work, they are incredibly fast (350kwh DC although the iX50 can 'only' handle 200kwh DC) and, with the BMW / Ionity subscription, it's about as cheap per kWh as it gets. The iX Sat Nav, however, recommends the nearest en-route fast chargers, as long as they accept the BMW Chargecard /app for payment. This often includes the Ionity chargers, but several times en-route the iX Sat Nav recommended other charging networks, even though there was an alternative Ionity charger within range. The difference in price was huge. We paid €0.29 per kWh for the Ionity chargers en-route and yet the other iX route selected chargers were at lease €0.78 per kWh (2.6 times the price).
We've received the BMW Chargecard invoice for the whole return trip. We plugged the ABRP recommended stops into the iX route planner and used the BMW chargecard exclusively for all our EV charging across UK, France, Belgium, Germany and Austria. We started with a 100% charge and returned with 25%+. The charging came to a grand total of just £221.70 GBP including VAT for the return trip. Road tolls added €9.20, as we mainly drove on the German autobahns (no speed limit is fun in the iX!) and then we had the Eurotunnel costs to get over the English Channel. The only non-Ionity Charger we used was in our ski resort (Alpbach). There we used the the local utility company's (TIWAG) on street charger and paid for it using the BMW chargecard/app. That charger was a 'slow' 22 kWh AC charger that the iX was able to pull 11kwh AC from. We charged the car the last evening for 5hrs to get us back up to 100% before the return trip. That was the most expensive individual charge (but very convenient for us). That individual charge was £14.56 (€17.44) for the 5 hrs (it was priced per hour, rather than per kWh) and is included in the £221.70 BWM Chargecard invoice. The return journey, plus a couple of trips the the hospital (opps), covered around 1,900 miles (3,060 km).
The road trip was a bit of an experiment for us in an EV (the iX is our first EV). I have to say I'd have no hesitation doing it again in the iX. What a fantastic car and we were very pleasantly surprised at how quickly the iX can actually charge in the real world.
The key to fast charging is a different mindset to having an ICE vehicle. I guess everyone that's got an EV quickly learns to start with a full charge on a long road trips and then push the journey until you're getting really low on charge, because the car charges so much quicker with an empty battery. Initially we started topping up when we were getting towards 20%, but on the return trip we had much more confidence in the predicted state of the iX's charge (both the iX and ABRP predictions), that we planned for stops when the iX was around 5%. I don't think we got below 9%, even when we planned to run down to 5%. The range predictions all seem to be a bit conservative, even though we were driving, let's say 'spiritedly'.
A couple of pics...
The last Ionity charge on the outboard trip in Angath, Austria
The 22 kWh AC on-street charger in Alpbach, Austria, before the trip home.
Have a play on the abetterrouteplanner website. I’m pretty sure it does route planning in North America and there are beta settings for the iX40 & iX50.
There’s a balancing act between minimising the number of recharges you stop for & how long that ends up taking. In my experience the iX50 can take 195kwh+ until it gets to about 50% charge and then reduces down to about 100kwh until about 80% charge and the drops right off. The last 95-100% is really slow & takes about the same amount of time as it does from say 5-55%. Some of our stops were 15 mins, which were barely enough to to visit the toilets & grab a coffee. In that time we could charge from say 10% - 60%. If we wanted to charge to 100% it would have taken us 1.5hours. In that time we could have made many more smaller stops. For us the best pattern was drive for a couple of hours, stop for 15-20 min, stop a bit longer for lunch and then repeat in the afternoon. Overnight you have the luxury of time and you can charge back up to 100%.
If you want to do a bit of advanced planning, I’d start by taking a look at what the the whole journey would look like non-stop. That’ll be worst case scenario time wise. Then work out how many overnight stops you’re likely to take & where you want to take them. Overnight it doesn’t matter how long you take to charge. I then created plans for each segment & just pulled them up for in the app for live route planning.
In the ABRP app you can choose your your preferred charging strategy in the preferences with a slider that goes between ‘fewer stops’ via ‘quickest arrival’ to ‘shorter legs’. Quickest arrival was the option we went for on our trip. The algorithm seemed to work well, if a little conservative.
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