GermanyThe first series-production BMW i3 came off the line in Munich this month. For the plant, that matters more than for the car. Munich has built combustion engines and combustion cars since the 1920s, and from 2027 it will assemble nothing but electric vehicles.
Getting there cost about 650 million euros (roughly $760 million) in conversion work, threaded through a factory hemmed in by the city on all sides that never stopped producing while the rebuild went on. BMW says the i3 changeover cuts overall production costs at the site by a further 10 per cent.
The car itself is the second Neue Klasse model, after the iX3. Production opens with one version, the i3 50 xDrive: two motors and all-wheel drive, 463 hp (469 PS) and 645 Nm, a 108.7 kWh battery, and up to 906 km of WLTP range on the launch specification. It runs an 800-volt system that peaks at 400 kW on DC, enough for 423 km of WLTP range in ten minutes. Zero to 100 km/h takes 4.7 seconds.
Order books opened in mid-June, earlier than BMW had planned. The company says i3 demand has run ahead of the iX3, which collected more than 50,000 orders in its first few months, though it has not published an i3 order count to put next to that number. First European deliveries are due in the autumn.
The BMW i3 revives a familiar nameplate for an all-new Neue Klasse electric sedan built on BMW's second EV-specific platform. The i3 50 xDrive makes 463 hp with an 800V architecture, up to 912 km of WLTP range, and 400 kW DC charging. Order books opened in Germany from EUR 65,900; deliveries start in fall 2026, with a stretched-wheelbase version for China following later.
