2027 BMW i3 Touring (NA1): The Neue Klasse Wagon, Its Lineup, and Everything We Know So Far

At the very end of the i3 sedan’s world premiere on March 18, former BMW CEO Oliver Zipse let a shadowy silhouette flash across the screen behind him. BMW had just confirmed that the 3 Series Touring isn’t going away, and that its first fully electric version is coming.

That car is the BMW i3 Touring, internally coded NA1. It’s the practical sibling to the NA0 sedan that just went on sale in Europe, and it’s shaping up to be the car a specific kind of buyer has been waiting years for: someone who wants the Neue Klasse’s range, charging speed, and software, but refuses to give up a wagon’s load floor to get it.

Coming in 2027

The i3 sedan enters series production in Munich this August, with European deliveries following this fall and the US getting its first cars in 2027. The Touring shares that production line, but BMW has only said it won’t start rolling off the line before the second half of 2027 “at the earliest.”

There’s a another story behind the timing, too. Munich is in the middle of converting into one of BMW’s first fully EV-dedicated plants, a transition that completes by the end of 2027. That’s also why a combustion 3 Series Touring (G51) won’t be built there, but rather in Dingolfing and maybe Mexico. The historic factory that’s spent decades building 3 Series wagons with engines under the hood is about to stop doing that entirely, and the i3 Touring is one of the cars taking its place.

Borrowing The Sedan’s Face, Keeping The Wagon’s Silhouette

Nobody outside Munich has seen a real i3 Touring yet, but the teaser BMW showed wasn’t vague enough to leave much guesswork. Rendering artists all converge on the same read: the Touring carries the sedan’s design wholesale up to the B-pillar, then finishes everything behind that as a proper long-roof wagon.

That means the same four-eye face, the same illuminated kidney treatment without a physical surround, and the same shark-nose front end. Where it diverges is the rear, and that’s the part actually worth caring about. The slim, full-width taillight graphic from the sedan carries over to the tailgate, but the roofline drops into the kind of near-vertical rear end every 3 Series Touring since the E30 has used, the better to load a stroller or a dog crate without folding yourself in half.

The Lineup: i3 30, i3 40, i3 50, and i3 M60

The Touring is expected to launch with the same trim structure BMW is building for the sedan, just spread across a wagon body:

• i3 30 — the entry point, almost certainly single-motor and rear-wheel drive with the smallest of the available battery packs.
• i3 40 — a step up in battery size and probably the version most buyers would want due to price.
• i3 50 — the volume model, and the one we actually have hard numbers for, because they come straight from the sedan. BMW’s i3 50 xDrive uses two motors producing 463 hp and 645 Nm of torque, a 108.7-kWh net battery, and 400 kW peak DC charging good for a 10-80% top-up in 21 minutes. The sedan is rated at 906 km WLTP in First Edition trim and 912 km in standard form. So expect similar ratings and figures for the touring model as well.
• i3 M60 xDrive — the performance flagship, rumored at around 630 hp, sitting at the top of the range as a preview of the electric M3 (ZA0) still to come. The sedan version is expected to enter production around March 2027, so the Touring’s M60 is realistically a 2027-or-later proposition either way.

None of this is officially priced yet. For reference, the sedan’s i3 50 xDrive starts at €65,900 in Germany once the First Edition launch run wraps up, undercutting the equivalent iX3 50 xDrive by nearly €9,000. Expect the Touring to land close to that figure plus whatever BMW’s usual wagon premium ends up being, though nobody outside Munich has confirmed a number yet.

BMW Already Proved It Won’t Shrink The Trunk

The most reassuring data point for anyone cross-shopping an estate doesn’t come from the i3 at all. It comes from the i5 Touring, which carries 570 liters of cargo space with the rear seats up and 1,700 liters folded, identical to the combustion-powered 5 Series Touring it shares a body with. BMW didn’t quietly trim the i5’s trunk to make room for batteries, and there’s no reason to expect a different approach here. The current 3 Series Touring (G21) holds 500 liters up and 1,510 liters folded, which is the realistic ballpark for the i3 Touring once it arrives. The sedan’s 420-liter trunk and tiny 31-liter frunk simply aren’t the relevant comparison for anyone actually cross-shopping a wagon.

Who Is The Buyer For The i3 Touring?

The i3 Touring exists for a buyer the sedan can’t fully serve: someone sold on Neue Klasse’s range and charging numbers but unwilling to trade away a flat load floor to get them. It’s also, by accident or design, the clearest signal yet that BMW isn’t ready to let the Touring nameplate die with the combustion engine, even as Munich shuts the door on building another gas-powered one. It’s also for people who love wagons because they’re simply cool.

[Renderings by @theottle]