IIn 1952, the first car was built at the BMW plant in Munich; it was a BMW 501 with an in-line six-cylinder. In October last year, an internal combustion engine was assembled for the last time at the main plant of the white and blue automobile group. Production director Milan Nedeljković is standing in hall 140 on this Wednesday morning, it is cold and the excavators will soon be rolling in here. “It’s about transformation,” says Nedeljković matter-of-factly. Changes have been a reliable companion of the Bayerische Motorenwerke since it was founded in 1916, first building aircraft engines, then motorcycles and finally cars with gasoline and diesel engines.
A “new era”
Now, according to Nedeljković, a new era is beginning again. Then the factory near the BMW high-rise, the so-called four-cylinder, will no longer produce cars with combustion engines. “We are investing 650 million euros here and will only produce fully electric vehicles in our main plant from the end of 2027,” Nedeljković told journalists.
Currently, combustion engines and electric cars coexist peacefully in the factory halls. In parallel to the battery-powered BMW i4, which has been built since 2021, a number of conventional 3-series and 4-series cars are still rolling off the assembly line. But that should end soon. After seven decades, the engine factory has to make room for a new assembly hall on the narrow factory site opposite the Munich Olympic Stadium in which the “New Class” vehicles, which are designed for electric drives, are built. The old, dilapidated Hall 140 would have been demolished anyway, says Nedeljković, regardless of the “New Class”.
Focus on electromobility
No question, BMW's focus is clearly on electromobility. Every second BMW that rolls off the assembly line in Munich is already fully electric. Nedeljković remembers the start of the first “New Class”, which set new standards in production with the BMW 1500 in 1962. Several model series followed her. This era is coming to an end and a new one is beginning, says Nedeljković.
The 54-year-old manager avoids the term turning point. The Federal Chancellor visited four weeks ago. For Olaf Scholz (SPD), BMW's 100-year-old parent plant, which has made the leap into electromobility, served as evidence of how the challenges of transformation in Germany can be overcome. And that's how the BMW management sees it, despite all the emotionality.
The Munich BMW plant will be the second location in the group's production network that exclusively produces electric vehicles. The first is currently being completed in Debrecen, Hungary. The first fully electric versions of the “New Class” will be assembled in the new building near the Romanian border in just over a year.
BMW had previously aligned its own production network so that both battery-powered cars and conventional vehicles could be assembled on one line, depending on demand. The company management calls this “technology openness”. BMW had taken a different path than its competitor Volkswagen, which had electric models produced separately on separate production lines.
BMW boss Oliver Zipse has been preaching the doctrine of openness to technology for years. According to his wishes, the combustion engine will continue to exist alongside the electric drive for many years to come. BMW is still not setting an exit date like VW, Mercedes-Benz and other competitors have set. And according to Nedeljković, the BMW plant in Munich will remain the only existing location that is undergoing the transformation into a pure electrical factory – at least for the time being.
#Change #electromobility #era #BMW #headquarters
