Yahoo Autos The M3 Will Use the Inline-Six for Years to Come, BMW Exec Says
You're not mistaken: there is an electric BMW M3 coming in the not-so-distant future. We reported on it earlier this year, but the boss of BMW's M division, Frank van Meel, let it slip that the era of inline six-cylinder power is here to stay.
"We’ll let the six-cylinder combustion run for as long as possible," van Meel said in the video by Bimmer Today, which we've translated from German to English through the magic of Google. "If customer demand is what it is at the moment, and it doesn’t drop off, we won’t turn off the six-cylinder either."
BMW's next-generation M3 will continue to be powered by the twin-turbo 3.0-liter inline-six known as the S58, according to the report from Bimmer Today. In the interview, van Meel says that the current internal combustion mill is in the process of being updated to meet Euro 7 emissions regulations, enabling the potent internal-combustion heart of many M models to stick around a while longer.
By inference, this suggests we'll likely see a gasoline-powered M3 alongside the incoming electric M3. Trademark filings from earlier this year revealed that BMW may call its new electric sports sedan like iM3, but BMW has since said it plans to drop its current "i"-based electric nomenclature. Built on a Neue Klasse platform, the electric M3 will likely be significantly different from both chassis and drivetrain perspectives, given shoppers two very different choices.
"If customers say, 'Even though an M3 is significantly faster electrically than the combustion engine that is the benchmark today, I still want a combustion engine,' then we will not withhold this offer from them," van Meel said in the Bimmer Today interview.
Beyond the confirmation of the gasoline-powered engine, we don't know much about the next generation of gas-powered M3. Reporting from BMW Blog alleges that the future of BMW's gas-powered M3 has been uncertain; initial plans were reportedly to launch an EV-only version of the sedan for the coming generation, but that plan has allegedly been changed to add the new ICE version — and that one should, reportedly, even retain its manual transmission.
That said, these next-generation M3s won't reach the streets anytime soon. The current G20-generation 3 Series debuted in 2018 and received a facelift in 2022, suggesting a next-gen model isn't likely to arrive until 2026 at the earliest — and a new M3 would likely come a year or two after that. And while the first Neue Klasse cars are expected to enter production in 2025, it will presumably be at least another year before a performance version arrives.
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