Here’s Why the 2027 BMW iX3’s and i3’s Funky Steering Wheel Looks the Way It Does

The all-new 2027 BMW i3 gives us a ton of stuff to look over and digest, and the digital-forward cabin sees some of the biggest updates. A pillar-to-pillar panoramic screen and a bigger infotainment screen are almost expected at this point, but an all-new steering wheel? With spokes at the 12 o’clock position? We gotta talk about this.

“It’s quite unusual, I agree,” BMW design boss Adrian van Hooydonk said during a roundtable discussion in Munich, Germany, last week. “We started early on in this project thinking about how we could allow our customers to bring their digital life and devices into the car and display certain things in the car and at the same time be able to drive the car, because BMWs are built for people that love driving.”

The panoramic display now serves as the driver’s information cluster, displaying things such as vehicle speed and battery life on the left-hand side. Sitting in the i3 driver’s seat, it does reduce the distance you have to move your eyes from the road to read pertinent information. And because there’s no more traditional driver cluster, van Hooydonk and his team were able to rethink the wheel.

“We began to make the steering wheel smaller and flat on the top and bottom,” he told MotorTrend. “The fact that we no longer had to look through the steering wheel onto an instrument cluster, that allowed us—or actually almost forced us—to put the spokes vertically.”

The 12 and 6 o’clock spokes are functional; they are what hold up the wheel. But the 12 o’clock spokes in particular serve almost a second purpose, which is to imply that because BMW has moved the traditional cluster, that space no longer needs to be spoke-free. And if it no longer has to be spoke-free, then why not add one? Basically, BMW said, “Because we can” here.

Conversely, the 9 and 3 o’clock button-laden spokes aren’t connected to the rim at all, making them seem like they’re “floating,” which is a pretty cool effect. BMW changed the button functionality here, as well, moving them deeper toward the center of the steering wheel. The buttons’ new positions supposedly make them easier to press, van Hooydonk said.

The buttons themselves aren’t buttons in the traditional sense; there is a group of single, physical buttons nestled in a surround. It’s more a case of having one big clear plastic pad with illuminated functions underneath it that you can press. Functions that are available light up; ones that aren’t stay dark.

Visually, the new wheel is certainly stark and minimalist. It does look a little like AUTO from Pixar’s WALL-E, especially in that snow-white leather. We respect the white but would probably opt for an upholstery with color, as there’s no way a white steering wheel stays clean for long.

The wheel feels substantive and well-sized when you grip it, but we obviously won’t know how it feels on the road or during performance driving until later on. For what it’s worth, van Hooydonk said he’s gone drifting in a car with the wheel, and it felt good.

The steering wheel of a 2025 BMW 3 Series sedan.

As a point of comparison, here’s the steering wheel from a 2025 BMW 3 Series. We’re big fans of the “old” 3 Series here at MotorTrend, and we don’t have many complaints about it. The steering wheel was almost certainly never a point of frustration. So it’ll be interesting to see how this new wheel design works for the masses.

If, after looking at these pictures, you truly hate the new steering wheel, all hope might not be lost: No one from BMW has said anything on the record, but kindly take note of this optional M steering wheel available in the 2027 BMW iX3 50 xDrive.

It lacks the 12 o’clock spoke and features more of an 8 and 4 o’clock spoke placement, so the 12 o’clock seems like it isn’t 100 percent necessary to make this kind of wheel work. And given customers’ past ability to interchange different BMW steering wheels, it seems reasonable they’ll eventually be able to do the same on the new i3.