It sounds as formal as it can get without the car in front of us, but the next BMW M3 will go electric. In June, BMW boss Frank van Meel told the Australian outlet Driving“Of course, we’re trying to make (the next M3) happen with pure electricity.” In August, the same Van Mel talked about the idea of a battery-electric M3 to an Australian outlet Selling cars“If we can make an M model as a purely electric model, it obviously has to be better than the current model and it has to drive like an M so… I would say there’s no need to be afraid of the future even if we have an electric propulsion system,” he said. One month later, the same outlet reported that BMW production Frank Weber had been told, categorically, “…the next M3 will be battery electric, fully battery electric.”
The saving grace for many enthusiasts is that the internal combustion engine M3 will be sold alongside it. Selling cars Weber was also quoted as saying that the S58’s 3.0-liter straight-six engine in the current M3 will be updated to pass future emissions standards. “It’s a beautiful engine, we’ll definitely make this engine compatible with Euro 7 and other things, so it will happen,” he said. “We will not have two distinct segments – there will be a coexistence of (ICE and EV) solutions in the market, which is essential.”
So what should we expect? It’s impossible to know for sure, but the ceiling is high. Last year, BMW revealed it was testing a quad-motor powertrain (pictured) that produces a combined megawatt, the equivalent of 1,341 US horsepower. Talk about this prototype’s Selling cars Last year, Weber said: “This (M3) could also be a twin-engine chassis, it could be a four-engine chassis with four 250-kilowatt motors for up to one megawatt.” The Neue Klasse platform on which the M3 will be built has been designed with front-, rear- and all-wheel drive models in mind, and is ready to accept four engines for maximum output. What’s more, the Neue Klasse’s new Heart of Joy electronics architecture not only runs all the software and sensor-based elements from a single electronic control unit, Weber told the newspaper. The Straits Times The ECU will contain “all the powertrain and dynamic data we’ve collected over the last 20 years… you can’t buy anything like it off the shelf.” This encyclopedic ECU can have an incredible range of dynamic responses, and thanks to the individual ECU and wheel-specific motors, these responses can be translated into real-world handling up to ten times faster than a current system of multiple ECUs communicating with a single ECU. Single controller. last.
There’s a more authentic soundtrack coming too – something less heavy than the Hans Zimmer-sourced soundtrack that BMW has applied to its current electric car lineup.
To be clear, we’re not expecting a 1,000-hp electric M3. But Weber and Van Meel have repeatedly spoken of their desire to surprise everyone with their Neue Klasse products, and the latter hopes that “it will be so groundbreaking that you’ll say, ‘This is crazy, I didn’t see that coming.'” The first offerings will be the next-generation iX3 crossover and i3 sedan that are scheduled to debut in 2025. The M3 is expected to debut shortly after the start of production of the 3 Series, and will hit the market around 2027. BMW Blog Its sources cite an expected output of around 700 hp in the M3 EV.
