2026 BMW iX3 vs 2026 Mercedes GLC – Which do I buy and why?
I made a video on both of these models, the new BMW EX-3 and Mercedes GLC. Both fully electric vehicles, and it’s very unusual that both Mercedes and BMW drop two direct competitors essentially on the same day. Now, in the videos that I made of these, I thought that both these models, when it comes to the design, nothing else, no spec, no tech. When it comes to the design, I think they are both a step in the right direction. Maybe not the best direction, but look at the EQ series. I mean, the bubbleness that we had with the EQS, the SUVs as well. It just was not selling. This looks like an internal combustion engine. Then we have the EX-3 with this Noya cluster design from a side view. And also, I don’t know if you’ve seen it, but they already dropped uh the M Performance parts for the EX-3. And if you have that in black, it actually looks really good. The side profile of the EX-3 is by far my favorite view. The proportions are on point. So, what we’re going to do in this video is if if I was to buy one of these today, which one would I buy? because both of them have negatives and both of them of course have positives. But it’s a pretty hard choice to be honest. Before we jump in and have a look at this in Photoshop here, I’m going to compare it. And look at how good the EX3 looks in black. It looks very, very nice. Specifically with these big probably 22-in wheels here because black covers up all the complexities that I was not sure about in the front end of the lower section here. You can see that it’s all covered up. Now, we still have, of course, the massive grill with I I can’t remember like 200 small little LEDs inside of the grill, chrome outline. You can get the Mercedes GLC with the black chrome package, which is something I would 100% go with. It at least uh brings some attention away from the grill. And of course, we’re going to have a look at the front and the side, the rear, and then the interior as well. very very tricky choice for me if if I was in the market for one of these. Let me know which one you would buy. Before we jump into any sort of check, compare the spec and take of these two. Let me know before we jump into the video. Comment down below if you were to pick if you had to pick one of these today. You had to buy one of these for some reason. Which one would you personally buy? And also let me know why. What is your reasoning for buying that specific vehicle? So before we jump into Photoshop, we’re going to have a look at Inside EVs article here. Here, I’m going to link it down below. This is a very good comparison between the two and I want to show it to you. So, BMW EX-3 versus Mercedes GLC EQ. Which next generation EV is better? Here we have one in blue, one in red. The grill still stands out. So, it’s it’s like overly defined this grill for the GLC. If you look at the previous GLC, I think they had a 63 uh AMG. That one was a perfect GLC. Just beautiful, beautiful design. This looks similar to that in side view, but they messed it up a little bit with the front end graphics. But the old GLC was a beautiful um SUV. So, here we have it. Both offer brand new 800 volt electric architectures that are built from the ground up to be updated uh up updatable uh over the air. I don’t think I’ve ever heard that word before. The GLC is slightly longer 190.7 in to the EX-3 is 188.3 in but they both nearly exact same width and length. Uh you got 483 horsepower in the Mercedes and 469 in the Beamer and not not you know a big difference there. The GLC 400 offers up to 596 pound- feet of torque, far eclipsing the EX- 350s uh 475. So, the torque is way up in the Mercedes. Something to keep in mind. If you actually plan on towing something with your EVs, you might want to consider the Mercedes because of the more torque uh the higher torque figures. Mercedes says the GLC 400 can knock out a 4.3 seconds 0 to62. BMW says the EX- 350 takes 4.9 seconds. To me, this does not matter. Horsepower as well, it doesn’t matter anymore. Horsepower is a number that is just thrown out there now in ridiculously high numbers. To me, what’s more important right now in today’s world is going to be the interior. the interior feel, the interior vibe, the the the warmth or the lack of warmth when you step into an interior. I think that is the key component for me because that is where you’re going to spend all your time in the car. You’re not going to look at the exterior that much, but at the same time, it feels good also to drive around in a package that is beautifully sculpted, of course. Both companies have a tendency to understate their car’s performance. So, they’re probably faster than these numbers here. expect both to launch performance variants of course uh later down the down the line pretty soon probably. So Mercedes says that the GLC 400 with EQ technology as they call it right now will offer up to 443 miles of range which is not bad at all probably around 400 realworld miles and we’re starting to get up to that number now that it makes sense to buy an EV if you even if you want to go on longer road trips. 400 miles. You can stop for 20 minutes, charge it up, and you’re good to go. And you’re good to go. So, the 350X drive will offer 421 to 500 miles of range. That should translate to well over 400 miles on the EPA cycle in max range spec, eclipsing the Mercedes and nearly every other electric SUV on sale. So, BMW has really worked on the range here. Love to see it. Uh, over 400 miles in realworld range. Not bad at all. The GLC will be the only will be one of the only EVs on sale to offer a twospeed transmission. So, that will help you if, for example, if you’re on the autobon, if you do a lot of highway driving, you don’t want to, you know, drain the battery really fast. You have a two-speed transmission here. Something that you don’t get in the in the BMW. So, the GLC squeezes out squeezes its 400 mile range out of a battery with 94 kwatt hours of usable energy. BMW fits a juicier pack uh with 108.7 kowatt of usable capacity. So, the Mercedes can accept up to 330 kW of power and charge from 10 to 80% in 24 minutes. Seems to be the standard numbers we see all the time. However, BMW