Hasn't BMW nailed the new interior?
There are a LOT of haters for the Neue Klasse interiors and fawning over the Volvo. But I don't get the love for the Volvo EX60 interior. Sure, the materials are great and premium, no argument there. But having looked hard at it side by side I think the BMW is the best execution by a distance.
The EX60 is a calm, single-tone room with a tablet that looks like an afterthought attached very hight. It's lovely to sit in, but the screen and the small driver display look placed on the dash rather than designed into it, and nothing is seemingly aimed at the driver.
The BMW is the only one where you can tell which seat in the car the designers cared about most:
- The centre screen is canted toward the driver.
- The panoramic display at the base of the windscreen puts speed and range in your sightline instead of down behind the wheel.
- The dash wraps into the door cards in one continuous band, so you sit in a cockpit rather than in front of a shelf.
Yes, there are harder plastics in the iX3. But they're down low, and you have to go looking for them. That's the right way to spend a materials budget: put the money where your eyes and hands go and save it below the knee line. I'm even coming around to the steering wheel!