The BMW Group is speeding up the shift towards electromobility and strengthening its global network for production of electrified vehicles. The company is investing €400 million in a new vehicle assembly at the main plant in Munich.

The new assembly in Munich will be built on the site currently used for engine production. The combustion engines with four, six, eight and 12 cylinders produced there will be manufactured at the company’s locations in Steyr in Austria and Hams Hall in the UK going forward.

Rendering of the new assembly hall.

We are systematically implementing our electrification strategy. By the end of 2022, each of our German plants will be producing at least one fully electric vehicle.

—Milan Nedeljković, member of the Board of Management of BMW AG responsible for Production

The future assembly and its production processes will be designed for a new cluster architecture geared towards electric drive trains.

This architecture will be in use from the middle of the decade. It will ramp up for the first time at our future plant in Debrecen, Hungary, before being rolled out across our global production network in stages.

—Milan Nedeljković

BMW is basing its realignment of the production network on three priorities: transformation towards electromobility and digitalization; efficiency of processes and structures; and sustainability in production and logistics.

The expansion of electromobility in the production network continues. The Chinese plant in Dadong also began producing the BMW iX3 this year. From next year, the BMW i4 and BMW iX will come off the production lines in Munich and Dingolfing respectively. Fully-electric variants of the new BMW 7 Series and the future BMW 5 Series are also ready to go in Dingolfing. Plant Regensburg will also start manufacturing the new BMW X1 in 2022, which will be available both with an combustion engine and a fully-electric drive train. From 2023, BMW Group Plant Leipzig, which has built the iconic BMW i3 electric car since 2013, will produce the successor to the MINI Countryman, with a combustion engine and as a fully-electric variant.

At the same time, the BMW Group is expanding its capacity for manufacturing electric drive trains. The company is investing in production equipment for highly integrated e-drives and high-voltage batteries at the Competence Center for E-Drive Production in Dingolfing. The Leipzig and Regensburg locations are also currently setting up equipment for production of battery modules and high-voltage batteries from 2021. In parallel, the company is also increasing production capacity for e-drive housings at Plant Steyr.

Sustainability in production. The BMW Group has reduced resource consumption and CO₂ emissions in vehicle production by 50% since 2006. The amount of CO₂ generated per vehicle will be reduced by another 40% from 2019 levels by 2025 and 80% by 2030.

Sustainability is a fundamental aspect of modern production. By the end of this year, our plants worldwide will obtain their electricity exclusively, 100%, from renewable energy sources.

—Milan Nedeljković

The plants will take advantage of the best options at each location—from solar energy in Oxford, Mexico and China, to biogas in South Africa, to wind power in Leipzig.

In addition to using renewable energies, water, solvent, gas and electricity consumption will be further reduced in parallel. For example, the company is using data analytics to minimize machines’ power consumption. The amount of waste per vehicle is also continuously decreasing, making the BMW Group one of the world’s most sustainable automotive manufacturers. The BMW Group was positioned as sector leader in the “Automobiles” category of the Dow Jones Sustainability Indices World and Europe, announced just a few days ago.