BMW targets a 3-5% EBIT margin in 2028 and 20% leaner management on the way back to 8-10%

At its Capital Market Day 2026 in Munich, the BMW Group gave a first glimpse of its future plans, aimed at strengthening its resilience and enhancing the competitiveness of its structures as market conditions get harder. The company says it will rely on its strategic strengths: technology openness, potential for technological innovation, a global presence and a clear premium brand strategy. Far-reaching decisions have already been made and initial measures begun to significantly raise speed and efficiency, with a large number of additional topics under evaluation and decisions expected by spring 2027. To secure critical raw materials and components including semiconductors, BMW is pursuing new partnerships, alternative concepts and closer cooperation with competitors inside the European Union, and says policymakers are increasingly called upon to help. Following the successful go-live of the genuine agency model for MINI sales in 24 European markets, the rollout for the core BMW brand is scheduled to start in mid-2027.

As a first step, the model line-up will be aligned more systematically with regional customer preferences, with targeted expansion of the range, significant adjustments to the drivetrain portfolio and a review that reduces the number of variants — there will be no successor to models such as the BMW 2 Series Active Tourer. At the high end, the BMW, BMW M and Rolls-Royce brands will be refined to leverage their strengths, and the first BMW ALPINA model, inspired by the BMW 7 Series and positioned between BMW and Rolls-Royce, comes to market in the coming year. In China, local production in high-volume segments expands with the launch of the Neue Klasse while imports are limited to the highest-margin models; at least 95 percent of vehicles made there are to be developed specifically for Chinese customers by 2030, and exports of China-made vehicles to Southeast Asian markets are under review. For the US, BMW is considering an additional offering above the current top-end BMW X7, and with Plant Spartanburg — the home of X — running at full capacity, the company is striving for greater regionalisation of SAV production. In 2028, with a focus on Europe, BMW will strengthen the high-volume entry segment with another fully electric Neue Klasse model, which together with the fully electric MINI range continues to drive down fleet-wide CO2 emissions in the EU.

The wide-scale rollout and systematic use of artificial intelligence across the company is a key driver of increased speed and agility, faster decision-making and greater efficiency — from development and purchasing through sales, marketing and aftersales. BMW will transfer AI from individual applications to core vehicle development processes, where agentic AI is expected to provide end-to-end support from initial technical requirements to testing and release, connecting specialised digital agents with decades of development data and existing IT systems while developers monitor, review and approve the results. In one example, BMW and AI company Mistral are collaborating on crash simulations, combining BMW's engineering datasets with Mistral AI's training capabilities; to scale the approach BMW relies on Large Industry Models trained on industry-specific engineering and simulation data. AI is already integral to BMW's production system and a core element of the BMW iFACTORY, spanning virtual factories with digital twins, AI-supported quality inspections and autonomous transport in intralogistics, while digital AI agents working with self-learning robots give rise to Physical AI. With the first Neue Klasse models BMW says it has laid the foundation for the next generation of digital vehicles via a zonal electrical and electronics infrastructure used across all vehicle segments — the basis for the next phase, the AI-defined vehicle, where systems from driver assistance to infotainment and comfort functions interact seamlessly; CFO Walter Mertl calls consistent use of agentic AI applications across all areas of the company a game-changer for more agile and efficient development, leaner structures and faster decision-making.

The AI transformation is also speeding up development of driver assistance systems, starting with a new L2++ system developed in partnership with Momenta that will be rolled out in China with the launch of the Chinese variant of the BMW iX3 and is described as the only system on the market offering brand-specific BMW Symbiotic Drive. Next year, as a result of development cooperation with Qualcomm, BMW will be among the first manufacturers to offer navigation-guided driver assistance in Germany on motorways, secondary roads and city streets, based on the new DCAS regulation — a Europe-wide legal framework for Driver Control Assistance Systems — with other countries including the US to follow in stages and all customers of the new vehicle generation able to activate additional features over the air. By the end of the year, BMW will offer its proven Highway Assistant with hands-free assisted driving in 21 countries, and customers have already driven more than 250 million kilometres hands-free with it. For the BMW iX3 and subsequent models the Highway Assistant has been upgraded with BMW Symbiotic Drive, designed so the driver can accelerate, steer and brake while assistance is active without immediately triggering deactivation of longitudinal and lateral guidance. The operating logic and clear displays in the BMW Panoramic iDrive are meant to keep assisted driving intuitive and controllable at the highest level of automation in SAE Level 2.