The transition to electric vehicles has always had one major stumbling block for car enthusiasts: the sound. Or rather, the lack of it. For decades, the soul of a performance car has been tied to the noise it makes—the intake gasp, the exhaust crackle, the mechanical symphony of pistons and valves. Now, as BMW prepares to launch its first-ever fully electric M3, the company is tackling this problem head-on, and their solution is surprisingly old-school.
Instead of trying to invent a new “sound of the future” filled with abstract spaceship hums and digital warbles, BMW’s Motorsport division is digging into its own history books. New videos from the development team reveal that the upcoming electric M3 will feature a synthetic audio system built from high-fidelity recordings of the brand’s most iconic internal combustion engines. We aren’t talking about generic engine noises here; BMW is literally sampling the legends.
Early footage of the prototype featured a sound that was unmistakably a turbocharged inline-six
Which has now been confirmed as the S55 engine from the previous generation M4. But it gets better. BMW has also captured the acoustic profiles of the S65 V8 from the beloved E90/E92 M3 and—perhaps most excitingly—the screaming S85 V10 from the E63 M6. The idea is that the production EV will likely allow drivers to toggle between these profiles. Imagine driving a futuristic electric super-sedan but having the option to fill the cabin with the wail of a mid-2000s V10. It is a nostalgia play, sure, but it is a clever one.
To make the experience feel real, BMW isn’t just playing an MP3 file through the speakers. They are pairing this audio with simulated gear shifts. This mimics the “jolts” and torque interruptions of a traditional transmission, giving the driver a sense of rhythm and engagement that is often lost in the seamless, linear surge of an electric motor. It mirrors the strategy Hyundai successfully used in the Ioniq 5 N, proving that “fake” shifts can actually make a car feel more alive.
This move comes at a time when the entire industry is scrambling to put the “emotion” back into driving
As EVs get faster, they are paradoxically becoming less exciting to some drivers because the sensory feedback is gone. Mercedes-AMG is working on systems that vibrate the seats to mimic a V8 rumble, and Genesis is tuning its “Magma” models to sound like authentic V6 turbos.
For BMW, however, the stakes are arguably higher. The “M” badge has always been defined by its engines. By grounding their electric future in the sounds of their mechanical past, they are trying to build a bridge for the purists. When you combine this emotional layer with the rumored quad-motor setup and advanced torque vectoring, the electric M3 starts to look less like a compromise and more like the best of both worlds. With the standard electric i3 sedan debuting later this year, we won’t have to wait long to see—and hear—if they have pulled it off.