claims at 21 minutes 10 to 80% sprint with a peak charging rate of 400 kW. So, it’s a little bit faster when it comes to the charging. Uh even though it does not have this two-speed uh transmission, that’s not going to help you on the highway. It’s probably going to drain the battery a little faster as well. Both cars offer, now look at the interiors here. Both cars offer pillarto-pillar infotainment screens. You got the hyperscreen in the Mercedes. You got the panoramic iDrive in the BMW. Both offer, of course, integrated AI powered virtual assistant now and a bunch of technologies that I would probably never use personally myself because I have my phone. I know where I need to go. Apple CarPlay, that is all I need personally. I don’t need these assistants or these big screens or or anything like that. But that’s what we get in both cars. Now, Mercedes also offers rear wheel steering, something you don’t have in the BMW. But the BMWs also, keep in mind, the BMW is a little bit shorter than the Mercedes, so the turning radius is probably going to be I don’t know, but it I feel like they’re probably going to be very similar. Anyway, so the EX-3 and the GLC support vehicle to home and vehicle to everything technology, so you can charge whatever devices you have. Just plug it into the vehicle itself. Now, the pricing, we don’t have any pricing for the Mercedes yet, but I do think it’s going to be very close to what the BMW is going to cost. So, the BMW is said to cost around $60,000 for the EX- 350X drive when it arrives in the summer of 2026. And I actually look forward to seeing these on the roads. I I can’t wait to see the EX-3 in real life and see if it actually because usually what happens when you see the pictures like this promo videos, you know, media, picture, photos, 90% of the time when I see the car in real life, it looks better, way better than it does in photos. I hope that is the case with both of these vehicles. I can’t wait to see them in real life. Pricing will start under $55,000 for the uh rearwheel drive only EX-3 which arrives a little later. Now, in the real world, you’re probably going to end up spending more than $60,000 anyway because you want to add some options to these vehicles. Of course, no pricing for the GLC yet. uh is supposed to launch late 2026. So, pricing should be out pretty soon. But, as I said, it’s probably going to be very, very similar to the BMW. Uh the BMW offers more range, faster charging speeds, and a design that this person who wrote this article personally prefer. Now, let’s jump into Photoshop here. They did cover all the spec in tech, but they missed the most important thing, the design. So, that is what we’re going to look at right now. Let’s jump in Photoshop here and have a look at both these designs. As I said, comparing this to the, for example, uh the EIX, the BMW EX, compare this to the EX-3. This looks so much better in design with this new Noya classic design. And specifically, I decided specifically to choose in in black here, even though that means that we’re going to cover up some of the details that we can’t really see. And that is the entire point of having it in black because I want to cover up these lower sections down here because I think when you look at the lower section of the EX-3, it has still has these very strange details in the lower section for the BMW. Even though the front end, the the top half looks pretty clean to me. We have this very thin 2002 BMW inspired kidneys right here that I personally wanted to extend. I showed you that in the uh video we made on the EX-3 and how I think that would look a little better just to extend the width of these by just a couple of inches to have more of a wider nostrils in in the front end. But other than that, very very clean design from BMW in the front end with the new noise cluster design. The Mercedes here still a good-looking design overall. The only thing that we talked about is this grill. It just sticks up way too low down here. And also, why is this the only feature that has all these LEDs, the chrome outline, the the bars in the middle here, the black bars, and then we have a black empty space in the lower section. This black space right here makes it feel even more that they extended it too far. It’s unnecessary because this is I guess it houses something. I’m not sure because the license plate sits sits right over it, but it feels like this is an unnecessary uh uh length or height for this. This piece down here could have been uh cut off. So, we have the grill ending in this area because this is the black area in the lower section. It doesn’t seem to have a function. Then, we have the typical Mercedes intake styling for the sides, which I think still looks good. They don’t necessarily need to change this up anytime soon because it still has a very modern look to it. The GLC headlights for 2026 looks to be exactly the same outline as the 2025 model year, which is not bad because they look very beautiful. Even though this head this star pattern that we have in the middle right there, does not feel like it suits the vehicle overall because it doesn’t have a connection to the outline of the of the GLC. That is something we talked about in the dedicated GLC video as well. Overall, both of these definitely a step forward. I mean, compare the GLC to the EQ with this mask design that we used to have, black framing for it and bubble design. This one looks so much better than that. And this one also looks 100 times better than the EX. Now, look at the side view. Definitely my favorite views for both of these vehicles because the GLC, for example, looks almost identical to the old GLC. Even though we do have a longer wheelbase, this EV uh EV proportions with the wheelbase, but we still have a nice line flow. We have a muscle over the rear axle. We have a hood that actually looks like it could house an internal combustion engine underneath there. We don’t have the A-pillar going down all the way to this point like we used to have in the in the old EQ vehicles looking like a proper bubble on wheels with no defined shape to it. The EQS SUV for example, the wheels look great as well. And look at this. Both of these