Motormouth: My BMW iX3 experience in Thailand with car nuts and coconuts

My BMW iX3 experience in Thailand with car nuts and coconuts.

The last time I was at Pathumthani Speedway in 2022, I was part of the earnest event team for the media test drive of the CKD Subaru Forester by content creators from Thailand, Malaysia, Vietnam and Cambodia.

The behind-the-scenes preparations were a mad mix of optimistic planning, pessimistic worrying, and hopeful praying to benevolent gods who might listen to this freethinker.

No prayer required this time at Pathumthani, because it's a BMW Asia regional media event, which means it'll be seriously Bavarian with motors galore and everything works.

Everything in this case includes hasty car nuts and tasty coconuts. "I feel the need, the need for... speedway, Pathumthani Speedway!"

I am a Singapore car nut who loves cars and likes coconut anything - water, fruit, juice, tidbit, ice cream. Naturally, I feel most coconutty in Thailand. 

However, I tend to feel less nutty about cars in Bangkok because of its traffic jams, which are heavier, noisier and smokier than what I'm used to in Singapore.

But where I am, Pathum Thani province north of the Thai capital, the heaviest part of the relatively light traffic is a fleet of six Thai BMW iX3s. 

There's virtually no noise from these BMW BEVs, except 22-inch 35-profile tyre patter from the staggered Michelins. There's no smoke, either, except for the legal weed I didn't dare to try at Sukhumvit. 

The bunch of Singaporean motoring writers brought here by BMW Asia  to try the all-important  iX3 include the best of the modern best and also the rest of the ancient best (yours truly). This car is like coconut ice cream - sweet on the road and cool on the track.

The best never rest, perhaps, but I am tired already when the morning programme starts. Thank goodness for the restful iX3 seat, which is easily adjusted (with idiot-proof physical switches), supportive and, uh, ventilative. 

Air-con power up! From front of my face to back of my side!! 

My backside and other half-decade body parts settle down comfortably behind the iX3 steering wheel, which looks like an experimental art project done by marginally mental interior designers.

The rest of the dashboard is less radical. Even the full-width, full-wow Panoramic Vision display is logical and readable once I get past the wow factor.

Doing the wowing on road and track in Pathumthani is BMW's current state-of-the-art BEV technology called Gen6 eDrive, which premiered in the iX3 50 xDrive with the bells and whistles.

The vehicular bells are headlined by the proprietary powertrain with BMW’s own battery pack, while the digital whistles include Panoramic iDrive and BMW Operating System X. Accelerating to 140km/h and then braking like a nutcase, without breaking anything.

With 345 kilowatts (469 horsepower) from rear-biased dual electric motors powering the iX3 from zap to zip faster than I can choose a fresh coconut from a Bangkok roadside stall (0-to-100km/h in 4.9 seconds), the iX3 is certainly punchy.

Actually, how the iX3 accelerates is a little less interesting than how it decelerates to a “Soft Stop”.  

It's as smooth as coconut custard, with a perfectly modulated stopping action every time in the final few metres of stoppage. I feel like a skillful limo driver who loves my job and likes my coconuts. 

I'm not sure whether to credit the BMW iX3 engineers for their expert programming of the transition between motor regenerative braking and friction brake pads below 5km/h, or to the coconut custard that might have inspired them to achieve what they did.

I have no chance to husk them... oops, I mean ask. The proof is already in the pudding anyway, and BMW iX3 serves up even more at Pathumthani Speedway - more proof, not more pudding. Thrills without the spills in a 35km/h slalom to test the stability of the body and no-frills suspension.

The car's ride on pockmarked roads can get a bit busy, like it's a sports-utility that prefers to play sports. This apparent preference gets some free play at Pathumthani, where there are more car nuts than random coconuts at this point in time.

Out of Bangkok city and closer to the countryside but not on farmland yet, the iX3's sports-utility equation of more sports than utility becomes clearer than coconut water and similarly sweet.

Threading this fancy electric vehicle through northern Thailand traffic with diesel pickups aplenty is relaxing and way easier than opening a coconut, albeit with a firmish ride quality and firm seat cushions. 

The firmness is justified at Pathumthani Speedway, where the iX3 speeds its way through the circuit like a surprisingly nimble electric SUV which happens to weigh 2.36 tonnes. Convoying through Pathumthani traffic in half a dozen iX3s is easier than opening a few coconuts.

This electricar is certainly heavy, and even heavier with two well-fed SG chaps seated inside, but its progress past the cones is not heavy going. 

The cornering is more confident than an unconfident non-racing driver like myself can manage/mismanage, and the directional changes look dramatic from the outside but feel stable and so simple from behind the wheel.

According to BMW, the excellent driving dynamics of Neue Klasse iX3 is enabled by the so-called “Heart of Joy”, the automaker's breakthrough high-performance control unit with super software to match.  

I’m just joyful that my heart is never in my mouth when putting the iX3 through its paces at Pathumthani. I much prefer to munch on coconut chips.

After experiencing BMW's "Heart of Joy" in the iX3, this car nut is ready for even more coconut.

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