KLASSE OF 2025

Do not adjust your set: Vision Neue Klasse is no mere concept. It is the next 3 Series, vanguard of BMW's new electric generation and one of the most important cars in its entire history. The future starts here...

- Georg Kacher

THE GENES OF THE 3 SERIES COURSE THROUGH modern-day BMW as sure as blue blood through royal veins. Its best-selling model carries the DNA that defines the Munich brand, just like the Golf at Wolfsburg or the 911 at Stuttgart. So, when it comes to replacing the backbone of its range, it should come as no surprise that BMW are taking their responsibility as an arch innovator seriously.

The Vision Neue Klasse-yes, German for New Class-is the close-to-production concept car that peeps ahead to the next chapter. This is no generational evolution or modest life-cycle impulse, as BMW like to call their gentler facelifts. Make no mistake: what we are about to experience is change as violent as anything conceived under the watch of disruptive design maestro Chris Bangle in the early Noughties. Which is why the new show car looks like no other BMW and is equipped with hardware scarcely related to what has gone before.

Plenty of BMW loyalists have found recent cars visually challenging, but those big grilles look subdued next to the aesthetic anarchy unleashed by the Neue Klasse. CEO Oliver Zipse says the car you see here is 'near production-ready' and much of its wardrobe and technical innovation will appear in showrooms within two years. 'It is about nothing less than the future of the BMW brand, the BMW Group, and our portfolio,' he told investors.

The clues have been there for a while. Before Vision Neue Klasse, we saw i Vision Circular and i Vision Dee-three concept cars in only two years, with one overriding message: BMW are fully committed to an emission-free future. Pure electric vehicles (EV) are on target to make up 15 per cent of the group's sales this year and it is now preparing to ramp up that share, as combustion engine bans loom in key markets such as Europe, although engines will linger until the end of the decade.