“Everything depends on you, don’t mess it up!” BMW design chief reveals the extraordinary pressure developing the make-or-break Neue Klasse EV

September 8, 2025September 11, 2025 Bruce Newton 7882 Views bmw, i3, iX3, Neue Klasse

BMW Group’s design chief Adrian van Hooydonk says the pressure developing the design language for BMW’s critical 10 billion euro (plus!) Neue Klasse vehicle concept was equivalent to the responsibility a Formula One racing driver has to deliver a successful result.

Neue Klasse is a new-generation battery electric vehicles that launches with the new iX3 medium SUV and the i3 sedan (pictured top).

But the design language these cars pioneer – along with Neue Klasse’s radical new infotainment package – will be migrated into BMW’s line-up of ICE models as well.

BWM Group design chief Adrian van Hooydonk with the BMW iX3.

Neue Klasse is the biggest financial bet BMW has ever made and the company’s future literally depends on its being successful.

While van Hooydonk won’t contemplate failure, at least not to journalists – “We don’t want to think about that, it wouldn’t be helpful” – he does acknowledge how pressured the situation is and the need to shut out extraneous noise to deliver the best possible outcome.

“I compare it [developing the Neue Klasse design] to the job that a racing driver has,” he told EV Central moments after presenting the iX3 at its global launch in Munich.

“The minute a racing driver gets in the car, everyone tells him ‘now it’s up to you, you have to do it now because hundreds, thousands of engineers have prepared everything, here it is. Now you have to do it’.

“The moment I just had [on stage] feels like that, or let’s say working on a car like this feels like that.

“But like a racing driver, you have to be able to blend that all out. It’s true.”

Van Hooydonk didn’t only have his own internal expectations to cope with. He revealed the highest levels of BMW management reinforced the responsibility he had.

“Everyone will remind me every now and then, even the [BMW] board [of directors] reminds me now and then, ‘remember everything depends on you, don’t mess it up please’.

“So it’s all true, but if a racing driver would be thinking about that, he would even miss the first corner. You have to be very good at compartmentalising your brain, set that aside while you do your job.

“Then of course the design project lasts longer than a race but it gets your adrenaline pumping as well.”

Part of the pressure the design team was under, van Hooydonk admitted, was the need to deliver a design that would age well in a rapidly changing world.

“At the time where we are making a design decision for this car, it was three years ago. Who would have known what the world looks like today?

“This design will still be on the road in 2030. Nobody knows what the world will look like back then.

“We felt the world was changing so rapidly. We had to have the courage to make a bigger change and I think we did.”

Van Hooydonk said the pressure he and his department have been under with this Neue Klasse compares with the late 1950s at BMW, when the original Neue Klasse was being developed.

That vehicle, the BMW 1500, was credited with saving the company.

“In the 1960s when BMW did the first Neue Klasse that was an existential crisis for the company, van Hooydonk said.

“BMW was nearly bankrupt. Things didn’t look so good, BMW was nearly bought by Mercedes. I don’t think we would have enjoyed that very much.

“At that time there was a lot of pressure on the design department and they came up with the Neue Klasse and that led BMW on to this path for success.”