MINI and Rolls-Royce will bid adieu to the ol’ internal combustion engine by 2030 as both British brands part of the BMW Group have pledged to go completely electric at the end of this decade. It’s a different story with the core BMW marque as it expects only 50% of global sales to be represented by EVs in seven years’ time. To that end, there’s still plenty of time for at least one more wave of vehicles with ICE power.
German-language business newspaper Handelsblatt cites sources close to BMW saying new SUVs with gasoline and diesel engines are programmed to arrive beginning in 2027. Consequently, it means the company will still have an unspecified number of SUVs on sale in the 2030s with conventional drivetrains. That shouldn’t come as a big surprise considering BMW M has already said it’ll retain the inline-six and V8 until at least the end of this decade.
A separate report from South Africa’s CarMag echoes the article published by Handelsblatt, citing a representative of the local BMW branch saying the inline-six will remain part of the offerings for several years. However, the downsizing trend has already started considering the V12 is no longer part of the lineup, with BMW deciding to discontinue the M760Li. Logic tells us the bigger engines are the more vulnerable, so the inline-six and V8 will likely be retired before the three- and four-cylinder units.
Our own sources have told us there might not be a next-generation X3 M with an inline-six. Instead, BMW is allegedly planning an iX3 M or something to that effect as a high-performance electric crossover based on the Neue Klasse platform. If accurate, the speedy zero-emission SUV could be out in 2026 or 2027, a year or two after the standard second-generation iX3 arrives.
Handelsblatt doesn’t go into any other details about the ICE-powered SUVs, but they’ll likely be based on an evolution of the existing CLAR platform. It’s too late in the game to develop all-new underpinnings for what will probably be a last hurrah for gasoline and diesel SUVs. The report does mention the hardware used by these future X models will accommodate fully electric drivetrains as well, unrelated to the NE-based vehicles.
