The company’s business strategy to supply its global demand for units without internal combustion puts Mexico ahead.
Starting in 2027, BMW’s plant in San Luis Potosí will start producing lithium batteries and electric cars, as part of the business strategy that the carmaker is implementing to supply the global demand for this type of units.
For this, the company formally announced investments of more than 800 million euros (around 864 million dollars), the second highest since the construction of the plant in Mexico in 2016, and for which it invested more than one billion dollars.
This will allow it to turn the country into one of its main fully electrified manufacturing centers.
The San Luis Potosi plant in Mexico will produce all-electric Neue Klasse models in the future and is starting up its own high-voltage battery production.”
*The plant is being expanded for the new production lines and will be powered by sustainable energy.
In a conference, Milan Nedeljkovic, member of BMW’s board of directors, assured that with the investment and the start-up of the new production, at least one thousand new jobs are expected to be created in addition to the three thousand that already exist, as well as the arrival of additional investments for the installation of local suppliers.
BMW’s main objective is that by 2030 more than 50% of its global sales will be electric vehicles, in order to integrate itself in an accelerated manner to the evolution towards electromobility.
During the ceremony for the announcement of the investment, President Andrés Manuel López Obrador acknowledged that the future belongs to clean energies, mainly in the automotive industry, since “the day will come when it will not be possible to sell vehicles that are not powered by renewable energies”.
He said that the plant’s success is assured and promised BMW executives that there will be no obstacles or problems, and thanked them for their “trust”.
All the agreements that are being made to face the problems of climate change are already demanding: that fossil energies are no longer used, that the option and the future is in lithium, in batteries, in chips, in electric cars, that is the future and it is good that they are moving forward”, he said.
HIGH VOLTAGE
Of the 800 million euros that the automaker will be spending, 500 million will be destined to the construction of a plant for the manufacture of high voltage batteries.
Although the production capacity has not yet been defined, it is expected that with this project they will be able to supply their vehicle production network and thus take advantage, not only of the geographical location, but also of the country’s trade agreements, mainly the TMEC.
Production will start in 2027, and will be supplied with lithium from Australia and Argentina, where BMW has agreements of 300 million dollars per year to have this material.
GOOD WORK
BMW’s San Luis Potosí plant started operations in 2019, has three thousand employees and produces the BMW 3 Series, 2 Series Coupé and the new M2 models.
The plant has a capacity to produce 175 thousand cars annually.
BMW also announced investments of 1.7 billion dollars for the expansion of its plants in the United States to manufacture electric cars and lithium batteries.
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