The BMW i3 Neue Klasse Finally Feels Like a Real BMW, and Here’s What’s Under the Skin

BMW’s electric cars have struggled to feel like real BMWs for years. The i4 was competent, and the iX was competent, but neither one ever quite escaped the sense of being engineered to satisfy a spreadsheet rather than a driver. The Neue Klasse platform is changing that story. The iX3 arrived first and proved the new architecture actually works, and the i3 sedan, which just entered production, carries that same DNA straight into BMW’s most important model line, the 3 Series. Neither car is a combustion vehicle with a battery bolted underneath, and both are ground up electric BMWs, which is exactly why the engineering behind them explains how differently they drive compared to everything the brand has offered before. Here’s where the i3 specifically is built, who actually makes its battery, what powers its wheels, and how the software ties all of it together.

Specification	BMW i3 50 xDrive	BMW iX3 50 xDrive
Body style	Sedan	SUV
Architecture	800V	800V
Motors	2, front and rear axle	2, front and rear axle
Combined output	345 kW (469 hp) / 645 Nm	345 kW (469 hp) / 645 Nm
Battery	108.7 kWh net	108.7 kWh net
WLTP range	up to 912 km (567 miles)	up to 805 km (500 miles)
Max DC charging	400 kW	400 kW

Size, weight and how much you can actually fit in

Before getting into what’s under the skin, it’s worth knowing what you’re actually looking at.

Specification	BMW i3 50 xDrive
Length / Width / Height	4,760 / 1,865 / 1,480 mm
Wheelbase	2,897 mm
Weight (First Edition)	2,205 kg
Boot	420 litres
Frunk	31 litres
Drag coefficient	0.21

That wheelbase is close to identical to the one on its iX3 sibling, since both share the same Neue Klasse floor. In First Edition specification the car weighs 80 kg less than the iX3 50 xDrive despite using the exact same battery pack, largely thanks to the sedan’s smaller body and that notably slippery drag coefficient. Boot space comes to 420 litres, a full 100 litres less than the SUV, and the smaller front end means the frunk shrinks to 31 litres too.

The i3 is built in Munich

The i3 is assembled at BMW Group Plant Munich, the same site where the company has built cars for over a century and where the very first 3 Series rolled off the line. BMW confirmed series production started there on 6 August, with high demand pushing a steeper than usual ramp up curve. From 2027, Plant Munich will build electric vehicles exclusively, and the i3 is the car leading that transition. BMW says the changeover has already cut production costs at the site by 10 percent on top of previous savings, largely thanks to the Neue Klasse architecture requiring fewer manufacturing steps than a shared ICE and EV line. The i3 Touring wagon version will follow from the same plant, expected in the second half of 2027.

The battery: assembled in Bavaria, but the cells come from China

This is where the story gets more interesting than most people expect.

Specification	BMW i3 50 xDrive
Cell format	Cylindrical, 46mm diameter
Cell chemistry	High nickel, low cobalt NMC
Cell suppliers	EVE Energy (primary), CATL
Pack assembly	BMW Plant Irlbach Straßkirchen, Bavaria
Battery capacity (usable)	108.7 kWh
Battery capacity (gross)	Not officially disclosed, estimated 112 to 116 kWh
AC charging	11 kW standard, 22 kW optional
DC charging	up to 400 kW
WLTP range (First Edition)	up to 906 km (563 miles)
WLTP range (standard, autumn 2026)	up to 912 km (567 miles)

The high voltage battery packs going into the i3 are assembled at a brand new BMW facility in Irlbach Straßkirchen, about 90 minutes from Munich, using what BMW calls a zero defect production approach. But the pack itself is not the same thing as the cells inside it, and the cells are where BMW made its biggest strategic shift. The sixth generation Neue Klasse cells are large cylindrical cells, a first for BMW after decades of using prismatic and pouch formats, and the primary supplier is China’s EVE Energy, which replaced Samsung SDI after a 17 year partnership. CATL also supplies cells for the platform, and CATL alone already accounts for somewhere between 35 and 40 percent of all battery cells used by European carmakers, more than any other single supplier, according to the breakdown in my piece on the next generation battery race. The chemistry itself is a high nickel, low cobalt NMC formulation, with more silicon added to the anode, which is how BMW claims a 20 percent jump in energy density. If you want the fuller picture of why that chemistry choice matters, I covered it in my LFP vs NMC explainer.

BMW quotes 108.7 kWh of usable capacity for the European market, though it has never officially published a gross figure, and third party estimates for the total pack size range between 112 and 116 kWh depending on the source.

The i3 50 xDrive’s WLTP range is up to 912 km (567 miles), and for a rough sense of what that might look like day to day, I applied the same kind of adjustment real range trackers typically use, since WLTP figures generally overstate real driving range by somewhere around 12 to 18 percent for an aerodynamic saloon like this one, which would put a more realistic everyday range somewhere in the region of 760 to 800 km. To be absolutely clear, that is my own estimate, not an official BMW figure and not an independently road tested one, since no outlet has been able to put real world miles on a production i3 yet.

