BMW has poured over €10 billion into Neue Klasse to develop a broad range of electric vehicles. But investing in the future isn’t just about spending vast sums on products. It’s also about investing in people. To support the technicians of tomorrow, the luxury automaker is donating one of its high-end EVs to a vocational school.
It’s not the new iX3 that leads Neue Klasse’s return, but rather an existing electric SUV from a class above. This iX is an xDrive40, so yes, the pre-facelift version. When the Life Cycle Impulse debuted at the beginning of the year, the base model was replaced by the xDrive45.
Valued at around €91,000, the donated EV will benefit the vocational school in Nabburg, part of the Oskar-von-Miller Schwandorf I vocational school center. Representatives from the Regensburg and Wackersdorf factories attended the handover ceremony, joined by officials from the Lell car dealership.
Assembled at the Dingolfing plant, this iX xDrive40 will be used to train future automotive mechatronics technicians. Teachers at the vocational school will dissect the electric SUV to give students hands-on experience with the iX’s complex innards. BMW ended production of this pre-facelift model a few months ago to make room for the heavily updated version.
The iX is believed to be a one-and-done affair, with no second generation in the works. Sources close to Munich claim production will end in mid-2028, by which time its indirect successor will already have been on sale for nearly two years. Based on the next-generation X5 (G65), the iX5 is expected to enter series production in August 2026.
An iX7 (G67) will reportedly follow about a year later, further rendering the current iX redundant. However, nothing is official until BMW confirms it. For now, the company’s largest electric SUV remains on sale, though it won’t adopt the Neue Klasse design language introduced by the new iX3.
Source: BMW
