For more than 100 years, BMW’s factories in Bavaria have turned out some of the most iconic performance cars in history. For the next 100 years, the automaker is retooling everything it does for performance of a different sort: batteries, electric motors, and even robots to make them.
At BMW, it’s a high-stakes and high-investment game that hangs on what it believes is the future mix of electrified and internal combustion vehicles that will keep it profitable into the next century.
Though BMW is one of the smaller automotive manufacturers—it isn’t Audi, which can lean on the massive Volkswagen Group, for example—the company’s focus and belief in electrification is remarkable. That’s doubly true in a political climate that is intent on backsliding into the days of pollutive petrochemical transportation.
Last week in Munich, BMW revealed more details about the battery cells, the so-called “Energy Master,” and the motors that will underpin its upcoming Neue Klasse electric vehicles. As BMW continues to trickle out information about the new platform and features, the company is going through a massive transformation across its supply chains and manufacturing locations around the world.
Photo by: BMW
I went to Munich last week for BMW’s Tech Day and a behind-the-scenes look at how BMW is changing its oldest manufacturing lines to keep up with EV demand. Those initiatives include keeping up with, developing, and testing new battery technology and borrowing lessons from the tech industry to build new battery controller modules in the face of a slower-growth EV market.
The new technology will underpin future BMW vehicles, including a new SUV and electric 3 Series-sized sport sedan for the U.S. While those will get produced and delivered first in Europe (starting this summer), we won’t see them stateside until sometime in 2026 at the earliest.
Photo by: BMW
How BMW is Keeping Up With Battery Tech
Ever since the pandemic constrained supply chains, automakers around the globe have rethought how they bring electric vehicles and their batteries to market.
The shift represents a considerable investment from the industry. In the U.S. alone, more than $112 billion has been pumped into various local electrification projects thanks in large part to President Biden’s infrastructure law and the Inflation Reduction Act (IRA).
Companies like Mercedes, Toyota, General Motors, and others have carved out facilities in the U.S., dedicated to battery technology research, with the aim of creating batteries that will eventually rely less on heavy metals and non-renewable sources and to pursue future breakthroughs in solid-state technology. BMW is no different. It’s been able to build on the success and learnings from early electric vehicles like the i3 and the i8, both of which were widely available to customers well before other mainstream manufacturers outside of Tesla.
Photo by: BMW
In Parsdorf, Germany, about 15 minutes outside of Munich, BMW built a 16,000+ square foot Cell Manufacturing Competence Center (CMCC) where it takes learnings from its Battery Cell Competence Center (BCCC) and puts them onto a pilot manufacturing line that can produce limited runs of batteries like the 4695 and 46120 round batteries that will underpin the upcoming Neue Klasse.
These upcoming batteries, developed by BMW, are made of a slurry applied to a thin copper sheeting, which is then rolled into cylinders, capped, and filled with an electrolyte. The BCCC works closely with academics around the world to create new battery technology, and the CMCC scales and tests new battery technology for future EVs.
BMW also has a Cell Recycling Competence Center (CRCC). This facility uses both hydrometallurgy and pyrometallurgy, along with other battery recycling techniques, to separate used batteries into their elemental parts so that they can be reused in future batteries. The aim to create a fully circular battery production and recycling system that BMW can continue to use well into the future.
With all this investment in facilities, human talent, and raw materials, you’d think that BMW might consider becoming a battery manufacturer and supplying other industries with their battery technology–or at least in-house battery production, as is the case with the Heart of Joy supercomputer that will underpin the Neue Klasse. But that’s not the case.
Photo by: BMW
The goal of the three internal groups is to share any findings and electrification technology that the company develops with vendors to see if they can meet BMW’s rigorous requirements and produce the battery technology consistently and at scale. One of the spokespeople at the event in Parsdorf said that the aerospace industry approached BMW about their battery technology but that the company had turned down the opportunity.
In the U.S., BMW will roll out the battery technology being developed and scaled in Germany at battery plants around the world–a process that the company calls “local-for-local.” For example, its brand-new battery plant, called Plant Woodruff in South Carolina, is under construction and progressing quickly. It represents a $700 million investment in the area near BMW’s Plant Spartanburg, which builds and exports the most X3s in the world.
The investment also requires massive retraining of thousands of employees who build BMWs all over the world. To scale training without disrupting the manufacturing line, BMW is leveraging a number of technologies, including gaming platforms, to make a seamless transition.
