Took delivery of the first 2023 BMW X1 in India: Initial impressions | Team-BHP (2023)

The front seats get the massage function but it is more of a gimmick because it feels like it is only put in the car to tick some boxes, not effective at all on both sides.

BHPian Rob_Goa recently shared this with other enthusiasts.

Dear all,

Firstly, had the pleasure of being the first owner of this New X1 2023 in India.!! I take great pride in this.

Was needing and upgrade for my Honda City of 2009 and with a family of 4(2 kids of 3 and 6 and the better half) needed an upgrade to drive on Goan roads with style and panache and once or twice a year to go on roadtrips(safety and reliability being paramount), with road And social presence very essential these days.

Was following x1 since August 2022 as it was officially launched in June 2022 worldwide (India release came only as late as 28th Jan 2023).

I guessed the previous generation was around 50~55 on road hence there would be definitely 5lac increase on this one( at least in India)....so was fitting my financial scene(around 60lacs with 2 years extended warranty hence 2+2=4 years).

Was reading a lot of reviews from foreign press and it's releases in different countries, you tube videos saying how good it is and was almost like a shrunken x5, etc etc etc. I was hooked.

So I went ahead and booked the car, unofficially, in late nov or early Dec (also had read about the unofficial booking in this bhpian forum itself. Did not waste any time and went and booked it blindly as official Indian variants etc was not launched so had no idea which one amongst the many would be launched in India but always thought they go for the 23d one (was lil disappointed when they indeed launched the 18d(for sure they are trying very hard not to cannibalise their x3, hence lesser power, no AOD, which is present abroad, no 360deg cameras to name a few)) (personally I'll take the AOD over the 360deg camera any given day And infact was a tad disappointed of its absence). Also ventilated seats would have been a great plus( but having driven the car for 1400km,in this hot weather of mid April I would say the seats were not even remotely a concern for comfort(might be the ventilated seats would have provided more comfort but it wasn't an issue)).

When the D-day finally arrived (car launch in India in late Jan), the car got heavily bashed for its lack of power... Period!!!

And I agreed with them that power is key and even contacted the rivals like Merc (Audi doesn't have similar social presence like BMW and Merc, not atleast in Goa, and hence did not even consider it).
But then, bmw was very forthcoming and the most important thing was my mind was already set on the X1 and the heart wants what the heart wants. It was always going to be BMW. So being the first in India wasn't confirmed but always had a doubt that it would be(eventually it was...... very happy about it).

So when my car came in on the 11th March and i wanted it for my mom's birthday on the 14th March, BMW made it happen as they had the registration, 3m ceramic coating and the 3.0 camera fitting to be done (problem was it was a weekend, 3.0 camera was the brand new camera and mine was the first car they were fitting into, hence some attachments were not in stock to do so, but BMW somehow managed and sourced in from Pune). They managed to give the car by 20:30 on the 14th and I happily drove directly for my mom's dinner party.

Now to the main part,(as there was no test drive vehicle or anything like that to try out the car). The car was smooth, got the new car sensation. Me, wifey, kids everyone. Few kinks with the software was present and the dealership test drive car came in a few days later so it took time to iron out a few things but the dealership was amazing and very quick to respond. The experience of buying/handing over was simply fantastic.

Now to the road trip itself. At the time of writing the review, the car had done around 650km.

It was a 8~9days trip to especially see Mysore zoo with pit stops in Honnavar and Coorg planned going time and Mangalore and Honavar on the way back with 3 days in Mysore.(start around 13th April ending on 21stApril).

I set the mileage counter to 0 just before embarking on my journey and until just before the ghats in Coorg it read 18 (driving in "efficient" mode all through as my kids were tucked in the back seat and mostly driving at about 90~110 on the open roads (lots of intersections on this highways even on open roads so safety trumped adrenaline).

But at the ghats later in Mysore city the mileage did take a hit almost going below 16 until I was on my way back down the ghats after Coorg and ended up with cool figures of 16.8km/lts until I reached back home. A totally of 1475km in my diesel driver. A very smooth and comfortable and overall fruitful experience.

