The BMW Group Plant Steyr is set to deploy €1 billion for an electrified future by developing the next generation of e-drives from 2025 to 2030. The Steyr plant in Upper Austria will remain the German luxury car maker’s leading drive-train location.
Milan Nedeljkovic, a Board of Management of BMW AG member, said the plant has developed and manufactured combustion engines for BMW and MINI brands for more than 40 years. He highlighted that one out of every two BMW Group vehicles around the world already has a “heart” built-in Steyr. The company is looking to develop and produce the next generation of e-drives in Steyr from 2025.
Nedeljkovic believes that years of experience and a wealth of drive train expertise make the plant an ideal location for future sustainable mobility.
Austrian Chancellor Karl Nehammer outlined that the manufacturing industry is an important partner to strengthening the European country as a business hub. It creates jobs and drives innovation. The Chancellor said the manufacturing industry is an effective and sustainable fighter against climate change. He acknowledges the BMW Group as Austria’s model company that functions like a powerful engine for a sustainable future. The carmaker has once again proved that climate protection and economic growth are not contradictory. Both can work together.
Plant Steyr’s remodeling is taking place in line with the car maker’s principles of the BMW iFACTORY – Lean, Green, and Digital. Lean and digital represents the use of state-of-the-art production methods for high efficiency, flexibility, and quality. And green ensures a responsible approach to the environment. As such, the plant will meet 100% of its energy requirements from renewable sources by 2025. It will use green power and heat from regional biomass. The e-drives will be from net carbon neutral production. BMW is creating the best possible conditions for carbon-neutral mobility from 2025.
E-drive production is an important milestone
Alexander Susanek, the managing director of BMW Group Plant Steyr, said the e-drive production is the most important milestone for the company since its groundbreaking in 1979. The plant aims to provide 600,000 e-drives per year, and simultaneously maintain high production capacity utilization for diesel and petrol engines. Susanek shared that by 2030, about half of their 4,400 employees will work in electromobility. This will be an enormous step towards securing jobs in Steyr for the long term.
The plant will produce core components for the innovative, highly-integrated e-drive train – the rotor and stator, the transmission, the inverter, and the housing. These will then be installed on two new assembly lines. Existing production areas will be refurbished to perform these tasks and new spaces will also be created.
BMW will initiate a two-story production hall to house two assembly lines for e-drives, including a transmission assembly. It will also be used for manufacturing power electronics with clean room technology. Another similar building will be for expanding logistics areas. As such, the total production area will be about 60,000 square meters. The BMW Group will allocate around €710 million in funding for this project by 2030.
