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BMW plans e-motor production in Steyr

BMW is planning the pre-series production of e-motors in Steyr. Up to 600,000 engines will be produced there annually by 2028. The objective is to expand the location as a competence center for e-mobility. This represents an important milestone for the Austrian automotive industry.

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As Tom Arnold reported in industriemagazin.at (WEKA Industrie Medien GmbH), BMW has now officially started pre-series production of the new electric engines at the Steyr site. The engines will be used for internal testing in the future. The series production of the new generation of e-motors will start in one year, as recently announced at the press conference.  

 E-mobility generates around 50 percent of sales   

“We expect that around 50 percent of sales will be generated by e-mobility by 2030,” Klaus von Moltke stated, Head of the BMW plant in Steyr. “It will be and remain part of our mobility.” When it came to the question of how long BMW will continue to develop combustion engines, the panel was hesitant. In this context, Moltke emphasized that the company would be guided by market conditions, whereby a possible ban on combustion engines in the EU in 2035 would be an important factor.  

 Investment volume of around 1 billion euros  

As planned since 2022, around half of the new production space for the future production of electric engines has now been completed. From 2028, up to 600,000 engines are to be built annually in Steyr on an area of around 45,000 square meters. The investment volume amounts to 1 billion euros, of which around three quarters will flow directly into production. With the start of pre-series production, “two thirds of the project's progress” has already been achieved, was mentioned further in the press statement. The engines of the new class are due to hit the roads from the third quarter of 2025 but will first be extensively tested - both on test benches and in real road traffic and on racetracks.  

Competence center for the 6th generation of electric engines  

The plant in Steyr is to be expanded into a competence center for the sixth generation of e-engines. BMW currently employs 4,500 people at this location, a number that is to be secured in the future. Whether this number will continue to rise depends on the market development, Moltke stated. In the engineering department, two thirds of employees already specialized in e-mobility, while the proportion in production is still lower.  

Josef Honeder, head of the development site in Steyr, recalled that work on the basic concept had already begun in 2020. “We see ourselves at the beginning of a long development process for electric engines, just as it was for combustion engines 100 years ago.” The company is particularly proud of the fact that key components such as the housing and the inverter can be manufactured locally.  

Hydrogen: a drive technology for BMW  

Plant manager von Moltke also confirmed that hydrogen also plays a role as a drive technology for BMW. Although research is being carried out in this area, there is not yet a concrete order in this direction for the Steyr site. The plant currently continues to produce around one million combustion engines per year for the global market. “Our task is to position ourselves broadly and to work on decarbonization,” said von Moltke.  

About BMW Austria  

BMW employs a total of around 8,000 people in Austria. In 2023, the Austrian BMW companies generated sales of around 8.9 billion euros. The plant in Steyr also plays a central role in the development of new driving technologies. 

 

Source: BMW Group Werk Steyr (bmwgroup-werke.com)

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BMW Group Werk Landshut

Ohmstraße 2
84030 Landshut
Germany

Telephone: +49 89 382-0

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