Next to BMW AG’s headquarters in the heart of Munich, a museum and glass-walled exhibition center showcase classics including the 507 convertible that Elvis Presley drove during his US Army tour in western Germany. Originally painted white, the king of rock and roll had the roadster resprayed red after his female fans kept writing on it with lipstick.
There’s been another BMW parked on the campus lately, hidden from view behind sets of secure doors. This one’s covered in camouflage, because the future of the company is riding on it.
The sport utility vehicle, called the iX3, will be the first of 40 new or updated models that share slick software, high-performance computers and radically different design cues. Crucially, for an industry that’s been turned on its head by fast-moving Chinese manufacturers leaving even Tesla Inc. in the dust, BMW is staging a swift rollout. Within roughly two years of customers starting to take delivery of the first iX3s, technology within this new EV will be in all of the company’s vehicles.
“We’re 109 years old, and it’s by far the biggest single investment into one architecture we’ve ever done,” Chief Executive Officer Oliver Zipse told Bloomberg in an interview.
There are more than a few spanners in the works for the global car sector at the moment. US President Donald Trump’s tariffs are forcing companies to rethink supply routes for both components and finished vehicles. China’s BYD Co. and Xiaomi Corp. are taking the world’s largest market by storm with desirable features and affordable prices. The transition to EVs is in flux virtually everywhere.
Despite all the tumult that’s prompted other players in this notoriously risk-averse business to batten down the hatches, BMW is proceeding with its break-glass procedure. Zipse has tagged the upcoming lineup with the same moniker assigned to sedans and coupes that ensured BMW’s solvency and established its identity in the 1960s: Neue Klasse, or new class.
Early reviews suggest the new models deserve the designation.
“The product convinces,” Bernstein’s Stephen Reitman wrote in a report recapping the company’s recent capital markets day. “Our characterization of BMW as the Wayne Gretzky of the auto industry, skating to where the puck is going to be, not to where it’s been, has not changed.”
New Benchmark
Zipse, a BMW lifer, took over as CEO in 2019, just as Tesla was beginning to navigate its way out of what Elon Musk described as production hell. When Bloomberg asked 5,000 early Model 3 owners that year what cars used to be in their driveway, the survey found an alarming number of BMW deserters.
Around that time, US consumers who had $50,000 or so to spend on a fully electric luxury vehicle had two choices: Tesla’s new Model 3, or the BMW i3. Even ardent BMW enthusiasts acknowledged it wasn’t a particularly close call — Tesla’s sedan was the larger, longer-range, faster-charging option.
The same won’t be said for the iX3 that BMW will produce in Debrecen, Hungary. The company has said…
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