BMW’s Board Puts The Four-Motor Electric M3 Through Its Final Test In New Video: “How Cool Is That?”

BMW M has released the seventh episode of its BMW M Electrified series, and it puts the near-production electric BMW M3 (ZA0) in front of Chief Development Officer Joachim Post and his division heads at BMW’s Miramas proving ground in France. According to BMW M, the car’s high-performance electric drive has been in development for more than eight years.

Judging by the reactions, it passed. BMW M CEO Frank van Meel summed up his drive with “How cool is that?” and said the only reminder of the electric powertrain is how much faster the car goes through corners. Post said the M3 kept finding more grip just when he thought he’d hit the limit, and called it the answer to years of internal debate about how an electric M car should work.

That’s BMW’s verdict on its own car. We’ll form ours soon: BMWBLOG will drive an electric M3 prototype shortly and report back on how much of the M3’s character survives the move to batteries.

Inside The Electric M3’s Final Exam At Miramas

Before the board drove it, every department involved in the car gathered at the Sachsenring for a last round of fine-tuning. That’s where Jörg Weidinger, the racing driver and M development engineer behind BMW’s Nürburgring record laps, drove it for the first time and came away impressed. By then, prototypes had already run on frozen lakes above the Arctic Circle, in BMW’s wind tunnel at up to 300 km/h (186 mph) and for around 8,000 km (4,971 miles) on the Nordschleife.

Miramas is where BMW has run its toughest tests for 40 years, with up to 4,000 prototypes a year on as much as 65 km (40 miles) of track, and the board’s drives there decide what happens next for each project.

What Do We Know About The Electric M3’s Specs So Far?

BMW hasn’t published horsepower, torque, weight or acceleration figures. Here’s what it has confirmed:

• Four electric motors, one per wheel, in two drive units with a gearbox for each wheel. BMW calls them the most powerful drive units M has ever used.
• A front axle that fully decouples for rear-wheel drive.
• A battery with more than 100 kWh of usable energy, using a performance-focused version of BMW’s Gen6 cylindrical cell. The housing is a structural part of the car.
• The Neue Klasse 800-volt architecture, with faster charging than the regular Gen6 pack. The regular iX3 already charges at up to 400 kW.
• A “Heart of Joy” dynamics computer that controls torque at each wheel, plus simulated gearshifts and an M-specific soundscape.

Output is the big unknown. We still believe BMW won’t deliver 1,000 horsepower since that will compromise the balance and driving dynamics. As we reported before, we expect the power in the  800-900 hp range. Yet, that range would make it the most powerful production M car ever, ahead of the 738-hp XM Label Red.

When Does The Electric BMW M3 Arrive?

BMW says Plant Munich will build the first fully electric M3 starting in 2027, and we previously reported that production starts in March. The car drops the “i” and is simply called M3. A gas-powered M3 (G84) with an inline-six follows in 2028, so the badge won’t go fully electric. BMW hasn’t announced a premiere date or pricing.