VIDEO&PHOTO How the Europeans managed to beat China into silence and launch the car with the greatest autonomy in the world
China has overtaken Europe on a media level, in terms of technology, because it has managed to grab the headlines in the specialized press, in the last 2-3 years, with information that talks about the speed with which batteries, software and cars as a whole are being developed. But Europe has quietly overtaken China, with BMW succeeding in launching the world's most autonomous car.
Tesla launched its first advanced electric vehicle more than 15 years ago, ushering in a new generation of automobiles, the so-called Software Defined Vehicles. But things didn't start with Tesla. The three premium German brands, Audi, BMW and Mercedes, can be considered the pioneers of software, sensor and computer assisted vehicles.
The first assistance technologies, driverless driving, were launched in the early 2000s, when intelligent cruise control systems, lane change assistance, night vision cameras and more, based on Radar, Lidar or video technologies, were available on the cars of these brands.
The component manufacturers who specialized in such technologies, such as Bosch or Continental, then put on the table for all car manufacturers what the Germans had turned into reality.
The Chinese took the big step in two stages. The first was that of electric cars, because here big investments were made in the battery industry. It was the Tesla phenomenon that sparked the technological craze of software-controlled electric cars.
The unexpected success of the cars of the American brand, taken over by Elon Musk from its founders, encouraged everyone, but especially the Chinese. With far fewer environmental restrictions and low wages that allowed big and fast investment, China's automakers learned how to make cars from Western companies that invested in China, and then took the craft to another level, especially in terms of speed.
Everything happened exactly like in the case of phones: with a successful model, such as the iPhone, produced under contract by a local company with cheap labor, the expansion of Chinese smart phone brands was inevitable. The history of Neue Klasse – the representative of German technology German brands have not been idle all this time, and BMW has continued its research almost quietly. The first information about a new revolutionary platform appeared 4-5 years ago. In March 2021, at the BMW Group Annual Conference, the new CEO of the company at the time, Oliver Zipse, announced the start of the development of a new generation of automobiles.
The first launch was scheduled for 2025, but it was not clear whether it would only target electric propulsion or be intended for combustion cars as well. A year later, the first explanations given by the same Zipse showed that the new platform would be exclusively electric, and the first models would be in the middle segment: the 3 Series and the X3 SUV. In 2023, the first concept based on the future platform began to reveal from the secrets of BMW: i Vison Dee, exhibited in Las Vegas, showed the world the screen across the entire width of the windshield.
In the same year, Vision Neue Klasse unveiled the first image of the future electric 3 Series in Munich, giving a clear message about the direction BMW's design is heading. A few months later, exactly two years ago, the Vision Neue Klasse X concept was also presented, which left no doubt about the series model it would become. From an industrial point of view, the new platform brought major investments for BMW: a new factory began to be built in Hungary, in Debrecen, and in parallel the main plant in Munich began the transformation.
In the fall of 2025, the new BMW iX3 had its world premiere, announcing itself since its launch as one of the most powerful electric cars in the world, with over 800 km of autonomy. The top version of the iX3 50 xDrive has become so in demand that the company raised the price by around 5,000 euros a few months after the launch of orders. But the pinnacle of the Neue Klasse came in March 2026, when the new i3, i.e. the first electric 3 Series in history, brought to market the production car with the longest range: over 900 km, WLTP mixed consumption. That's exactly 243 km more than the best-performing Tesla Model Y, which until now has been the benchmark in the electric segment, and 150 km more than the best-performing Model 3.
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