Pros:

• Drive
• Comfort
• Speakers
• Boost mode
• Digital key
• Reverse parking
• Reverse assist (upto 50mts)
• Cruise control
• Exterior design (the grill especially gives a big wow factor)
• Adas level 1 is responsive
• Screen very responsive

Cons:

• AC
• Audio input with Hey BMW(response very bad)
• Internal lighting
• Lacks power (felt at sandy slopes)
• Software not optimised
• Interface could be improved
• Massage function could have been better
• No free service
• Touching 60 lakhs makes it pricey
• No physical knob for controls of screen (everything with touch, dangerous as gets eyes off the road navigating the complicated menu)

The drive:

It was indeed very very good. I used to drive to Honavar in my Honda City and we used to get little tired doing so but with this one, all the trips (entire trip cut into smaller trips with max driving at one go being 6.5hrs,day time, before resting for the day/night ),no one even felt anything, not even my kids of 3 and 6.they were energetic and full of verve every time, which I can say says a lot about the comfort and handling of the car. The gear shifts were so very smooth in this automatic 7 gear transmission, hardly felt anything, only a few times at lower gear felt little jerks(literally 2~3 times the entire journey).

Power:

The lack of power was not seen anywhere on road except once on a sandy slope in Mangalore.

On Goan roads this is the best, we hardly get to go that fast anyways. On my Honda City manual, I sometimes could hardly even use the 4th gear but offlate the Goan highways have become better but we hardly have huge amount of roads to use that extra power anyways for day to day usage. Plus even on the highways on my trip I felt I could just breeze through at even 130km/hr (with kids tucked in was not feeling safe with so many intersections on the highway to go any faster, obviously with wifey constantly reminding me too). So yes, The question, is the power enough? Straight answer... More then enough! (and this is purely to say on Goan roads for my day to day driving).

Only once in my entire journey, in Mangalore, on a sandy tricky slope I felt I needed that extra power or boost to get me up the slope. Here definitely, the extra power was sort for,and With the sport mode."on" I indeed got on top of the slope finally. But overall, for me atleast, the power was more then enough for almost all of my journey though I had to used the sport mode for few overtakings on the highways and on the slopy ghaats of Coorg.

Sports mode:

This puts the car in beast mode. Just too good. I actually did not try the digital mode "sports mode" change but the actual sport function near the drive/sport on the lever. That is really a charm, you can see the car just zooming past, though only used it a few times for overtaking etc but yes...... It really gets the car going.

But I never really felt I should use the peddle shifters and never did the entire journey.

All the other digital modes:

I don't know what exactly all the other modes actually do. I feel they are gimmicky at best. Eg, efficient, relax, abstract, sports, expressive and personal mode. Other then changing the interior lighting and some modes starting the massage function I don't know what else it does. I dint even try this digital sport mode to see what happens yet.

Comfort:

Well, the seats are very comfortable and BMW has also given reclining option of around 13 cm for the rear seats too but why did they stop at 13 cm? Why not all the way through? That would have been really great and given high feasibility to the rear seat passenger seating.

The front seats are very good, only ventilated seats would have put it over the top but alas it's missing. There are 2 memory seats functions which recognises the key instantly and sets the seat according to the driver's profile (it's preset by us, Mr & Mrs, according to our preference) or because BMW is often updating the software on the car it sometimes does not recognise and hence can be done with a press of a button (2 buttons are kept, one for each).

The front seats are very good but the massage function is more of a gimmick because it feels like it is only put in the car to tick some boxes, not effective at all on both sides, driver and passenger.

The ambient lighting keeps my kids going (for now at least) and is not bad at all.

Storage items in the cabin are well positioned especially the bottle holders in every seat pocket (very handy)(front and rear seats).

Air Conditioning:

I felt the air conditioning should have been a bit better. Not to say it lacks to make the cabin cool. But my Honda City of 2009 was equal to the task. Plus it's a bit noisy when you do put to "medium", forget "high" where it gets really loud. This is surely one of the weaker points of the car and definitely should have been improved considering the cost of the car.

Wipers:

The wipers of the car are all automatic but I did see one of them stuttering and not very smooth. I've sent a video to BMW(my local dealer in Goa), they did tell me to get my car in, but I never really got the time to take it there to get it fixed cause its very noticeable and doesn't wipe the water totally from the Windshield cause of this.

Will update once it's done but it'll take sometime.

Digital key:

This works like a charm, had activated the same 1 week after buying the car in March. Works very well with my Samsung fold 4 and in Android Auto, and the physical key is not even required for taking the car around. They digital key can be even passed around to your contacts and deleted as and when required. Very good feature!

Also there is a debit card as key. Which has to be activated after forming the BMW ids. This is handy to keep in ones wallet and can be used as a normal key.

