BMW has published the first pictures and the first details of the new 2018 BMW X3 model. For now, we only have some camouflaged pictures, but one thing is for sure: the new X3 won’t be a revolution on the design side.
The tests are held around Arjeplog, just 56 km (34.8 miles) south of the polar circle, where temperatures often drop to minus 20 degrees, causing the lakes in the surrounding area to freeze over.
The resulting vast, even surfaces serve as proving grounds on which steering, suspension and drive characteristics can be meticulously tested and various different technical solutions compared against one another. In the process, the intelligent four-wheel technology xDrive is able to demonstrate its advantages by not only ensuring best possible traction on icy surfaces but, thanks to fully variable distribution of torque, also by optimizing handling agility.
The extensive ice surfaces of frozen lakes and the numerous remote roads with their firmly packed layers of snow offer excellent conditions for fine tuning of the settings activated via the Driving Experience Control function.
As a result, engineers are in a position to sense the vehicle’s dynamic behaviour much more accurately and synchronize the control of driver assistant systems such as Dynamic Stability Control (DSC) or Dynamic Traction Control (DTC) even more precisely and to attune it to the vehicle as a whole. It is this painstaking development work that later provides the customer with a competently tuned chassis for that typical BMW driving pleasure.
