BMW is pioneering a new electric vehicle system: the iX3 has got off to a flying start, yet the sales teams are still "selling pictures"

"Selling cars just by showing pictures can still drive explosive sales." This is an experience that Zhou, a BMW salesperson, has never had in his 10-year career selling BMW vehicles. The car in question is exactly the landmark model of BMW's intelligent electric transformation, the all-new Neue Klasse iX3.

On August 21, at the Chengdu Auto Show, the BMW Neue Klasse iX3 opened for pre-sales with three configuration tiers priced from 269,900 yuan to 339,900 yuan. The pre-sale price is the official listing price, and full product specifications have been fully disclosed. By laying out pricing, configurations and sales models all at once, the brand has received a flood of orders.

"As soon as the pre-sale price was announced, the sales team barely got any break, working until 10 p.m. every day, as there are far too many interested customers," multiple BMW dealers told 36Kr. Nearly a week after the new model opened for reservation, almost every single store in core regions has received nearly 80 paid non-refundable small-lock-in orders.

However, the booming orders have brought another major headache to BMW: every potential customer is asking if they can see and test drive the car, while sales staff at more than 500 stores across the country can only apologize repeatedly, as the display vehicles are not expected to arrive at stores until the end of October.

"We are not selling cars at all, we are essentially just selling pictures," Zhou, a frontline BMW salesperson, sighed to 36Kr. In his 10-year career as a BMW salesperson, this is the first time they have encountered a scenario where no physical vehicle is available for display after pre-sales launch.

36Kr has learned from multiple sources that at present, BMW only has a handful of engineering vehicles that have been touring for exhibition across cities nationwide since April this year, and no store has a permanent display vehicle.

This wave of "small-lock-in orders" is essentially blind booking. Consumers have paid the deposit of intent without even touching the real vehicle. But BMW has indeed achieved one thing: it has awakened a large number of wait-and-see consumers who are holding cash to buy a new car, relying only on product specifications and pre-sale prices.

Multiple frontline salespeople told 36Kr with emotion that BMW's brand appeal remains strong, and the public attention to the Neue Klasse model far exceeds their expectations.

A glance at the configuration list can explain this enthusiasm: Powered by large cylindrical batteries, the top-tier iX3 has a CLTC cruising range of 919 km, and the official measured cruising range around Qinghai Lake by BMW exceeds 800 km; the end-to-end intelligent driving system developed in cooperation with Momenta supports complex urban road conditions and is standard across all trims; the cockpit is integrated with two large models, Alibaba Tongyi and DeepSeek, which greatly improves the voice interaction capability compared with previous models.

To sum up in one sentence: This is a BMW model whose brand premium has faded, and its product competitiveness has finally caught up with that of new EV startups.

But after visiting a large number of stores, 36Kr found that under the good start of the BMW Neue Klasse iX3, the brand is still in the "novice stage" of traditional luxury brands transforming into intelligent electric vehicle makers. And accumulating small-lock-in orders by "selling pictures" is just one part of this new system that urgently needs to be improved.

BMW Neue Klasse iX3 Launch Event at Chengdu Auto Show

BMW Neue Klasse Pre-sales Are Booming, But Order Attrition Also Requires Vigilance

The launch of BMW Neue Klasse iX3 has almost made a resounding shot to the dull pure electric transformation of BBA.

But the tricky part lies in the timeline: Display vehicles will not be delivered to stores one after another until the end of October, and after the first batch of deliveries starts in November, large-scale deliveries will not begin until 2027. The BMW APP shows that customers with small-lock-in orders can confirm their orders no later than January 31, 2027.

In other words, from the pre-sales launch at the end of August to the final order locking, BMW has extended consumers' decision-making period to 5 months, while the normal rhythm of the automotive industry is at most 2 months.

Before the pre-sale price was announced, some dealers had spontaneously organized potential customers to view the car and counted their reservations. "Before the announcement, the proportion of customers choosing the 500km high-end trim was higher. After the official price was released, the number of orders for the 400km mid-range trim rose significantly," a dealer told 36Kr.

The core differences between the three configurations of the Neue Klasse iX3 lie in power, battery and cruising range, while intelligent driving, intelligent cockpit and comfort features are all standard across all trims. This means that iX3 customers are more inclined to choose the more cost-effective mid-range trim.

"Customers who come for cost-effectiveness are exactly the group that is most likely to churn," a person close to BMW China's sales team said. At present, most of the small-lock-in leads come from online channels. "The competition among all brands for online customers is the most fierce, so the internal team pays extremely high attention to the conversion rate from small deposits to full payments, and does not relax vigilance just because of the hot small-lock-in orders."

To improve the willingness of small-lock-in customers to stay, BMW has introduced the "waiting points" mechanism that is commonly seen among new EV startups: From the day of placing the order to delivery, iX3 users can receive 100 BMW membership points per day. Calculated based on the waiting period for delivery in January 2027, users can accumulate about 16,000 points, equivalent to a rights and interests value of about 4,000 yuan.

Behind this long cycle, as the flagship product of BMW's electrification transformation, multiple technologies of the Neue Klasse iX3 are making their global debut on this model.

A person close to BMW's R&D team told 36Kr that these new technologies are still in the final testing and verification stage, and the internal team has extremely strict control over delivery standards. "The brand would rather postpone delivery than deliver a semi-finished product to users, and must ensure product stability."

