I picked up my iX 45 a week before a 650-mile overnight trip. In preparation, I bought a foam+air mattress and booked a reservation at a nearby state campground that offered 50-amp service (for charging the iX). I also read up on how to simulate “Camp Mode” in a BMW.
The Destination
Cherry Springs State Park, in north central Pennsylvania, is a Gold-tier International Dark Sky Park. It is widely considered the darkest place east of the Mississippi River, so it’s great for stargazing and astrophotography. If you go at the right time of the year, you can see the Milky Way as you just cannot in cities and suburbs.
Here’s a photo from their website and one that I took (straight from my phone without edits).
Attachment 3824256
Attachment 3824257
Charging Challenges
The Cherry Springs area used to be a charging desert. Since I was last there, a nearby Ford Dealership has installed a 120 KW charger that splits power equally when both cables are in use. (The next nearest DC charging is an hour away.) Four 48-amp AC chargers have been installed in the Cherry Springs visitors parking lot. Each pair shares a 60-amp circuit (i.e., you get 5.5 KW if both chargers on a circuit are in use).
My Flex Charger would not pass on power from the NEMA 14-50 outlet at the campsite, (It showed a line of orange lights.) As a backup plan, I paid to charge to 80% at the Ford dealership. At Cherry Springs, I got 9 kWh while stargazing and taking photos. When done, I went back to the campground to sleep.
Mattress and Frame
I originally thought that I would get a special-purpose SUV mattress to cover the entire cargo and rear seat area. Most SUV mattresses provide too few measurements to ensure that we will get a good fit in an iX. Instead, I selected a Lost Horizons Option3 Twin (75” x 38”) from Amazon. It leaves a few inches on the sides to place things that you might need during the night.
The rear seats of the iX do not fold flat. (They are at an angle of about 11 degrees.) The top of the folded seat back is 4 7/8” higher than the cargo floor behind the seats. Bed frames can raise the mattress over the bend to provide a flat sleeping surface, but cost hundreds and decrease headroom.
There wasnt time to research, order, and get delivery of a bed frame for this trip, so the mattress went on the floor and thus was bent in the middle.
Head vs Foot
I slept with my head toward the front of the car to give myself maximum headroom. I found this uncomfortable because of the 11° bend in the sleeping surface and because my feet kept hitting the rear hatch. Also, I foolishly left the hatch cargo cover in place, and my legs banged it a few times. The mattress itself was comfortable, and I got 5.5 hours of sleep. However, the bend and the foot/leg thing made it not a good experience overall.
I needed to nap on the drive home. Since the mattress was still inflated, I pulled into a rest stop, removed the hatch cargo cover (!), and slept with my head toward the back of the car. This worked much better that did sleeping toward the front. My feet could “stick out” between the front seats, so I didn’t feel constrained. The bend in the sleeping surface didn’t bother me. (Maybe the 11 degree tilt was counteracted by the taper of my legs???)
Charging OR Climate Control
UPDATE: Simultaneous charging and continuous climate control appears possible. Details in reply 11.
Rant: BMWs do not have a dedicated camp mode, like Rivians and Teslas do. We’re left to approximate that mode with lots of settings adjustments that still yield substandard results. Although few BMW owners want to sleep in their vehicles, BMW should include modes for “occupancy rather than driving” (e.g., camping, pets, people in car while driver runs into market, etc.) Charging and comfort are at odds in these compromises: you can have climate control without charging or charging without climate control. /Rant
(See reply 11 for updates to these instructions.) For continuous climate control, open the door, buckle the driver’s seatbelt, get in, start the car, use iDrive to turn off lights (interior and exterior) and the center display, disable the cabin motion alarm, then exit). Get in via a rear door, close it, then lock the vehicle. The climate control will run all night, but the car cannot charge because it is in drive ready state. (Note: we cannot turn off the driver display, so you will need to cover it. We cannot turn off the backlighting of buttons on the doors and center console, so just be glad that they aren’t terribly bright.)
(See reply 11 for updates to these instructions.) With overnight charging, you cannot run climate control continuously. However, you can schedule a “next departure time precondition” and three scheduled precondition times to give you four periods during the night when climate control will activate and run for up to 30 minutes. Remember that the times you select are for when climate control should be done (i.e., when the cabin should be comfortable for departure) rather than for when it should start. Dont forget to check that the Flex Charger will work where you are staying and that its connected before you go to sleep.
Since I had charged at the Ford dealership, I was focused on climate control rather than charging, so I chose continuous climate control. I normally keep the cabin at 70°. That was too warm for sleeping, so I lowered it to 67°. It was 57 outside and climate control used less than 1% battery/hour. I don’t know much this figure would have varied if it had been 30 or 80 degrees outside.
Final thoughts
Entering and exiting via a door is easier than using the hatch and is less likely to cause paint damage.
Next time, Ill chose intermittent climate control with continuous charging to avoid the driver display and button backlight issues.
I probably will get a mattress frame. The Hele Box Duo (40” wide) with the optional stubbies (i.e., short legs) will hold the bed frame just over the folded rear seats, leaving 20-24” of headroom above a 4” mattress. Since my mattress is a foam+air model, itll compress some, providing an inch or two of additional headroom. Thats not roomy, but having 26" above my head isnt too bad.
