The Munich carmaker BMW is expanding in the USA and investing 1.7 billion dollars in its plant in South Carolina. Because electric cars in particular are to be manufactured there, a supplier is also building a factory for battery cells nearby.
BMW is investing $1.7 billion in its Spartanburg plant and a new battery factory to build electric cars in the United States. CEO Oliver Zipse also announced that the Japanese cell manufacturer Envision AESC would build a battery cell factory in the region to supply BMW. The annual capacity of this battery cell factory is up to 30 gigawatt hours.
By 2030, BMW wants to produce at least six fully electric SUV models in Spartanburg. In preparation, a billion dollars will be invested in the plant in the US state of South Carolina, the group announced. BMW is building an assembly center for high-voltage batteries in nearby Woodruff for another $700 million.
As Zipse said in Spartanburg, Envision AESC will build a new battery cell factory in South Carolina and supply BMW with next-generation lithium-ion battery cells. This is “an important step in strengthening the BMW Group’s regional supply chains. The locally based battery cell factory in conjunction with the expansion of e-vehicle production in the USA will result in new supply chains, new networks for subcontractors and new jobs arise from which the entire region benefits,” said BMW.
The carmaker basically wants to buy battery cells where production takes place and has already announced four cell factories in Europe and China. For this, orders in the tens of billions were awarded to the partners CATL and EVE Energy. BMW does not have its own cell factories because the technology is developing rapidly and that would be a brake on innovation for a small car manufacturer in view of the necessary sums. Mercedes-Benz opened a battery factory for its SUV plant in Alabama in March and announced a partnership with Envision AESC to build a cell factory in the United States.
The batteries for the BMW X3 plug-in hybrid are currently being manufactured at the Spartanburg plant. Almost 70,000 electrified cars were produced there last year. BMW employs more than 11,000 people in Spartanburg and can build up to 450,000 vehicles a year.
