BMW M3 EV confirmed

The man responsible for signing off all production models from BMW has stated “…the next M3 will be battery-electric, fully battery-electric.”

During a roundtable interview with automotive media at the global launch of the BMW i5 in Portugal this week, BMW product development chief Frank Weber confirmed the German brand’s most famous and most important high-performance vehicle, the BMW M3, would be all-electric by around 2027.

His comments follow remarks made by BMW M chief executive Frank Van Meel during a recent trip to Australia, when he outlined the potential for a megaWatt (1000kW) sports sedan based on the company’s next-gen Neue Klasse platform, which is expected to underpin the next BMW 3 Series range from around 2025.

The Neue Klasse “…was designed for four independently operating electric machines [motors] up to one megaWatt,” confirmed Weber.

“And then you have some settings where you can go deeper into something that is more and more rear-wheel drive biassed with the control possibilities that you have with electric machines. You can go crazy,” he explained with enthusiasm.

BMW has already indicated its intent to unleash a quad-motor drivetrain with its i4-based prototype EV, and while Weber was careful not to confirm the first-ever M3 EV would definitely deliver a 1000kW sucker punch, which would blow its four-cylinder plug-in hybrid Mercedes-AMG C 63 arch-rival out of the water, it seems almost certain that BMW intends to take its next range of M cars to the next level with EV power.

“We want to come with something where we show Neue Klasse is already very ambitious. But this is doing something far above what people are used to today. This will come with M3 and will not be too far away from the initial launch of the Neue Klass as a product line,” he said.

The first model based on the Neue Klasse platform architecture is set to be the 2025 BMW 3 Series and Weber said he expected to see the all-electric M3 arrive not long after, putting its arrival at around 2027.

“And we said we want to have it early and close to the SOP [start of production] of the core [Neue Klasse] model because exactly as you mean, people want to have what M can do best also in the battery-electric world.

“We clearly see this from consumers,” he explained.

Weber insisted that that M customers “…want simply the highest and best performance you can get, and the moment you will get into a car that is almost megaWatt in performance and you can control every individual wheel, I can guarantee to you there might be something wrong with the engine sound if they still miss this, but definitely not how the car behaves. It’s incredible,” declared BMW’s development boss.

Despite his eagerness and excitement around a quad-motor M car, Weber said petrol-powered vehicles would still play a big role in the German brand’s future and that goes for the BMW M3.

So customers who want the sound, involvement and soul of a combustion engine will still be able to get just that. Rather than replace the petrol-powered M3, the first electric M3 would augment the traditional M3 model range.

At present, the BMW M3 CS packs the biggest wallop from its 405kW/650Nm S58 3.0-litre six-cylinder turbo-petrol engine (codenamed S58) and Weber confirmed both fully-electric and ICE versions of the BMW M3 will share the limelight.

“It’s a nice engine, we will certainly make this Euro 7-capable and other things, so it’s going to happen. We will not have two different classes – there will be co-existence of the solutions in the market, which is necessary,” Weber said.

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