BMW to release six BEVs by 2025

BMW is planning at least six model launches within 24 months for the ‘New Class’ electric cars from 2025. To this end, additional plants are to be converted for the production of these electric cars. More concrete information on the platform and the first models will be available in September.

Electric cars based on the new vehicle architecture, which BMW clearly describes as “BEV-only” in its current announcement, will be produced at the new plant in Debrecen, Hungary, from the second half of the year, and also at the main plant in Munich from 2026 and at the Mexican plant in San Luis Potosi from 2027. BMW plans to announce further production locations for the New Class shortly.

The New Class will start in the high-volume core of the BMW brand with a so-called ‘Sports Activity Vehicle’ and a sedan in the current 3 Series segment. In the first 24 months, production of at least four more models of the New Class is to start.

At the moment, BMW is not giving any further details about the New Class. So it remains with the known information that it is an 800-volt platform with 46X0 round cells and current-excited synchronous motors. In the announcement, BMW promises, among other things, a completely newly developed electrical system with a fundamentally new UX/UI concept as well as a newly developed drive and battery generation with a significant development in efficiency. At the IAA Mobility 2023 in Munich, BMW plans to present further steps and new details on the way to the New Class.

In 2025, there will be another innovation in the New Class models that does not have anything directly to do with e-mobility: The heads-up display across the entire width of the windscreen, which BMW showed in January in the CES study i Vision Dee, will then be available in the vehicles of the New Class under the name ‘BMW Panoramic Vision’.

The electric vehicle model launches this year will not yet be based on the purely electric New Class, however, but on the familiar multi-energy platforms. The i5, for example, is an electric sedan coming to the upper mid-size class, followed by an electric estate in spring 2024. The new 5 Series is also set to make it to market for the first time as an “all-electric BMW M Performance automobile”. This will take BMW one step further than the i4 M50, which is still internally a BMW model and not one of BMW M. The new iX1 will also be joined by an iX2.

“Substance is convincing — and this is where our models speak for themselves. That is why we are striving for further significant growth in fully-electric vehicles this year and expect them to account for 15% of our total sales,” says BMW CEO Oliver Zipse. By January 2023, BMW has already achieved a BEV share of those 15 per cent, according to the statement. “Proven strengths, future-oriented technologies and the NEUE KLASSE — that is our recipe for success in the coming years,” Zipse added. “With this combination, we are in the right position to be able to respond precisely to different developments in the various regions of the world”.

Although the Munich-based carmaker emphasises in the press release for the annual press conference that it expects “dynamic BEV growth in the coming years”, the Board of Management does not want to commit itself to battery-electric drives. BMW sees the hydrogen fuel cell as an additional drive option and the possibility for a potential series offering in the second half of the decade – “depending on market requirements and general conditions”, it says. BMW had put a demonstration fleet of the BMW iX5 Hydrogen on the road in February.

bmwgroup.com (annual press conference), bmwgroup.com (i5)