BMW X3 xDrive30e M Sport 2020 UK first drive

In hybrid mode, the car has a generally slick, well-rehearsed way of managing its power sources. Most town running will be done electrically. While the size and weight of the X3 clearly demand more of the 108bhp motor than the 30e versions of the 3 Series and 5 Series, it still copes quite well in urban environments, with enough pedal response and accessible power to make good progress through stop-start traffic.

As you leave the city, you will rouse the piston engine if you want the car to accelerate briskly, which it will certainly do. But it’s still easy enough to get up to 70mph without burning any hydrocarbons – and you won’t be holding anybody up while doing so.

Out of town, electric-only range isn’t quite worth the 31 miles in practice that the WLTP lab tests promise (although it might well be in exclusively urban running). On a typical UK office commute, you would probably see something between 20 and 25 miles of electric range on a full charge. Charging the battery back up to 80% from a 16-amp post or wallbox connection then takes just over two-and-a-half hours at a maximum charging rate of 3.7kW.

Even when the drive battery is depleted, the powertrain still runs and performs very satisfactorily. Our testing suggested that a ‘range-extended’ fuel economy return in the low-40mpg range should be easy to achieve. Moreover, the engine starts and runs smoothly even at high loads and revs, which isn’t something you can say about many PHEVs.

Because the car is clever enough to take data from the sat-nav and to decide for itself when to use its engine and when to shut it down, you can find that overall fuel economy is surprisingly good, even on longer journeys, only part of which can be powered electrically. Our test route was a 55-mile loop embarked on with 80% charge in the battery and concluded with just under 5%, which the trip computer recorded for fuel economy at just over 70mpg.

You can, of course, easily find fault with the logic of presenting information like this. It would be a lot more honest and informative if the car’s petrol efficiency counter simply stopped running when the engine was shut down and there were a counterpart for electric running displayed just as prominently, wouldn’t it? For the time being, though, (and for as long as the prevailing thinking is that electricity is free and petrol efficiency is all that matters) this is what we will likely continue to get. And not only from BMW, I should add.

If there’s a real disappointment here, it concerns the X3 30e’s ride and handling; which, ironically enough, is what often attracts people to BMW SUVs in the first place. Because as well as making this plug-in hybrid just a bit less fleet of foot than its saloon and estate relatives when running electrically, this car’s two-tonne kerb weight undoubtedly penalises it for close body control on uneven roads.

BMW’s standard passive suspension certainly keeps tabs on lateral body control well enough and makes the car’s handling pleasingly agile and precise for a car of this size when its operating on smoother roads. Over a typical UK commute, you would likely seldom be anything other than very pleased with the car’s grippy tautness.

But introduce it to a few sunken, testing B-roads and the chassis can come up notably short on ride fluency, suppleness and finesse. The body fusses laterally when one side of its axles are made to work harder than the other, and plenty of bouncy, underdamped movement can be allowed to unsettle the cabin at times.

Bigger, pricier SUVs tend to have adaptive suspension to help deal with the inherent problem that this X3 has: that it has quite a lot of extra weight to carry and is carrying it at greater altitude than the average saloon or hatchback, so it’s likely to be felt all the more keenly. It’s not a huge problem for the car but, if you’re a keener driver, I reckon you would notice it.