Over the holidays, Plant Spartanburg, right next door to still-under-construction Plant Woodruff, began to transition to building electrified X3s on the same line as the ICE X3s. BMW leveraged video gaming platforms like Unreal Engine and VR to train its manufacturing staff during the short break. Associates built a unique VR training program on Unreal Engine to give associates the opportunity to learn the new processes for EV assembly. The technology allowed BMW to keep the production line up and moving while making the transition.
Photo by: BMW
Retrofitting And Rebuilding Plants And Production For Neue Klasse
BMW’s plant in the heart of Munich is more than 100 years old, and it is currently in the process of being simultaneously torn down and rebuilt to handle more electric models on the three-story line. It represents a massive investment of €650 million ($680 million) and a mind-melting logistics challenge.
The plant currently produces 1,000 vehicles a day, and despite the construction going on all over the 4.3 million square foot area, the line has not stopped. BMW currently builds both ICE vehicles and electrified vehicles on the same line in Munich.
Photo by: BMW
The BMW plant in Landshut, about an hour northwest of Munich, is also undergoing significant transformation. Landshut, which specializes in lightweight powertrain materials and construction, is currently manufacturing the lightweight aluminum casings for the new asynchronous and electrically excited motors that BMW will use in the Neue Klasse. It’s also where all of the new “Energy Master” controllers for the battery packs will be built for the world.
Photo by: BMW
BMW has leveraged lessons and manufacturing techniques from the tech industry to ensure that all those Energy Master control modules that roll off the line meet a high standard of quality and reliability. For example, the Energy Master is built in a clean room environment, primarily by robots, to ensure that no dust or debris gets into the controllers. The company is currently working with robotic arms made by KUKA, but also experimenting with smaller robots that can gently pick up, grasp, and plug-in wiring harnesses in the Energy Master, a task that is currently handled by humans in the plant.
Once the Energy Masters are assembled and sealed, human experts then review the robot’s work. Then the Energy Masters will be shipped from Landshut around the world to be attached to the batteries built locally for the Neue Klasse vehicles.
According to the company, the plant will start production at scale in August.
BMW Neue Klasse EV Concept
A Globally Flexible Manufacturing Line for EVs
The automotive manufacturing sector was rocked by supply challenges and chip shortages during the pandemic, and many, like BMW, have taken the lessons learned during those years and applied them to create more resilient local supply chains.
One of the biggest challenges that the company sees to EVs and electrification is the increasing regionalization (like President Trump’s proposed tariffs on foreign imports). To prevent significant supply chain upheaval and cut costs, the company has invested in both things like the battery technology that will underpin the Neue Klasse and the manufacturing and assembly locations for their new EVs.
“I think that’s one of the questions everybody has in mind these days,” BMW board member Joachim Post said during a roundtable discussion in Landshut. “The good thing is, we don’t have to change our strategy.”
Post said that the company has a “technology-open approach, and a global footprint all over the world.” It can use all of that to tailor individual offerings to the needs of each market.
“From the supply chain side, we are also creating local-for-local,” Post said. “Our philosophy is that production follows the markets, and the supply chain follows the production. We have a huge footprint in the U.S. We are the largest exporter by value from the U.S. and Germany, and sometimes people forget these things.”
Photo by: BMW
In spite of EV headwinds here in the U.S., thanks to the current administration’s current war on EVs and aims of rolling back Biden’s IRA and infrastructure work, BMW continues to stay the course. When asked about the impact that tariffs might have on the company, Post was unfazed, stating that the company believes in the future of electrification and that it will continue to provide customer choice. That includes future BMW models, and their manufacturing lines will continue to support everything from full ICE to fully electric vehicles.
“It’s a growth market, and we are participating very well due to the wide portfolio we have in every, for us, relevant segment, at least one BEV,” Post said. “I think that’s a clear advantage, and this goes hand in hand with our technology-open approach because markets and customers decide which technology they want.”
Photo by: BMW
Abigail Bassett is an award-winning and experienced freelance journalist, writer, on-air talent and television producer with more than two decades of diverse experience. A winner of numerous awards, including two Emmys, her bylines have appeared in The Atlantic, Elle Magazine, National Geographic, Travel & Leisure, Fast Company, Inc., Fortune, The Verge, TechCrunch, CNN and more.
