What hasn’t been said about the BMW iX so far? Ever since the new electric SUV from Munich came out, hundreds of reviews have come out, dissecting it in every conceivable way. And yet, none of them took the time to take a look back in BMW’s history. That’s important, because if you know where you came from, you’re in tune with your history. Simply ignoring your past won’t do you any favors and might actually work against you.

That’s what the review from The Fully Charged show seems to suggest, at least in the first part of the video. Taking a look at other trailblazers from BMW’s past brings forward a rather obvious and undeniable decision: none of them had such a controversial design and, of course, none was an SUV. Times change though and the shape the iX has makes a lot of financial and economic sense. SUVs are simply all the rage right now and BMW had no other choice.

That can be painfully obvious in the case of other cars too. It’s not a simple coincidence that the BMW XM, the first ever bespoke M product, is an SUV. The same reasoning went behind that decision as well. However, getting back to the iX at hand here, there’s a lot more to this car than just its looks. Of course, design will always be subjective, but the electric SUV also comes with a lot of tech, innovations and firsts for the Bavarian brand.

As the review points out, this makes the iX incredibly important, playing the part of a trendsetter, in the same way a BMW 7 Series used to in the past.  A lot of the technologies seen at play on it will make their way on smaller, cheaper cars in the future. There’s a lot more at stake here than a lot of people imagine. Click on the video below to learn all about it.