Software:

There were some software glitches and BMW back end team is continuously upgrading the same remotely. Small small things like Alexa, android auto and even particularly BMW maps needed fixing as it was initially configured for UK. Alexa still not working even though it is supposed to work And bmw being reminded about it. Android auto had bugs before but it was been updated since And Google maps and both BMW Maps are working great now. The gimmicky "Hey BMW" is very finicky and not very intuitive at all. Sometimes I feel I wish there was a physical knob or something to get through the menu as the audio input is not responsive most of the times, plus it recognises only a few commands and BMW should have given the commands it does recognise instead of us searching through the help menu.

The audio input is one of the worst feature of this car as most of the times it is not responsive and very very irritating.

The screen itself is very very good. It's like working on an apple ipad. Very fast to the touch and responsive. But taking your eyes off the road for every small thing is not very safe and intuitive.

Also, the engine start /stop has no physical button which is very cumbersome to each time go inside the menu, browse through to turn it off. And after every trip it resets and one has to do it each time. Very tiresome. They could have easily given a physical button for this function.

Lights:

Interior lighting is very good, with each mode change the lights change or the lights can be change from the menu independently.

The exterior lighting is what impressed me most. It's very sufficient, truly! (though I've driven only on Goan roads at nights but they are very good and bright. Even the headlights and dipper once set in auto does it's job seamlessly each And everytime) (that is when it senses done bike /car in front or coming from the opp direction).

Reverse parking:

The best feature is this! What an amazing feature this is. It'll do reverse parking, parking between cars, forward parking, reversing from the parking lot, reversing through 50mts, all this is done flawlessly(but they did iron out a few kinks and once in a while it forgets the easy reverse options and tries the difficult one, this has been reported on bmw, hopefully they are working on it currently).

But overall, Just great! Just fantastic! So reliable and so practical! Even the reverse camera is fabulous.

Plus due to the 50mt reverse memory, it's a charm to get the car out from tight spots, cannot tell in words how helpful this feature is especially at night time.

Wireless charging:

This car has wireless charging in its centre console with a holder to keep the phone from falling backwards, which is handy, but goto to say, the charging speed is very very slow. But apart from that there are 4 type C charging points in the car, 2 for front passengers and 2 for rear and these are quite fast I should say.

Steering wheel:

This is the one part I thought needed some improvement. Firstly, I direct physical button to change songs or to go the previous /next song. It's very tedious, as have to go through a menu and then select to go fwd/previous tracks. Obviously, this can be done at the track wheel at the centre arm rest but then have to remove hands from the steering wheel.

Centre storage:

This takes a bit of time to get used to. Huge space but a bit tricky to navigate due to its position. But it has a cabinet on it where certain small things like keys etc can be fit nicely,to unclutter small things with the big ones.

Boot:

Well, this is subjective depending on the amount of luggage each person has or the car he /she previously owned. But I should say 3 or 4 big suitcases will fit easily in it. Plus the seats if required can be folded in to make more space as and when required. For my trip, we had 1 big, 2 small suitcase plus 4~5 other bags plus kids bags which had to be fit in the boot(though we used the space under the middle seat as one plant was also carried back from Honavar). So for a nice trip, this boot is sufficient.

Also the boot opens and closes automatically with the remote, or by hand by pressing on the tail gate or by the leg movement below the door(handy option when both hands are full. And since this car has easy access, the key cabn be in the pocket, never touched, place all bags being carried directly into the boot without even touching the keys and this is very very convenient.
Also to close or to close and lock the car directly there are physical buttons on the boot door.

Exterior of the car:

Now this is totally subjective, but looking at the grill of this car, one can see the wow appeal of this car. I wish there was a way to remove the "X1" from the rear end. That is the only distinguishing mark saying it is an X1, otherwise the car can even pass as a X5 if seen standalone. It's just a magnificent thing for the eyes. Very very well designed and I should say one of the best designed car by BMW off late. Now definitely people with bigger budgets are waiting for the arrival of the Updated X3 and X5 which will come in early or mid 2024. Because if the interiors and exterior of this X1 and the previous X1 has so much difference then people should definitely wait for the updated higher versions too.

Interior of the car:

This is the ups of this car. Every review you'll read will tell you how good it is. It's just beautiful and feels so sophisticated. The space for the rear passengers is so very spacious and comfortable. The mocha colour suits my needs cause of my kids (light colors will make it dirty very quickly).

Well I tried to give a honest take on my X1 and put more basis on simple things rather then all the technical aspects part of it. All the things mentioned are the things which we will use everyday and which will make a difference to our day to day driving.

My drive was very memorable and peaceful.

Hoping this would be the case all throughout the life of the car. Happy trips to all of you and safe driving and happy days for all of you.

Thank you for giving me a patient ear. Thank you again.

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