BMW is preparing for the reveal of its facelifted i7 limo later this month at the Beijing motor show – and it’s working with Croatian electric sports car maker Rimac to develop fancy batteries for it. 

We’ve seen spy shots of the new car floating around the internet and the German carmaker doesn’t have massive changes planned for the floaty giant luxury wagon – we’re expecting to see changes to the headlights up front, a rear light bar and a tech overhaul inside. 

The i7 was launched back in 2022, before BMW’s ‘Neue Klasse’ reinvention, so the styling isn’t quite in line with what we’re seeing from the likes of the new i3 and iX3 models, and certainly doesn’t follow the trend of cutting out weight wherever possible, we’re talking nearly three tonnes of car here. 

The difficulty is in trying to squeeze BMW’s latest generation electric tech in a car that was designed around the last generation stuff. So it’s underneath the car where it gets interesting – BMW says that it’s been working with Rimac to develop new battery tech for the car. 

Rimac is a Croatian firm that made a name for itself a few years back with the Nevera electric hypercar and then bought up Bugatti from the Volkswagen Group. These days it does a lot of behind the scenes work with carmakers to improve their battery and electric motor tech without taking too much of the credit, but it seems that BMW is happy to give some here. 

We don’t have many (if any) details of what the new tech does for the car, but we have heard that the collaboration has yielded a 20% jump in energy density and that the upgraded i7’s rapid charging ability will be significantly higher than its current 195kW. 

At any rate we’ll get to see the new i7 and hear more details about the car from the Beijing motor show – stayed tuned to Electrifying.com for all the news. 

BMW says Rimac will prepare the new i7's batteries at its own factory before shipping them to its place in Dingolfing near Munich