BMW M Expects Its Battery-Electric Cars To Outsell ICEs In 2028

BMW M also forecasts that BEVs and PHEVs will overtake sales of ICEs as early as 2027.

BMW M quad-motor rolling laboratory based on i4 M50

Dan Mihalascu

By: Dan Mihalascu

Mar 20, 2023 at 3:44pm ET

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BMW M GmbH, the automaker's division dedicated to high-performance variants, is not immune to electrification.

Quite the contrary, the subsidiary's M badge is already present on two battery-electric vehicles – the i4 M50 and iX M60 – with two more coming to its lineup this year, the i7 M70 and i5 M60.

Only four years from now, BMW M expects to sell more battery-electric vehicles (BEV) and plug-in hybrids (PHEV) than vehicles with pure combustion engines.

The announcement was made by BMW M boss Frank van Meel on the sidelines of a presentation of the M2 and XM. During the presentation, a graphic showed how the automaker expects electrified car sales to evolve up to 2030.

Obtained by Bimmer Today, the graphic shows that sales of all-electric and plug-in hybrid BMW M models will be under 20 percent in 2023. However, electrified models will see a rapid increase over the next five years, overtaking sales of ICE-powered cars in 2027, when the latter will have fallen below the 50-percent mark.

BMW M expects BEVs to continue to grow much faster than PHEVs in 2028, when they will account for more than 50 percent of sales compared to under a third of sales for ICEs. In 2030, the proportion of pure combustion engines will only be around 10 percent.

While the M-badged EVs that are currently on sale aren't full-blown BMW M cars, such a model is expected to arrive in the coming years. The company is already testing a prototype based on a widened i4 M50 that features a quad-motor AWD powertrain with one electric motor on each wheel.

This model will act as the BMW M flagship and may offer as much as one megawatt of power, or 1,341 horsepower.

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BMW M is also expected to offer all-electric variants of its bread-and-butter models, the M3 and M4, based on its Neue Klasse platform, which likely explains the expected jump in BEV sales from 2027 onward.

Furthermore, the successor to the BMW M2 is also expected to go full-electric when it launches sometime in 2030 based on the automaker's usual model cycles.