BMW is completely converting its main factory to electric cars

BMW wants to soon only produce electric cars at its main factory in Munich. The group is investing several hundred million euros in this ambitious project, as the factory will be renovated while operations continue. This investment can be worth it. Because if you look at the sales figures for 2023, the share of electric cars in particular will increase significantly, which will give BMW a big plus.

Investment focus on sustainable mobility

Sales of electric models in particular rose sharply at BMW. Their share increased to 15 percent. This is an increase in the growth of electric cars of more than 92 percent compared to the previous year, according to the Munich car manufacturer. 330,596 fully electric vehicles were handed over to customers. In the fourth quarter alone there were 113,458. “We continue to see high demand for our fully electric products,” explains BMW board member Jochen Goller.

BMW now draws its conclusions from the sharply increased demand for electric cars.

According to its own information, the group aims to sell more than half a million fully electric vehicles by 2024. But that’s just the beginning: “We are investing 650 million euros here and will therefore exclusively produce fully electric vehicles in our main factory from the end of 2027,” says production director Milan Nedeljkovic in a press release. Engine production is moved to England and Austria. 1,200 BMW employees have already been retrained or transferred for the project.

The combustion engine era at BMW will soon be a thing of the past

75 years after the introduction of the BMW 501, the era of vehicles with combustion engines is coming to an end. According to production director Nedeljkovic, BMW will launch six new fully electric models in 2023 alone. This is how the group wants to “shape the future,” according to the production director.

This increase in electric car sales in Germany puts BMW in third place, behind Volkswagen and Tesla. According to the Center of Automotive Management, Mercedes and Audi follow in fourth and fifth place. However, the car experts point out that the share of electric cars among German brands is below the market average. This increased from 17.7 percent in 2022 to 18.4 percent.

BMW achieves record sales of 2.55 million cars

BMW sold more cars last year than ever before: after a strong final quarter, global sales rose 6.5 percent to around 2.55 million vehicles, the company announced last week.

However, there could be a small setback for the e-car industry in 2024: the federal government decided to stop financing for electric cars as early as December 18, 2023. A subsidy via the environmental bonus was actually planned until the end of 2025.

(with material from afp)