BMW IX3 vs MG Cyberster

What's the difference?

The BMW iX3 50 xDrive is a seriously quick electric SUV that earns points for its family practicality, while its impressive range could go a long way towards easing range anxiety. The ride isn’t always as settled as I’d like, but for the most part, this is a well-executed premium EV.

The Cyberster is certainly an impressive thing in a lot of ways, but if you were expecting a perfect sports car from MG, you'll be a bit disappointed. 

It's quite expensive if you're looking for a nice EV, but on the flip side it's quite cheap if being fast is your main concern.

If anything, the Cyberster is an exciting look at what the brand is capable of, even if it's a bit rough around the edges.

BMW has done a really good job with the iX3's styling. It’s distinctly futuristic without falling into that pillowy, blob-like look that some EVs have. The LED light signatures are gorgeous, although the illuminated kidney grille, from some angles, gives off bucktooth vibes. The rear indicators are also far too small.

The optioned 22-inch alloys are enormous and look fantastic, but are they worth the extra coin? Because in the EV world, size does matter and the larger the tyre, the bigger the hit to the driving range (in this case, roughly between 8-10 per cent).

Inside, BMW has avoided the same-same, slightly sterile feel of some EV cabins. There’s plenty of personality here, with the burgundy two-tone synthetic leather, stepped dashboard and seriously flashy displays bringing plenty of wow factor. The knitted accent panels across the dashboard add some welcomed warmth and texture to what could otherwise be a very tech-heavy cabin.

MG reckons the Cyberster draws on the proportions of classic roadsters like its MG A and B from the ‘50s and ‘60s.

And I reckon that’s about where the comparison ends, really.

But don’t get me wrong, I think it’s got some pretty angles and nice elements.

It’s got the long bonnet, but its cabin isn't set so far back and its aerodynamic lines and curves probably weren't a priority back then either.

This is the standard colour, English White, which is more like off-white or cream or beige.

You can have a red roof on the lighter colours, white, silver, and grey, but red and yellow Cybersters have black ones.

The tail-lights at the back were inspired by the union jack, but they’re probably one of the elements on this car I'd put in the ‘tacky’ column.

The front row is spacious, and the sport seats offer plenty of adjustment to get comfortable. The massage function is particularly good when you’re sitting in a school pick-up line or waiting for the car to charge. Access is also easy, thanks to the comfortable step-in and step-out height.

There are a few storage options up front, including a shelf underneath the centre console, a couple of cupholders and drink bottle holders in the doors. Both the centre console and glovebox are on the shallow side, but I love the dual phone holders and the way they’re angled so you can still see your phone screen when you need to.

Charging options are good, with a 12-volt socket, two USB-C ports and a ventilated wireless charging pad. A second charging pad for your co-pilot would have been nice, though.

The displays look a little overwhelming at first, but the panoramic display is surprisingly intuitive to use while driving. In fact, I found it made the 3D head-up display feel somewhat redundant. The multimedia system is highly customisable and easy to navigate once you’ve spent some time getting familiar with it. Wireless Apple CarPlay was also easy to connect, and Android Auto is available too.

The rear row is just as spacious as the front, with a flat floor that will make middle-seat passengers happy. There’s also enough width for three kids to sit comfortably. The seats are firm but supportive, and I like the height of the centre armrest.

Storage back here isn’t quite as generous, with two cupholders and door-bin storage essentially covering the options. The hard seat backs are easy to clean, though, and my son was a fan of the rear climate controls, directional air vents and two USB-C ports.

There are three top-tether anchor points and two ISOFIX child-seat mounts, while the 40/20/40-split rear seat adds some useful flexibility when you need to carry a mix of passengers and cargo.

The boot offers up to 520 litres of capacity with all seats in use, which is plenty for a big grocery haul or a road trip’s worth of luggage. There’s a handy netted pocket on the side and a hard cargo cover, although, unsurprisingly for an EV, you only get a tyre repair kit rather than a spare wheel. The powered tailgate is also a welcome convenience.

Rounding everything off is a 58L frunk which houses all the charging cables.

A three-screen dash sounds a little daunting at first, but it’s not that far from the giant screens in some new cars now.

The central 10.25-inch screen is info only, while the flanking 7.0-inch screens are touchscreens, as is the climate control screen in the console.

As much as I’m a fan of physical buttons where possible, this car shows that multiple screens means you don’t need many sub-menus.

Basically, this feels like a lot, but you get used to it relatively quickly.