vehicles now offer a lot of wheel choices in silver. Great to see it. Love to see the black wheels slowly fading away. at least given us some options to have silver wheels coming back because personally I I’ve always thought that it looks classier to have uh you know silver or or bronze or maybe gunmetal wheels and on top of that it also feels like we can appreciate the spoke design like I talked about so many times before when we actually can see what the spoke design looks like and not just a black hole in the in the in the wheel arch itself. Now look at the BMW. I mean check this out. These proportions honestly look really good. They look great in my opinion. It does not look like an Eevee. First of all, what I mean by that is usually this rear axle is sticking out way in this area right here and having the wheel all the way out there. This looks great. We have a Hoffmeister kink as BMW calls it themselves for this. Even though it’s a little bit stretched out, doesn’t look like a traditional Hoffmeister kink. And look at the statliness in the front end with this peak. this corner right here being the farthest point in the top half of the graphics in the front end. And we have a properly designed hood as well. If we draw down the A-pillar, goes down right in front of the um rear axle center point exactly like we want to see on an SUV proportions. If it was a coupe, we want to have it go down into the center point singles for the sedans as well. We also have a uh muscle over the rear axle. Nice to see it. We have a line right here that does not really have a connection to. You can’t really see it here, but it is a line in the bodywork right here that I wish had a connection to maybe a defined bumper in the rear. Something like this would have been nice to see to have a line flow going through there. But it’s okay because it’s still so much better than the EX, which is to me, I mean, I’m sorry to say it, but the I to me is BMW’s worst design of all time. That’s just my opinion. And uh I I didn’t know how they would come back from that. But we see it now with the Noya cluster. They said we need to step up our game here. And they definitely did that with these proportions of the EX-3. This looks great. I mean the wheels they do a lot. You need big wheels for this to make the proportions look right. And these are the wheels that I would personally go with as well. Now look at the rear end design. Both of these looks pretty decent in the rear. To be honest, this I feel like the EX-3 is the car that is going to grow on me the most between the GLC and the EX-3, especially in black. I I I think I I I would probably go with black for the EX-3 with these wheels or maybe some aftermarket wheels uh that doesn’t have this cover up of the spokes right here. Uh this little um Frisbee that we have inside of the wheel arch in the wheel itself. We have this muscle. You can see it here. Beautiful muscle right here. We also have some beefiness in the front end as well. The only thing that I would like to change here is, by the way, we have these uh industrial looking features right here, creases in the hood that then comes back in the rear. Almost exactly the same styling like we have in the front and just a little bit squished. What I would like to change here is just cut the uh the tail lights in this area. So, I want to have this be black and then have the the the uh tail lights be a little bit smaller in in in width than what we have right here. they stick too far, too long into the middle. But that’s just a small little detail that is not really a big deal. The lower section looks pretty decent as well. Even though we have now this these features sticking up in typical BMW fashion, they need to add some weirdness still in the in the design both in the front of course and in the rear. Looking at the Mercedes, very clean design. Uh not so sure about these parallel lines here. What I did in the redesign was to just add an indent like this to follow the outline of the the the tail light unit that goes inside that goes on inside of the tail light unit. And they also of course need to add this feature on every single vehicle, which is a shame because you can see this line, we talked about this again in the GLC video, how this line, if this piece was not here, it would have a nice connection to this line in the bumper line. But now we have this sitting right in the middle like blocking these connections off. So this line does can’t reach its friend over here uh because of this blockage that we have with this unnecessary fake I assume out uh you know air vent in in the in the bumper itself. The lower section very dynamic looking design very organic and and rounded. I love to see it. And we have a nice looking gloss black diffuser at the lower section as well. Now, last but not least, the interiors here. This is where uh where it really made it hard for me because honestly, if I were to pick one of these based on the exterior design, it’s going to be the BMW. I just really like what BMW did with the iX3 with this Noya cluster design. I can’t wait to see what the new 5 series 3 series, the entire lineup is going to look with the new Noa class. They’re also updating the 7 series, which looks to be less of Noya Classic design for that one, but it’s still an update. But here, I definitely prefer the the Mercedes for the interior because this looks so cold and so clinical, the EX-3 interior, but at the same time, I mean, this is a gorgeous interior. Even though I do not prefer these two screens, the integration of it, the vent design, the build quality just feels like they put a lot more effort into the uh into the Mercedes compared to the BMW, and it feels like a much more welcoming interior. But this makes me think that if I were to buy the the car based on the interior, I would go for the Mercedes. But overall, the entire package for the vehicle, in my opinion, I would still go for a black BMW EX-3. Let me know again which one you would pick and why down in the comments below.
2026 BMW iX3 vs 2026 Mercedes GLC – Which do I buy and why?
Article – https://insideevs.com/features/771846/bmw-ix3-vs-mercedes-glc/
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