BMW To Slash 2026 IX3 Emissions Using 740kg Of Reused Materials

Forbes

10 hours ago

It will take less than a year of driving for the upcoming 2026 BMW iX3 to wipe out its production CO2 deficit to an equivalent combustion-powered car, the Bavarian automaker claims.
BMW has gone all-in on both renewable energy and re-used raw materials to make its all-new iX3 cleaner, faster than any BEV before it, plus the SUV uses 20% less energy to drive than the current car.
With an astonishing 740kg of recovered raw materials, fully one third of the iX3 50 xDrive's total mass will be made of pre-used aluminium, thermoplastics and other discarded materials.
The result is the cleanest BMW electric vehicle ever made, before it even turns a wheel, with reused secondary materials now used in stressed components for the first time.
'It's a win-win,' BMW's Head of Sustainability Vehicle Projects Juergen Froeschl said.
'We keep plastics and metals out of the seas and landfills, and they take less processing energy to create the raw material,' Froeschl said.
'And these days the quality is comparable to a 100% primary material, at a much lower CO2 cost.' The electric SUV's wheel carriers use a 70% mix of recycled aluminum, and the wheels are up to 80%, giving those parts an 85% reduction in production CO2.
The entire interior plastic mix contains material from 140 PET bottles (which can be 100% recycled to automotive-grade material), while 30% of the material mix of the 58-liter 'frunk' is made of recycled fishing nets from the south of France.
Built in an all-new, flagship green plant in Drebecen, Hungary that emits just a third of the traditional CO2 to build a car, the iX3 is the first of what BMW calls its 'Neue Klasse' (New Class') of BEVs.The iX3 could have gone even higher and harder on secondary materials mix if the supply could be guaranteed, according to BMW's Head of Sustainability Vehicle Projects Juergen Froeschl.
'If the quality of the secondary material can be guaranteed, you can do it much higher, but it's limited by the availability of the secondary material,' Froeschl said.
'All our engineering stress specifications are untouched. What's changed is the quality of the raw material we can be supplied, so we now use this on stressed parts as well.
'We can now do this with no change to the chemistry. With aluminum, we improved our competence with it so we know what to do to achieve the maximum acceptable limit.
'We did not change the recycling process. We know a very great deal about the benefits and the limits of corrosion and fatigue.'
Production upgrades and recycled materials mean the Neue Klasse's sixth-generation cylindrical battery cells emit an astonishing 42% fewer CO2 emissions than the Gen 5 cells in the current iX3.
BMW insists that 90% of a BEV's supply-chain CO2 comes from just four sources: the battery cells, aluminium, steel and thermoplastics.
But the battery stands out, at 50% of all supply-chain CO2.
BMW claims it has pulled a 35% CO2 reduction from its 2700 tier-one suppliers.
'The battery is half the production CO2 cost of the car, and our Neue Klasse battery cells use 42% less carbon per Watt hour than the current iX3,' Froeschl said.
'The materials like lithium, cobalt, nickel are all 50% secondary raw materials, and we use renewable energy to make the anode and cathode, and the Future Sustainable Car Materials Group is working on making it even higher.'The new Debrecen plant delivered BMW a claimed two-thirds reduction in CO2 emissions per car, down to just 0.1 tonnes from production.
Designed from the ground up to be a renewable flagship and to minimise reliance on grid energy, it even has BMW's first fully electric paint shop.
There's an on-site solar farm providing a third of the plant's total energy requirements, and any excess solar energy is stored in an 1800 cubic-metre thermal-energy unit.
The 2026 BMW iX3 isn't just made from reused materials. It's designed to eventually provide them.
While the interior contains 140 PET bottles, the recycled-material mix has an unusual limitation: smell.
But BMW has found a way around that, and the Econeer seat material uses the same PET-sourced raw material to create the yarn, the glue and the fleece.
'End of life dismantling is easier and more efficient with monomaterial parts. It's the same material for three different things, so this can be recycled 100% and recreated into autograde materials.'