BMW Opens Gen 6 Battery Plant in Shenyang, Neue Klasse i3 Tests 1,213 km on One Charge

BMW has flipped the switch on sixth-generation high-voltage battery output at its Shenyang site in Liaoning province, a move that gives the automaker a domestic supply base for the Neue Klasse rollout it is counting on in China. The announcement came alongside a headline-grabbing road test in which a long-wheelbase Neue Klasse i3 covered 1,213 km before needing to plug in.

The endurance run was carried out by the i3 50L, which BMW is positioning as its electric range standard-bearer. The route mixed expressways, national highways, country roads and city streets, and the car arrived with just 1 percent left in the pack. A 113.4-kWh battery sat underneath, and the trip logged average consumption of 8.8 kWh per 100 km. BMW is careful to frame the figure as a real-world result from one specific drive rather than a homologated range under a standardized cycle, though it still notes that no battery-electric BMW has gone further on a single charge.

The Shenyang battery project carries a price tag of 10 billion yuan (about $1.49 billion) and spans a planned 240,000 square meters — roughly five times the footprint of BMW’s current battery facilities. Ground was broken in May 2023. The plant pairs large cylindrical cells with pack integration, an 800-volt electrical architecture and the company’s sixth-generation drive hardware. Shenyang now joins Debrecen in Hungary and Irlbach-Straßkirchen in Germany as the third node in BMW’s global Gen 6 battery network, and the cells built there will first feed the Neue Klasse iX3 and i3.

With battery output live, BMW says all three core components of its sixth-generation electric drive system are now manufactured in China. The company also started trial production of its Energy Master at the Shenyang powertrain plant in late September; that unit acts as the central controller for Gen 6 packs and was developed in-house on both the hardware and software sides. Shenyang is the only BMW site outside Germany able to build the system, and the only one worldwide where casting, engine, high-voltage battery and Energy Master production sit under one roof.

The manufacturing groundwork supports the China launch of the Neue Klasse. Pre-orders for the China-only long-wheelbase iX3 opened on August 21, with deliveries slated to start in November. The i3 50L, meanwhile, is a sedan tailored to local tastes, with regulatory filings listing a 3,005 mm wheelbase — 39 mm longer than the previous China-built i3. Localization extends to software: the i3’s driver assistance suite was co-developed with Momenta, while the infotainment system draws on AI voice technology built with Alibaba and DeepSeek.