The BMW Group will usher in a new era of electromobility beginning in 2025 with the NEUE KLASSE, the next generation of vehicles.
BMW is systematically gearing its production network towards electromobility. The company’s plant in Debrecen, Hungary, will begin producing the first NEUE KLASSE vehicles in 2025, followed by the main plant in Munich. From 2027, it will increase volumes by integrating the NEUE KLASSE at Plant San Luis Potosi. At an event with Mexican President Andres Manuel López Obrador and San Luis Potosi Governor Ricardo Gallardo Cardona in San Luis Potosi, Milan Nedeljkovic, member of the Board of Management of BMW AG responsible for Production, said.
Creating around 1,000 new jobs
The Group will usher in a new era of electromobility beginning in 2025 with the NEUE KLASSE, the next generation of vehicles. Considering this, the company makes ongoing investments in the growth of its global production network. The company is moving forward in a significant way at its San Luis Potosi, Mexico, facility. The company is currently investing an additional EUR800 million and adding roughly 1,000 new jobs to the facility where three distinct models are already being produced. The BMW Group is accelerating in this manner in its production of electric vehicles. At the same time, it is underpinning its ambition for 50 percent of global BMW vehicle sales to be fully electric before 2030.
In Mexico, a high-voltage battery assembly is being built.
The highly adaptable San Luis Potosi facility for the BMW Group was inaugurated in 2019. This implies that expanding production to include electric vehicles just requires a few modifications to body fabrication and assembly, in keeping with the creative BMW iFACTORY production philosophy. A local high-voltage battery assembly plant will be built with EUR500 million of investment expenditures. On the 85,000-square-meter plant, more than 500 additional workers will produce batteries. The NEUE KLASSE vehicle framework will incorporate this right away.
Remarkable team
According to Harald Gottsche, President and CEO of the BMW Group Facility San Luis Potosi, “With this significant investment, our plant in San Luis Potosi will play a vital role in the BMW Group’s transition to electromobility.”
The company is increasing its commitment to Mexico and its stake in its facility, not just because of its advantageous location but, more importantly, because of a strong work team that, in less than four years since operations began, has already produced three models that supply 74 global markets and stand out for their quality, he added.
The plant has expanded the number of apprenticeships in the current training year and has already begun to find and qualify new hires. At the factory, a second shift will be implemented in April 2023, providing 500 extra jobs, getting a total of around 1,000 added employees working in San Luis Potosi in the future.
Future-oriented production
The central Mexico location exemplifies not only quality and flexibility, but also the innovative and resource-saving car production for the future. The region is arid, which makes it even more imperative to use natural resources such as water sparsely. Therefore, San Luis Potosi is home to the first BMW Group paint shop that entirely recycles its processed wastewater. In other words: the water used in the painting process of the models produced here is afterwards treated and reused. Electricity comes from the factory’s 70,000-square-meter solar plant, located on the premises.
The BMW Group continues to consistently and successfully implement its master plan to produce the future in San Luis Potosi also – the BMW iFACTORY.