In early 2023, BMW announced plans to build electric cars at the San Luis Potosí plant in Mexico from 2027. At the time, the identity of the first model was not disclosed. However, the company did say it would be a member of the Neue Klasse family. This week, BMWBLOG attended a press event held at the factory where it was announced the electric SUV would lead the way.
Harald Gottsche, President and CEO of BMW Group Plant San Luis Potosí made the important disclosure. The electric crossover (its name has not been confirmed by BMW) will hit the assembly line about two years after it enters production in Debrecen. Initially, the model (which we believe is called iX3 with codename NA5) is going to be exclusively built at BMW’s new factory in Hungary. It’s unclear whether the EV will be sold in North America before production starts in Mexico.
BMW is spending about €800 million to integrate Neue Klasse production at its Mexican site. Some of the funds are going into a battery assembly facility that will have a maximum annual capacity of 140,000 packs. To make it all happen, it’s creating approximately 1,000 new jobs at the site where the 2 Series Coupe, M2, and the 3 Series Sedan currently roll off the line.
San Luis Potosí is not the only BMW factory in North America that will build electric vehicles. The Spartanburg plant will make six EVs by the end of the decade. Expect all of them to be SUVs. The company hasn’t specified whether these will sit on the Neue Klasse platform and/or the existing CLAR architecture. We believe the unannounced iX5, iX6, and iX7 models will share the underpinnings with the conventionally powered next-gen SUVs.
The iX3 will be the first of at least six Neue Klasse-based models coming by 2028. BMW has already announced the second car is going to be an i3 sedan assembled at the Munich plant in Germany in 2026. Unconfirmed yet but we strongly believe there will be an i3 wagon and an iX4 crossover-coupe. Logic tells us that the company’s Chinese arm is also cooking up at least one regional model. In fact, the BMW Designworks Shanghai Studio has been working on Neue Klasse EVs for about a year.
