The brand new BMW 5 Sequence, together with the all-new fully-electric BMW i5, celebrated the official begin of manufacturing at BMW Group Plant Dingolfing.
The positioning in Decrease Bavaria, which is celebrating 50 years of BMW automotive manufacturing in 2023, has now ramped up its third fully-electric mannequin in two years, following the BMW iX and BMW i7. Pure battery-electric automobiles’ share of whole manufacturing on the BMW Group’s largest European manufacturing location is projected to extend to over 40 % subsequent yr.
Milan Nedeljković, member of the Board of Administration of BMW AG liable for Manufacturing, defined in Dingolfing: “The BMW i5 and our plant in Dingolfing are good examples of how the BMW Group is reworking itself for e-mobility and growing our crops on the street to the BMW iFACTORY. E-mobility is the brand new regular at our crops worldwide. Between 2021 and 2024, we can have built-in a complete of 15 fully-electric automobiles into our manufacturing community.”
To realize this, the BMW Group is counting on versatile architectures and providing most of its fashions to prospects all over the world with totally different drive practice variants. The BMW 5 Sequence – just like the BMW 7 Sequence and BMW X1 earlier than it – shall be out there with a fully-electric drive practice or inner combustion engine, or as a plug-in hybrid. This requires a excessive diploma of flexibility, however permits the corporate to utilise its crops’ capability effectively and modify its providing to buyer demand. Nedeljković: “We’re following the market. Buyer necessities decide what the precise drive practice combine seems like.” This has been made doable by in depth investments within the manufacturing community. The BMW Group has invested multiple billion euros in integrating the BMW iX, BMW 7 Sequence and BMW 5 Sequence on the Dingolfing car plant.
Over the following few years, Plant Director Christoph Schröder expects the launch of the brand new BMW 5 Sequence to spice up the plant’s manufacturing numbers: “The BMW 5 Sequence has historically been Dingolfing’s core mannequin and can present precious impetus for volumes once more this time.” In 2022, greater than 280,000 automobiles got here off the meeting line at Plant Dingolfing. Over the approaching yr, with the beginning of manufacturing for the BMW 5 Sequence Touring and the eighth-generation BMW M5 fashions, Schröder expects that quantity to climb to nicely over 300,000 automobiles. Stefan Danner, Deputy Chairman of the Dingolfing Works Council, provides: “Together with the profitable transition to e-mobility, the BMW 5 Sequence is central to long-term capability utilisation at our plant, in addition to securing jobs.”
Of the roughly 12 million BMW automobiles constructed on the location to this point, a complete of eight million, i.e. two thirds, are BMW 5 Sequence fashions. That is carefully tied to the historical past of Plant Dingolfing. Precisely 50 years in the past, again in September 1973, the very first BMW automotive rolled off the manufacturing line on the new car plant – a first-generation tangerine-coloured BMW 520i. Since then, the plant in Decrease Bavaria has develop into some of the distinguished places within the automotive business – and an engine for financial improvement within the area. The annual wage invoice for the greater than 18,000 BMW workers in Dingolfing is over one billion euros, and the plant contracts with round 1,000 suppliers from Decrease Bavaria. Along with investing within the Dingolfing car plant, the BMW Group has additionally channelled multiple billion euros into manufacturing of electrical powertrain elements on the location since 2015.
As with the choice to construct Plant Dingolfing through the oil disaster of the early Nineteen Seventies, the entrepreneurial imaginative and prescient of the BMW Group remains to be very a lot in proof on the web site right now. Because of in depth funding, Plant Dingolfing is extraordinarily nicely outfitted for the longer term – and the transition to the BMW iFACTORY is tangible. The perfect instance of this improvement within the areas of “lean” and “digital” is profitable the famend Automotive Lean Manufacturing Award in 2022. The Expertise Meeting was recognised for the rollout of clever digital camera methods for high quality monitoring (AIQX), for instance, in addition to sensible logistics options and the IT platform IPS-i for identification and localisation of objects. Final yr, the plant additionally piloted Automated Driving In-Plant (AFW), deploying the brand new BMW 7 Sequence alongside routes between the meeting corridor and the end space. That is being rolled out on a bigger scale with the launch of the brand new BMW 5 Sequence.
Within the subject of sustainability – the “inexperienced” facet of the BMW iFACTORY – the positioning has stepped up its actions in several areas lately: from selling biodiversity on plant grounds, to stopping and recycling waste so solely round 600 grams of waste for disposal stay per car produced, as much as and together with decarbonisation measures. Along with sourcing inexperienced energy, the placement has additionally signed a far-reaching contract for the provision of locally-produced warmth from regional biomass for heating functions. This may meet round half the plant’s course of scorching water necessities from the center of the last decade onwards, decreasing its CO2 emissions by 10-15% consequently.
Jul 24, 2023