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By the time the 2026 BMW iX3 had its US debut in Manhattan on September 21, it had already been shown twice in Europe, including at Munich IAA Mobility. Europeans will get first dibs on this tech-oriented electric crossover SUV a few months before it goes on sale in America next summer.
The iX3 is the first of BMW’s digitally enhanced “Neue Klasse” family, which the company says will grow to as many as 40 new or refreshed vehicles across powertrains globally in two years.
The iX3 will initially be sold only as an approximately $60,000 dual-motor 50 xDrive model with a 108-kilowatt-hour battery (under the floor) yielding 400-mile range, but Nicholas Gerstner, a BMW product manager for the Neue Klasse, said that single-motor versions are in the pipeline for 2027. An iX3 variant will be produced for (and in) China.
Driving impressions will come later, but BMW said the AWD version of the car will have 463 combined horsepower and an estimated zero to 60 mph time of 4.7 seconds.
The US unveiling brought out Sebastian Mackensen, president and CEO of BMW North America, and Dr. Joachim Post, global chief technology officer, with both of them being interviewed by former New York Times columnist and current CBS News Sunday Morning correspondent David Pogue—who called himself an “EV nerd.”
For the event, BMW stationed a spiffy bright green 1975 2002 on 11th Street, commemorating the date 50 years ago when the company officially launched BMW of North America (after years of distribution by the importer Max Hoffman). Television crews interviewed Mackensen standing in front of the car.
“You could have chosen to attend Oktoberfest in Munich, but instead you are with us here to be the first people to see the iX3 in North America,” Mackensen told the crowd. “We are proud and excited to introduce the car.”
Post said the iX3 can charge at 400 kilowatts and add 175 miles of range in 10 minutes at an 800-volt DC station. Although one of the pre-production cars in New York sported a J1772 port, the production car will get a standard Tesla-derived NACS (with an adapter for CCS). Post described the iX3 as a software-defined vehicle with four computers that will “bring all the information you need directly in front of your eyes.” BMW calls the user interface debuting on the iX3 Panoramic iDrive, and it includes the ability to project head-up information in the driver’s line of sight across the full width of the windshield, complementing the 17.9-inch central display.
The 2026 iX3 will also feature "Attentive Light," which automatically turns on the cabin reading lights when a driver or passenger gropes for something in the dark.
A driver-facing camera tracks eye movements and lets the operator know if signs of drowsiness are present. The so-called “Attentive Light” can turn on reading illumination when front-seat occupants grope for something in the darkened cabin. The driver can also initiate automated lane changes with his or her eyes at speeds over 40 mph by looking at the appropriate rear-view mirror.
Surround-view cameras are there to record the passing scene, producing video that can be played back on the infotainment screen in 40-second snippets. If a collision occurs, photographs are automatically taken to record the event.
BMW describes the car’s hands-off self-driving system as Level Two Plus. There’s plenty of technology aboard, and some of it was developed with collaborators. In a pre-debut call, Ignacio Contreras, vice president of product marketing at Qualcomm, told Autoweek that Snapdragon Ride Pilot was a joint project with BMW involving 1,400 technicians on three continents, and making its debut on the iX3. It’s versatile. “It can be one camera, or up to seven cameras, plus five radars, and for both highway and urban driving, and it’s designed to be continuously updated,” Contreras said. The system will be offered to other automakers.
The iX3’s cabin is spacious, with a tall roof that gives back-seat passengers plenty of headroom. Legroom is also fine front and rear.
BMW is emphasizing sustainability on the iX3, including a carbon dioxide-reducing roof that uses natural flax fiber developed with Swiss supplier Bcamp. Some 30 percent of the secondary raw material in the engine compartment cover and front storage is recycled maritime plastic from fishing nets and ropes.
Meanwhile, BMW is still bullish on fuel-cell vehicles. At the iX3 debut, Michael Rath, vice president of hydrogen vehicles at BMW, told Autoweekthat the company will debut the iX5 Hydrogen (a variant of the X5 SUV with Neue Klasse tech inside) in 2028, with the markets offering it as-yet undetermined, depending on available infrastructure. This will be BMW’s first series-production hydrogen car. Germany now has 60 hydrogen stations, Rath said. The U.S. had 54 retail outlets for hydrogen in 2024, the Department of Energy said, almost all of them in California.
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