German Manager Magazin: BMW: Carmaker increases billions in investment in new electric car factory in Hungary002159

The carmaker bmw is investing significantly more in its planned new electric car plant in Debrecen, Hungary. By 2025, the Dax group wants to invest a total of more than two billion euros in the new plant, as the Munich company announced on Friday. So far, there has been talk of a sum of more than one billion euros.

An assembly of high-voltage batteries for the cars is now to be built in addition to the plant already planned for the new electric car series “New Class” announced by BMW for the middle of the decade. According to a spokeswoman, around 1.5 billion euros are earmarked for car production and half a billion for the battery park.

Planned production of 150,000 electric cars per year

“Our investments underline the consistency with which we are implementing e-mobility,” said BMW Board Member for Production Milan Nedeljkovic (53). With the additional investment, BMW plans to create more than 500 additional jobs in battery assembly. Around 1,000 employees in the actual car production will produce up to 150,000 fully electric cars a year in Debrecen. The foundation stone for the vehicle plant was laid in the middle of this year, and construction work for battery assembly started recently.

With the all-electric “New Class”, initially in the middle segment, BMW wants to accelerate the spread of electric drives. The plant in Debrecen will be the first car factory in the world to produce exclusively with renewable energy and thus completely CO2-free. “The plant combines environmental protection and competitiveness – and that’s much more than we originally planned,” said Hungary’s Foreign and Trade Minister Péter Szijjártó (44).

As before VW and Mercedes, the carmaker has announced big plans and offensives, with public commitments to electromobility. Yet as an analysis by Manager Magazin shows

, the German car bosses have misjudged their own market for a long time. Now they are overwhelmed by the rapidity with which their hitherto highly lucrative business is changing. So players like Tesla or BYD are getting out China on and attack the German market

.

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