Two motors, built entirely in Austria

The i3 launches exclusively as the 50 xDrive, meaning two electric motors, one on each axle, producing that combined 345 kW (469 hp) and 645 Nm of torque. Unlike the battery cells, the motor stays entirely in house, and the Gen6 e-motor is built at BMW Group Plant Steyr in Austria, a facility BMW has used for combustion engine production since the 1970s and has now converted into one of its main electric drive hubs.

Specification	BMW i3 50 xDrive
Motor type	Electrically excited synchronous motor (EESM)
Motor count	2, front and rear axle
Combined output	345 kW (469 hp)
Combined torque	645 Nm
Production location	BMW Plant in Austria
Inverter	Silicon carbide, integrated into housing
Housing casting	BMW Plant Landshut

The motor itself uses an electrically excited synchronous design (EESM), meaning it works without permanent magnets and therefore without the rare earth materials most EV motors depend on. Rotor, stator, transmission and that silicon carbide inverter are all produced on the same modular lines in Steyr, with the aluminium housing cast at BMW’s Landshut foundry and shipped over for final assembly. That in house control over the motor is a big part of why the i3 drives differently from most rivals. Rather than buying a generic e-axle off the shelf and tuning software around it, BMW designed the motor, the inverter, and the software stack together, and that integration is exactly what lets the Heart of Joy driving dynamics system do its job properly.

The software: built in house, but on an open source foundation, and that distinction matters

BMW Operating System X is the platform running the show, and it’s built on the Android Open Source Project, or AOSP, rather than starting from a completely blank sheet. I want to be precise here because it’s easy to overstate this. BMW’s own statements are explicit that OS X is developed 100 percent in house, using AOSP only as the underlying open source foundation, the same way a huge share of the industry uses Linux as a base rather than writing a kernel from scratch. That is a meaningfully different situation from Volkswagen licensing Xpeng’s finished, proprietary XNGP driving stack, which I wrote about earlier in a separate piece.

BMW itself describes its approach as pick the best, where differentiating, brand defining software stays in house while some pieces get sourced externally. For the part European drivers will actually notice, BMW’s Intelligent Personal Assistant now runs on Amazon’s Alexa+ technology through the Alexa Custom Assistant, launched first on the iX3 in Germany and the US from the second half of this year, before rolling out to more markets and models. The customer facing layer, BMW Panoramic iDrive, sits on top of OS X, and underneath all of it are four dedicated computers BMW calls Superbrains, splitting driving dynamics, automated driving, infotainment, and basic vehicle functions into separate systems that can each be updated independently.

None of that means the industry’s real problem goes away, though, and here’s where I’ll add my own take: picking the best pieces from outside partners doesn’t fix the underlying gap, because that gap isn’t really about which pieces you buy versus build yourself, it’s about how many good developers you actually employ. McKinsey looked at this across the whole European car industry and found something pretty stark: new entrant automakers put 43 percent of their engineers on software, while European legacy brands only manage 16 percent, and most European brands are still sitting at what the consultancy Roland Berger calls SDV maturity Level 2, while Tesla and the big Chinese brands are already working closer to Level 3 or 4. Volkswagen’s CARIAD mess is the cautionary example everyone brings up, and fair enough, it really was a disaster, but BMW’s pick the best approach is a smarter hedge than what Volkswagen tried, not proof that the underlying pressure has disappeared. My view is that BMW and the rest of the German industry still need to keep hiring and growing real in house software teams, rather than treating AOSP as some kind of shortcut that solves the problem on its own, because the moment differentiation shifts away from the operating system layer and into the AI assistant and driving intelligence layer, that’s exactly where a thin in house team gets caught out.

The platform is the real headline, not any single part

If there’s one thing worth adding beyond what you asked for, it’s this, because none of the above would matter on its own: the reason the i3 finally feels like a proper BMW is that Neue Klasse was designed as a dedicated EV platform from the first sketch, not adapted from a combustion chassis the way the i4 was. The 800 volt architecture runs end to end, the weight sits low and centered thanks to the battery pack’s structural role in the chassis, and the motor, battery, and software were developed as one system rather than three separate departments handing parts to each other. That’s the actual difference between a car that happens to be electric and a car built to be electric, and it’s why BMW is betting the next models across its entire lineup on getting this platform right.

Whether all of that translates into the driving experience BMW is promising is something only real world testing will confirm, and it’s worth watching the early reviews closely once cars reach customers this autumn. For now, the engineering story alone makes the Neue Klasse platform, and the i3 built on it, the most credible attempt BMW has made at an electric car that doesn’t just carry the badge, but actually earns it.

FAQ

Who makes the battery cells in the BMW i3?
EVE Energy is the primary cell supplier for the BMW i3, having replaced Samsung SDI after a 17 year partnership, with CATL also supplying cylindrical cells for the same Neue Klasse platform.

• Cell chemistry: high nickel, low cobalt NMC
• Pack assembly location: BMW Plant Irlbach Straßkirchen, Bavaria
• Battery size: 108.7 kWh net

What software does the BMW i3 run?
The BMW i3 runs BMW Operating System X, developed in house on an Android Open Source Project (AOSP) foundation, with an Amazon Alexa+ powered AI assistant available in Germany from launch.

Featured Image Source: BMW