Here’s The New BMW iX3 Chilling Out In Lapland

Later this year, the first of the new BMW Neue Klasse EVs will arrive. Promising to bring more tech, more range and less… challenging styling than Beemer’s current EVs, the new models, which borrow their codename from the run of saloon cars that saved BMW’s bacon in the 1960s, will be spearheaded by a saloon and an SUV, equivalent in size to the 3 Series and X3, respectively.

We’ve seen both previewed in concept form and now Car Throttle has spotted the SUV, which will be badged iX3 when it arrives later this year, undergoing cold weather testing in the Arctic Circle.

This is the car we saw previewed last year as the Neue Klasse X concept, and while the prototype wears the usual camouflage in an effort to throw us off the scent, it’s clear to see that plenty of the concept’s styling cues will carry over.

The production car tones down some of the more concept-ish bits of the Neue Klasse X, but we can clearly see a similar overall silhouette and a version of the same shark-nosed front end, with long, slender headlights stretching across the front fascia.

BMW has concealed the prototype’s kidney ‘grilles’, but we’d expect the production car to wear similar items to the tall, slender 2002-inspired grilles on the concept. Other features of the concept like the exaggerated Hofmeister kink are present and correct, too.

Powertrain details of the Neue Klasse models are still under wraps for now, but we know they’ll use BMW’s sixth-generation batteries and electric motors, powered by a fast-charging 800V architecture. All the cars’ systems, meanwhile, will be run from four ‘superbrain’ computers, with one each handling infotainment, automated driving, driving dynamics and other basic functions.

The finished car will be unveiled in September at the Munich Motor Show, and should be fairly swiftly followed by the saloon and a further four Neue Klasse EVs in the coming years.