After releasing their U.S. plans for electric vehicles, BMW announces today a new investment on their home turf. Plant Leipzig will receive a capital infusion of 800 million euros to ramp up the production of electric cars. The investment will cover a new battery assembly line and new cell varnishing lines. BMW says the batteries will be used for its fully electric MINI Countryman. Between 2020 and the end of 2024, the BMW will have invested more than 800 million euros in establishing e-component production in Leipzig. In the future, this area of production will take up around 150,000 square meters on the site.
Preparing For First-Ever MINI Countryman Electric
In the first quarter of 2023, the first of five new battery cell coating systems will go on stream at the Leipzig site, followed by another four systems which will launch in stages until the end of the same year. The battery cells they will process will be manufactured by external suppliers working to BMW Group specifications. First of all, the lithium-ion cells will be plasma-cleansed before being coated by the specially developed systems to ensure optimum insulation. In Leipzig, the cells are assembled into battery modules on two existing module lines.A third module line is set to go on stream in the summer of 2023.
Once complete, the battery modules, connectors, control units and cooling aggregates are fitted into an aluminum casing. The number of modules and the size and shape of the casing depend on which vehicle variant they will be used in, so that each vehicle is fitted with the most suitable high-voltage battery. In the future, Plant Leipzig will also assemble high-voltage batteries when two designated assembly lines go on stream in 2024. BMW currently assembles electric batteries at four plants: Dingolfing and Regensburg in Germany, the Spartanburg plant in South Carolina, and its Shenyang plant in China.
Earlier this week, BMW announced that it would invest 1.7 billion dollars in Plant Spartanburg to prepare it for the next-generation of BMW EVs built on the electric-first platform Neue Klasse. 700 million of the U.S. investment will go towards establishing a new high-voltage battery assembly facility in Woodruff, Sc. By 2030, BMW plans to generate 50 percent of its total sales from electric vehicles.
