When you’re amongst these Final Driving Machine aficionados who disliked the BMW i3, you will be glad to know the automaker will keep away from a polarizing design with its successor. BMW improvement boss Frank Weber informed German outlet Automobilwoche in an unique interview (through Automotive Information Europe) that the i3 alternative will likely be extra typical than its predecessor.
“Lots of people favored it, however within the eyes of others the i3 was not an actual BMW. A little bit of an outsider within the classroom if you’ll. We won’t repeat that on this type,” Weber informed the publication.
What is maybe extra fascinating to level out right here is that the BMW i3 may have a direct successor, one thing the automaker had not made public till now. When BMW introduced that manufacturing of the i3 would finish in 2022, it stated that the compact EV could be succeeded in some markets by the iX1 crossover.
Nevertheless, the iX1 is bigger and has fully completely different styling, which makes it, at greatest, an oblique and short-term successor to the i3. (Additionally it is not offered in North America.) The excellent news is a direct successor is coming.
“BMW positively must convey to market an inexpensive, compact automotive,” Weber stated. “We connect nice significance to providing clients the absolute best entry to the BMW model. That’s the reason we’re pondering very fastidiously about how an entry providing may be a part of the Neue Klasse household.”
The EV market is in a really completely different place now than when the i3 first arrived. When it launched in 2013, the marketplace for all-electric automobiles was in its very early days. The Nissan Leaf had been on sale as a mass-market EV pioneer for nearly three years, and the Tesla Mannequin S for a couple of yr.
BMW wished its first mass-produced battery-electric automobile to face out from its vary of conventional inner combustion engine sedans and SUVs, which is why it went for a polarizing design for the i3 boxy hatchback. However the city compact EV was so completely different from the model’s modern sedans that it drew a whole lot of criticism from BMW loyalists.
That stated, it is also value mentioning that the BMW i3 developed one thing of a cult following, drawing many first-time BMW consumers who appreciated the quirky EV and its sustainable strategy to manufacturing.
However that is additionally the primary time we hear that the brand new EV-focused Neue Klasse structure may underpin a small EV. BMW’s future EVs based mostly on the Neue Klasse platform will provide longer driving ranges and sooner charging occasions whereas decreasing battery prices by 50 %, in addition to new software program features.
BMW will begin manufacturing of its first Neue Klasse EVs at its new manufacturing unit in Debrecen, Hungary in 2025, after which in Munich that very same yr. The platform will initially underpin a midsize sedan related in dimension to the three Sequence and a midsize SUV that may change the iX3.
The Neue Klasse will add 4 extra automobiles inside two years. “You’ll be able to simply think about that rather a lot may be created from the center downward to smaller automobiles in addition to upward to bigger automobiles,” Weber stated within the interview above.
BMW stopped making the i3 final yr after promoting greater than 250,000 models throughout 9 years of manufacturing, making it one of the crucial profitable electrical vehicles of all time.
