BMW 3 Series EV announced for the Chinese market

31 March 2022

We got a spy shot of the new EV variant of the BMW 3 Series a couple of days ago and now we have the real thing. BMW announced the fist ever electric version of the 3 Series but it remains exclusive to the Chinese market. At least for now. We have a good reason to believe, however, that the presented design will be used for the ICE version as well.

The car is officially named i3 eDrive35L, but has little to do with the original BMW i3. The new sedan shares the drive system with its bigger siblings such as the BMW iX3, BMW i4 and the BMW iX. The manufacturer doesn't mention how many electric motors the new i3 uses but it's probably just one given the 281 hp (210 kW) peak output. This is enough for 0-100 km/h in 6.2 seconds.

CLTC (China Light-Duty Vehicle Test Cycle), which usually gives higher ratings compared to other standards, reports 526 km of autonomy. This means that WLTP endurance should be somewhat lower. The car uses a 66.1 kWh battery charging over a 95 kW DC that takes 35 minutes to charge from 10 to 80%.

Aside from some scarce info about the luggage volume (410 liters), BMW didn't reveal anything regarding the interior. There aren't even photos.

Finally, the press release explicitly says that the i3 eDrive35L is specifically designed for the Chinese market, as in some of the components have been fitted to comply with the available supply chain in the country and the suspension has been tuned for the Chinese road conditions. This could mean that if there's a global version of the car, it will be different in some aspects.

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