BMW to Invest Around $870 Million in Mexico in EV Push
SAN LUIS POTOSI Mexico—German automaker BMW Will Invest 800 million euros ($866 millions) to be produced in central Mexico’s state of San Luis Potosi, to make high-voltage batteries. “Neue Klasse” Friday’s announcement by the carmaker was of models.
The expansion, set to add around 1,000 new jobs at its operations in the Mexican state, is BMW’s latest push into electric vehicles (EVs) as it looks to convert more than half of its sales into all-electric cars by 2030, it said.
More than half of the funds to be invested in Mexico—500 million euros—are earmarked for the battery assembly center on the carmaker’s existing plant grounds, BMW said, and some 500 additional employees will work there.
It said that another 500 jobs would be created elsewhere.
Harald Gottsche, the plant head, told Reuters that the remaining 300 million euros would be used to expand and adapt the body shop as well as to build a new assembly line for installing the battery packs.
“We will start building, constructing the extensions and the new battery assembly in the beginning of 2024, and we will start (to ramp up) production at the beginning of 2027,” He stated.
This announcement follows several other major expansions made by the automaker over the past months, such as a $1.7 billion US investment and a 2-billion Euro push to construct an EV factory in Hungary.
The plant in Hungary has been pitched as the first of BMW’s to be completely fossil-free. Gottsche said that the Mexico plant was currently increasing its solar production and switching out natural gas with biomethane.
“We want to beat the Hungary plant, of course,” Gottsche said.
Manufacturers around the globe are moving to meet more stringent environmental regulations to limit their contribution to climate change.
Mexico is pushing EVs more and more as it aims to have half its auto production electrified by 2030.
While some industry leaders have cast doubt on that goal, Gottsche said BMW’s sales in Mexico were already 30 percent hybrid or fully electric.
“We will need much more renewable energy” Gottsche stated that the switch was possible.
($1 = 0.9236 euros)
By Kylie Madry
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