In case 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 growth boss Frank Weber advised German outlet Automobilwoche in an unique interview (by way of Automotive Information Europe) that the i3 substitute can be extra standard 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 is not going to repeat that on this kind,” Weber advised the publication.
What is probably extra attention-grabbing 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 can be succeeded in some markets by the iX1 crossover.
Nevertheless, the iX1 is bigger and has fully totally different styling, which makes it, at greatest, an oblique and momentary successor to the i3. (It is usually not offered in North America.) The excellent news is a direct successor is coming.
“BMW undoubtedly must carry to market an inexpensive, compact automobile,” Weber stated. “We connect nice significance to providing clients the very best entry to the BMW model. That’s the reason we’re considering very rigorously about how an entry providing might be a part of the Neue Klasse household.”
The EV market is in a really totally different place now than when the i3 first arrived. When it launched in 2013, the marketplace for all-electric autos 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 multiple 12 months.
BMW wished its first mass-produced battery-electric car 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 totally different from the model’s smooth sedans that it drew quite a 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 supply longer driving ranges and quicker charging instances whereas lowering 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 facility in Debrecen, Hungary in 2025, after which in Munich that very same 12 months. The platform will initially underpin a midsize sedan related in dimension to the three Collection and a midsize SUV that can change the iX3.
The Neue Klasse will add 4 extra autos inside two years. “You’ll be able to simply think about that lots might be created from the center downward to smaller autos in addition to upward to bigger autos,” Weber stated within the interview above.
BMW stopped making the i3 final 12 months after promoting greater than 250,000 items throughout 9 years of manufacturing, making it one of the vital profitable electrical automobiles of all time.