• BMW has begun testing the future electric M3 around the Nurburgring Nordschleife in Germany.
• The model will have up to four electric motors and over 1,000 horsepower in its most powerful guise.
• It’s expected to debut in 2027, one year after the electric 3 Series equivalent makes its market debut.

BMW producing a fully electric M3 is a big deal, and it will be a very different beast from anything that came before it, even current BMW EVs. However, it needs to embody the same basic traits as a gas-burning M3, even without its characterful engine, which plays a big part in the driving experience that has made these cars so popular.

It needs to deliver not only fun and engaging handling but also put down good lap times around a track. After being spotted testing in snowy northern Europe, the electric M3 prototype was spied going around the Nurburgring Nordschleife, the 12.8-mile benchmark test track where most new sporty cars are put through their paces, which features 157 corners all in the space of just one lap.

The prototype clearly shows the BMW Neue Klasse design cues, including the telltale headlight design and the general squared-off aesthetic. We’re not sure if this car is wearing its final production body panels, though, and it could just be a mule that blends production parts with one-off handmade pieces made only for testing.

It has the typical M car flared wheel arches, with additional bolt-on overfenders (it’s these that potentially suggest this is still a mule), hiding what appear to be very wide tires. We wouldn’t be surprised if the rear tires were 295- or 305-section, and it needs a lot of rubber because it is expected to have a lot more power than any previous M car, even the new plug-in hybrid M5, which has over 700 horsepower.

We’re sure this is the fully electric M3 equivalent because it lacks visible exhaust tips, its front fascia is mostly closed, and @joelre98 posted an Instagram video showing the prototype driving onto the track and silently powering away. If this was a plug-in hybrid, the combustion engine would have started up when the driver floored it as it passed the camera.

Another indication that this doesn’t feature final production components is the obvious placeholder rear lights, which surely won’t look like this on the production car. They will be very close in style to what we saw on the concepts previewing the electric 3 Series equivalent, which will likely be called i3 in non-M guise, so the M model could be the i3M or Mi3.

Whatever its name, the electric sedan must be both a crowd pleaser, able to pull high-angle slides and a precision corner carver to make driving enthusiasts nod their heads approvingly. BMW also has something to demonstrate in the performance EV space, where its offerings so far haven’t quite been what we expected. Both the i4 and i5 are blistering in a straight line, but around the corners, they can’t hide their weight, which dulls the handling considerably compared to combustion BMWs.

Having driven most performance EVs out there, we would actually pick a Hyundai Ioniq 5 N or a Tesla Model 3 Performance to drive quickly around a track over an electric BMW today, which is quite telling. But with up to four motors and more than 1,000 horsepower in the most powerful variants combined with BMW’s motorsport expertise, we have high hopes for the electric M3, which went down a storm with BMW execs during an internal drive event.

BMW hasn’t put a date on when it intends to show the electric M3, but it will be after it reveals the regular non-M i3 sedan, which will happen in 2026, after it unveils the first Neue Klasse model, an electric X3 equivalent, later this year. We could see it debut in 2026 but it will most likely come in 2027.