And while it also seems like MG’s software has become more intuitive and less laggy, the placements of the screens is a little annoying - the side screens on the dash are blocked by the steering wheel, and the central touchscreen is a bit fiddly.

Like I mentioned, no wireless phone mirroring is a let-down and there’s not really an obvious place to put a phone, but the ability to level out the cup holders is kind of interesting and the central storage where the USB-A and C ports are is big enough.

There’s a narrow bit of storage behind the seats, but the boot is actually 249 litres and seems much more usable than you might expect.

It's also worth noting the Cyberster comes with an AC slow charging cable as standard, but not a DC fast-charging cable for plugging in at some charging stations.

The MG Cyberster finds itself here as the only electric convertible sports car on offer, which means it’s hard to compare its $115,000 price tag to any direct rivals.

The Kia EV6 GT and Hyundai Ioniq 5 N are the wrong shape, the Porsche Cayman has the wrong running gear and most other things with doors like this are a lot more expensive.

So what does $115,000, before on-road costs, get you?

It’s only available in one variant, with pretty much the only cost-option being paint colours.

Aside from the scissor doors, there’s the electric folding roof, triple-screen cockpit with another centre panel, an eight-speaker Bose sound system, heated electric seats and steering wheel, and ambient lighting.

The exterior lights are all automatic intelligent LEDs, and you can open the doors with the key fob.

It is, however, missing a couple of things.

No phone charger might be down to space, but no wireless phone mirroring is a bit annoying, and the manual steering wheel adjustment feels a little cheap in a six-figure EV.

The new BMW iX3 is built on an 800-volt platform and features a dual-motor all-wheel-drive set-up producing up to 345kW of power and 645Nm of torque. It can sprint from 0-100km/h in just 4.9 seconds, so in a nutshell, it’s pretty darn powerful and fast.

It might not be segment-leading when it comes to outright performance, but there’s certainly no shortage of grunt for a family SUV.

Okay, here’s where the Cyberster gets impressive.

Its dual-motor set-up combines a 150kW front motor and a 250kW rear motor for a total of 375kW.

Peak torque is a hefty 725Nm.

All that is enough to get you and two tonnes of MG from zero to 100km/h in 3.2 seconds.

Sure it tops out at 208km/h, but the rush of hitting highway speeds is already enough to put your licence at risk.

The iX3 has a massive 108.7kWh lithium-ion NCM battery and a WLTP driving range of up to 805km. With the optional 22-inch alloys, that range does take a hit in our test vehicle, dropping to around 740km, which is still very good.

With my average consumption sitting at 15.5kWh/100km, I’ve actually beaten the claimed energy consumption of 18.8kWh/100km. That’s after a mix of highway and urban driving throughout the week, which is seriously impressive for a large, powerful electric SUV.

The iX3 has a Type 2/CCS charging port and can accept up to 22kW on an AC charger and a hefty 400kW on a fast DC charger. Finding a charger capable of delivering that much power will be the real challenge, but if you do, BMW claims a 10-80 per cent charge in just 21 minutes. That’s excellent charging performance and makes longer road trips considerably easier.

However, it does lose marks for missing out on vehicle-to-load (V2L) functionality. BMW Australia says the iX3 is equipped with the hardware for V2L, but the company is waiting on approvals for the required accessories before it can be rolled out to Australian versions. In other words, it's coming soon.

The MG Cyberster has a 77kWh battery and a claimed efficiency of 19.1kWh/100km.

While that means its claimed driving range of 443km relies on a bit of energy to be recuperated from braking, something you don’t really get on the highway, it actually works in the car’s favour during dynamic driving.

After 264km of driving on a test loop that included some urban but mostly highway and rural driving, the Cyberster’s trip computer displayed a 19.4kWh/100km average consumption.

The battery sat at 27 per cent, with 108km estimated range remaining.

While 443km of total range seems optimistic for a car that’s likely to be driven relatively quickly a lot of the time, the efficiency of the Cyberster held up better than you might have expected.

The iX3 50 has plenty of power and torque to satisfy when you need to plant it on a hill or overtake. Power is delivered smoothly in Efficient mode, but it definitely feels more dynamic when you switch to Sport.

The suspension is nicely balanced around town and through corners, but occasionally the car feels a little unsettled on an uneven open road. This is where you start to wonder whether those big tyres are doing the car any favours.

