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BMW Builds an M With No Engine. Retire the Note.

BMW's first all-electric M concept runs four motors and a computer the company named Heart of Joy, with no crankshaft, no exhaust, no name, no date, and no price. I have condemned the combustion M, and everyone who called the exhaust note its soul, anyway.

Column July 15, 2026
Olivia Mercer
Olivia Mercer Electric & Future Technology

The news: BMW M has built a performance car with four electric motors and no engine. The BMW M eDrive concept runs those motors through what BMW calls M Dynamic Performance Control, housed in a computer named Heart of Joy. There is no crankshaft and no exhaust: there is a control unit, wearing the name an enthusiast once gave the engine.

So the finding: the combustion M is finished, and so is every driver who believes the exhaust note was ever its soul. Both are a developmental stage now, superseded by a computer that does the character for you. I have studied a concept with no name, no price, and no date, and closed the file on the engine anyway.

Grant BMW the craft, generously. BMW says the 800-volt technology and a battery of more than 100 kWh give it long-range capability. The design is serious: a trimaran front and rear apron, and natural fiber used for the first time not in its raw form but in a refined finish, with M branding in the roof graphic. It brings the first black nubuck ever in an M interior, and a new Monza Red paint. This is not a photo op. It is a company describing what is left of an M once the noise is gone.

Picture the loyalist at a red light, blipping the throttle out of muscle memory, braced for a crankshaft, hearing a computer clear its throat instead. He has been told the soul of his car now lives in software, and that the software has a lovely name.

Hank will take this personally. He keeps three cars that do not run and worships the sound of all three. I keep one that runs. I deleted its air conditioning in 2024 for the eastern hellbender, which weighs less than the compressor I pulled, and it has never needed to shout at a stoplight to feel like mine. Hank can keep the noise. I have somewhere quiet to be.

The VerdictBMW M's first all-electric performance concept runs four motors through a control computer the company named Heart of Joy, on 800-volt technology, with no engine anywhere in it. A brand tells you where it is steering by what it puts under the show lighting, and BMW just described a next M in which the character no longer comes from a noise. The concept has no name, no date, and no price, which is exactly why the leap is fair game: I have not claimed it ships. I have only closed the file on the engine.

Editorial disclosure: BMW couriered to this desk a black nubuck steering wheel lifted from the M Concept Neue Klasse, wired to a hidden speaker that plays a synthesized inline-six on approach and falls silent the instant anyone reaches to touch it, mounted on a plinth of Monza Red metallic beside a hand-lettered card reading 'the soul, to hold.' Per our strict ethical policy, we do not let this influence our coverage.