bmw invests around one billion euros in its engine plant in Steyr, Austria. The Munich car manufacturer announced on Monday that the plant for the production and development of electric drives should be equipped with the money by 2030. Production director Milan Nedeljkovic (53) said that parts for electric cars should be built in the plant from 2025.
BMW’s largest engine plant is in Steyr, where the engines for around one million cars are built every year. BMW will be launching the “New Class” from 2025 and expects to increase the proportion of electric cars to increase significantly. By the end of the decade, Munich expects at least every second BMW to be electric. However, unlike most of its competitors, the group has not set a formal end date for combustion vehicles.
Plant manager Alexander Susanek (45) described this step as the most important milestone since the foundation stone was laid in 1979. “In the future we will produce over 600,000 electric drives per year – parallel to the persistently high production capacity utilization of diesel and petrol engines. By 2030, around half of our 4,400 employees will be be active in the field of electromobility. This is also an extremely important step in order to secure jobs here at the BMW Group location in Steyr in the long term,” says Susanek. In the future, all core components of the electric drive machine will be produced in Steyr, including the rotor and stator, the gearbox, the inverter and the housing.
According to BMW, existing production areas will be converted and new areas created for these tasks: A two-storey production hall will provide space for two lines for assembling the electric drives, including gearbox assembly. The new building will also be used for the manufacture of power electronics using clean room technology. A second new building will then expand the logistics areas.
“We are strengthening the Steyr site by further expanding our expertise in electric drive technology. For the first time, a completely new electric drive machine is being developed here in Austria,” emphasized BMW Board Member for Development Frank Weber (55). According to the company, the development site will spend around 230 million euros by 2030 on the new high-performance e-drives. A third of the 700 developers in Steyr are already working in the field of e-mobility. By 2030, this proportion will rise to around 90 percent.