BMW brings back the i3 as a funky four-door EV

BMW’s new class of EVs begins with the iX3 SUV, but you had to know it wouldn’t end there. The company’s engineers didn’t spend all that time working up a completely redesigned and substantially more efficient EV platform just for one crossover, and now it’s time for the second wave.

Meet the new i3, which takes the same basic motor, battery, and electronics package that powers the iX3, plus the Neue Klasse’s controversial styling cues, and applies it to a more familiar sedan shape, the sort of silhouette that BMW’s reputation was largely built upon.

It definitely looks a lot like the iX3, but with a slightly different intent. Sebastian Kroes, BMW’s head of interior design for the Neue Klasse cars, told me that the iX3 was designed with an “emphasis on verticality” to make it look taller. The i3, on the other hand, has an “emphasis on horizontality,” most directly seen in the series of lights that span virtually the sedan’s entire nose.