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• BMW engineers drove an iX3 from the factory where it’s built in Hungary to Munich on one charge with range to spare.
• The trip was 626 miles and the vehicle completed the journey with 2% and 12 miles remaining.
• The route avoided highways, and the vehicle had climate, comfort and media features turned off for maximum efficiency.

Electric vehicle range estimates are really just a suggestion, and you can easily exceed them with some careful driving and route planning. 

BMW proved it with the new iX3, its latest and most advanced electric vehicle, by driving one 626 miles (1,007 km) across Europe—with 2% and 12 miles (20 km) of indicated range left. The SUV blew past its 500-mile (805 km) European WLTP range estimate by 25%, and even demolished the 400-mile EPA estimate it’s expected to receive. 

It’s all pretty remarkable for such a big SUV.

There are a few big reasons why BMW engineers were able to pull this off. First and perhaps most importantly, they avoided highways. They started in Debrecen, Hungary, where the iX3 is built, and drove it all the way to Munich, BMW’s historic home. Keeping speed low helps because the faster you go, the more air resistance you encounter, killing efficiency. 

They also kept the climate system and even music off to minimize the drain on the battery, and probably kept the speed as low as possible. Being in a BMW, they had a good excuse to keep turn signal usage to a minimum, too.

But you don’t have to go this extreme to travel great distances in an iX3. It is an efficiency beast, especially for a vehicle of its size, thanks to a big 108.7 kilowatt-hour battery pack nestled in BMW’s brand-new 800-volt Neue Klasse platform. BMW only offers a dual-motor version of the iX3 today, but it will likely add an even more efficient single-motor variant to the lineup later down the line, which will stretch its battery capacity even further. 

As important an achievement as this is, it’s not exactly representative of a real road trip. Driving that long at below-highway speeds probably wasn’t very exciting, and since all the comfort features were kept off, it wasn’t the most comfortable journey either. You can see in the video that one of the drivers has a full jacket and scarf on in the car at one point.

Still, it confirms an important lesson about EV range. Your mileage may vary, and if you keep things slow, you’ll be able to go a lot farther than you think.