BMW's extreme rigor in product development has built its brand moat. But in the current fierce competition with hundreds of new cars launched every year, the new product dividend window has shrunk sharply to 6 months. This means that even for BMW, it has to face a reality: the brand that can convert public attention into delivery volume the fastest can take the initiative to drive sales growth.

Early new EV startups also adopted the "production based on sales" model, but the 2-3 month cycle of production line ramp-up doomed the fate of "futures delivery". NIO ET5, Li Auto i6, and Xiaomi SU7 all lost users because their delivery speed could not keep up with the number of orders.

Data from China Passenger Car Association (CPCA) shows that from January to May 2026, brands that adopt the "launch and deliver immediately" model have an average sales fulfillment rate 15 percentage points higher than that of brands using the traditional model.

As a result, leading automakers have collectively shifted to the "start production before launch" strategy: Xiaomi prepared 4,000 existing vehicles before its launch event, and LeDao L90 was delivered the very next day after its launch event. "Deliver immediately after listing, and achieve high delivery volume shortly after launch" has been an obvious trend in China's automotive market.

With mature brand assets, BBA faces far higher transformation complexity than new EV startups that start from scratch: they need to not only defend the quality standard of "taking time to make high-quality products" on the product side, but also cope with the rapidly evolving competition rhythm of the Chinese market.

When the product development rhythm cannot be changed drastically overnight, the core link connecting products and consumers naturally becomes the primary breakthrough point for BBA's transformation.

BMW Neue Klasse iX3

Piloting "Nationwide Unified Pricing", Dealers Are Not Allowed to Even Give an Extra Bottle of Water for Free

Since 2025, BBA has successively implemented nationwide unified pricing, and BMW is no exception.

36Kr has learned from multiple sources that behind this model, the cooperation mechanism between automakers and dealers has also undergone fundamental changes: dealers no longer need to advance funds to purchase vehicles from the manufacturer, and they get settled in the way of "selling one vehicle, collecting one service fee".

A dealer told 36Kr that to ensure the transparency and unification of the offline selling price of the Neue Klasse iX3, BMW has formulated extremely strict management and control rules. "Once any terminal price fluctuation is found, even if the salesperson gives a free water cup as a gift, the manufacturer may directly cancel the iX3 quota of this dealer group, and no longer allow us to sell this model."

This person further said that for most of the BMW models currently on sale, the terminal selling price is still at a loss, which needs to be covered by various subsidies and rebates. "But the iX3 is a clear exception. We make profits from every car we sell. Although the profit margin is not high, it is steady cash flow, so we will go all out to sell it."

Under the unified pricing rule, how do dealers compete for orders?

In the past, the core action of different dealers was to compete on price to attract regular customers, using price cuts to grab consumers who had already decided to buy BMW. Now the strategy has completely shifted to expanding the user base, persuading consumers who originally did not intend to buy BMW to choose BMW from a broader consumer group.

"The BMW iX3's roadshow in Guangzhou is the best opportunity for us to get offline leads," a dealer from Guangzhou told 36Kr. During the roadshow, every dealer group can arrange sales staff to be stationed at the site. "Who will be sent to this critical scene? We adopted an interview system, the boss interviewed every salesperson one by one, and the one who knows the product best will go."

This person told 36Kr that starting from the Neue Klasse iX3, all stores of the group have paid unprecedented attention to learning product specifications. Since pre-sales launched, the iX3 has gained a large number of sales leads. During the communication with customers, he and his team clearly felt the differences among new energy vehicle consumers.

"The market has been educated by new EV startup brands for years, and now customers pay great attention to parameters. 9 out of 10 calls we receive will ask about the battery capacity, the cruising range, whether the car is equipped with seat massage, and whether it supports urban intelligent driving," this person admitted. In the past, frontline BMW salespeople had very limited knowledge about product features, and could not answer many questions raised by customers. "In the past, the salesperson who was best at negotiating prices became the top performer. But now it is the era of fixed price. If you don't learn product knowledge, you can no longer stay in this industry."

This also reflects that there is still a certain gap in information transmission between the headquarters and the terminal sales team.

Multiple dealers from Mercedes-Benz and BMW told 36Kr that the latest generation of electrified products from BBA are not weak in competitiveness, but automakers still have much room for improvement in conveying technical highlights to end users.

"New EV startups' press conferences are all about technologies. From large parts such as body strength and sun-proof glass, to small parts such as motor rotors and battery cell structures, they will explain everything clearly to consumers. But BBA's press conferences are still dominated by brand narratives, and the proportion of technical disassembly is relatively limited," an industry insider said. "Where your motor and electronic control system is better, where your body structure is better, where your software security is better, the manufacturer does not explain these points clearly. It is too difficult for us terminal sales staff to explain them alone, and we can hardly develop offline leads."

BBA's reform goal is very clear: the headquarters is in charge of pricing, and dealers are responsible for providing services. But this transformation is far from thorough. BBA's electrification transformation has always been trapped in the dilemma of "wanting to keep the bottom line of quality" and "needing to catch up with the market rhythm". When consumers have long been accustomed to the "deliver immediately after listing, full transparent configuration" model of new EV startups, this slow transformation of established luxury brands will eventually make up for the lesson of user-centric thinking.

But in any case, just relying on product specifications and pre-sale prices to get tens of thousands of small-lock-in orders, BMW's Neue Klasse has already won the first key battle in its transformation.

*Zhou is an alias.