SAN LUIS POTOSI, Mexico — German automaker BMW will make investments 800 million euros ($866 million) within the central Mexican state of San Luis Potosi to provide high-voltage batteries and absolutely electrical “Neue Klasse” fashions, the automotivemaker stated Friday.
The growth, set so as to add round 1,000 new jobs at its operations within the Mexican state, is BMW’s newest push into electrical autos (EVs) because it appears to transform greater than half of its gross sales into all-electric automotives by 2030, it stated.
Greater than half of the funds to be invested in Mexico — 500 million euros — are earmarked for the battery meeting heart on the automotivemaker’s current plant grounds, BMW stated, and a few 500 extra workers will work there.
One other 500 jobs shall be created in different areas, it stated.
The remaining 300 million euros will go to adapting and increasing the physique store and constructing a brand new meeting line to put in the battery packs, plant head Harald Gottsche advised Reuters.
“We are going to begin constructing, developing the extensions and the brand new battery meeting to start with of 2024, and we’ll begin (to ramp up) manufacturing at the start of 2027,” he stated.
The announcement follows a number of different main expansions from the automaker in latest months, together with a $1.7 billion funding in the USA and a 2-billion-euro push to construct an EV manufacturing unit in Hungary.
The plant in Hungary has been pitched as the primary of BMW’s to be fully fossil-free. Gottsche added the Mexico plant was within the course of of accelerating its photo voltaic manufacturing on-site and swapping out pure gasoline for biomethane.
“We need to beat the Hungary plant, after all,” Gottsche stated.
The push comes as producers worldwide shift to adjust to extra stringent environmental rules to mitigate their influence on local weather change.
Mexico has additionally more and more made the push for EVs because it appears to show half of auto manufacturing electrical by 2030.
Whereas some business leaders have forged doubt on that objective, Gottsche stated BMW’s gross sales in Mexico had been already 30% hybrid or absolutely electrical.
“We are going to want far more renewable power” to make the swap, Gottsche stated.