BMW will stop making internal combustion engines at its Munich main plant by 2024, its production manager said at a conference that marked the start of production of its electric i4 model on Friday.
The ICE NYSE engines currently made in Munich will be produced at BMW’s factories in Austria and the United Kingdom in the future, said production manager Milan Nedeljkovic, although the cars using the engines will still be assembled at the BMW plant. Munich.
Still, by 2023, at least half of the vehicles produced in Munich would be electrified, with either battery-electric or plug-in hybrid, the company said.
BMW has set a goal for at least 50% of global new car sales to be electric by 2030, and CEO Oliver Zipse said at a conference last week that the company would be ready with an all-electric offering if any markets ban ICEs by then.
The battery-electric i4 car was built on a joint assembly line with ICE and hybrid models such as the BMW 3 Series Sedan and Touring, the company said, a change that cost 200 million euros ($ 233 million) of investment in infrastructure from production.
A similar mixed assembly line is already underway at the automaker’s Dingolfing plant, which produces the BMW iX alongside the hybrid and ICE models.
The new model will take priority in making decisions about where to allocate the scarce chips, said plant manager Peter Weber. The company was well supplied with other raw materials, Nedeljkovic added.
BMW has previously said it expects to produce 70,000 to 90,000 fewer cars than it could have sold this year due to the chip shortage that has plagued automakers around the world.
He also pledged to cut emissions from transport logistics at the Munich plant, the company’s largest, in the coming years, without giving a specific date.
This will be achieved by making greater use of rail transportation and battery-powered trucks to transport vehicles in and around the plant, he said.
(This story corrects to state that internal combustion engines, not cars, will be phased out from the Munich plant)