The steering is lighter than expected, although you do get used to it after a couple of days. The car can also feel heavy when you need to stop quickly, to the point where the brakes can feel a smidge spongey. Otherwise, they’re responsive enough.

The cabin is impressively quiet around town, although road noise, again, likely helped along by those big tyres, creeps in a little more on the open road. To be clear, it’s only more noticeable by EV standards; this is still a quiet car compared with a combustion-powered SUV.

Visibility is quite good from my driving position, and I like the commanding view overall. SUVs do rule the roost in this regard. There are four regenerative braking levels, including B mode for one-pedal driving, and I’ve kept it on either level three or B throughout the week.

I also like that you can still creep at lower speeds in B mode, and the 360-degree camera is exceptionally clear. The way the camera view moves with the steering wheel takes a beat to get used to, though. If you're a little unsure, you can activate the parking assist function, and the car will park itself.

There’s good news and bad news about the Cyberster from behind the wheel.

The good news is it’s quite easy to drive this thing very fast. 

The bad news is it feels like it would be quite easy to get sick of as a day-to-day car, depending on your situation.

The first thing I noticed is the seat feels a bit high, even at its lowest setting. That's likely due to the placement of the battery pack under the floor of of the car.

Following that, if you’re taller than me (I'm five foot 11), it feels like the wrong road surface will have you nudging your head into the roof liner.

That mechanical roof should take about 15 seconds to lower or raise, and that can be done at speeds up to 50km/h.

It could be a symptom of trying to keep 1985kg tied down, but some of Melbourne's highways and arterial roads between 70 and 100km/h had the Cyberster bobbing quite a bit.

But the suspension doesn't let individual bumps intrude too much into the cabin, so it’s not all bad.

Similarly, there’s good and bad when it comes to the steering and braking.

The first being that the steering seems pretty accurate, even though the feedback is a bit numb. 

The braking on the other hand is handled by some pretty capable Brembos up front that pull the heavy roadster up quickly, but don’t always clamp as hard as you might expect when approaching a traffic light at 60km/h.

But stopping’s one thing, and going’s another.

There are three main drive modes, Comfort, Sport, and Super Sport, which mainly alter the acceleration intensity. And they feel well calibrated.

Comfort keeps things calm and cruisy, Sport is plenty for the road, and Super Sport has the potential to draw the attention of the authorities.

There’s good adjustability when it comes to regen braking, and even a decent single-pedal driving mode.

Aside from a couple of particularly heinous roads, the Cyberster held mostly flat when cornering at high speeds, but the potential for its suspension to let its wheels lose their footing might - or should - stop you from pushing the MG too hard.

At high speeds, there’s a bit of wind noise that you really can’t complain about if you’ve just purchased a drop-top, but the noise, vibration and harshness is decent, all things considered.

My only gripe with the interior fit out is that the passenger seat wobbles a little, and rattles on the surface behind it before moving it forward.

It’s impressive what this car can do in terms of performance, it’s just a shame it’s not more playful.

The Cyberster hasn’t been tested by ANCAP but as a niche sports car, it may never get tested.

The good news is it rides on the same platform as the MG4, which has five stars.

It’s got frontal and side airbags, plus all the usual new-car tech like adaptive cruise, lane-keep assist, blind spot warnings, collision warnings and avoidance, and speed limit warnings.

The Cyberster’s active safety is actually mercifully restrained, giving a couple of relatively quiet dings when exceeding the limit before you turn it off, letting you do the steering even when lane-keep is on, and in my case, only giving me a driver attention alert when I yawned while at a red light.

The iX3 is covered by a five-year/200,000km warranty, which is a fairly typical term at this end of the market. You can also pre-purchase a six-year servicing plan for $2420, which is a reasonable cost for a vehicle in this price bracket.

Maintenance is governed by BMW’s Condition Based Servicing system, so the car will tell you when it’s time to head in for a service. Depending on how you drive it, expect servicing to be required somewhere between 12 and 24 months.

MG has a 10-year/250,000km warranty that’s pretty impressive by industry standards, and the warranty also covers its EVs.

It’s important to note that the convertible roof is one of a few items (including 12-volt batteries and light bulbs) that MG covers for less than 10 years. In the case of the roof it’s only five.

It’s worth closely reading the fine print before you crack into buying a car, regardless.

There are also ten capped-price services which occur every 12 months or 25,000km, ranging from $246 to $785. The average price per service is $503.40.

MG also offers free roadside assist for the period of the warranty.