BMW has introduced that the primary series-produced i4 has rolled off the manufacturing line on the virtually 100-year-old BMW Group Plant Munich. This represents a significant milestone for the corporate, as its residence plant now manufactures all drive variants (petrol, diesel, plug-in hybrid and totally electrical) on a single meeting line.
“For the plant and group, the launch of the BMW i4 is a milestone on the highway to electrical mobility,” stated Milan Nedeljkovi?, BMW AG board member for manufacturing. “By 2023 greater than half of all autos from our Munich facility can have an electrified drive. The bulk can be totally electrical. So, Munich goes totally electrical,” he added.
The common i4 was first revealed in March this year, with two variants named (eDrive35 and eDrive40) initially, adopted by the M50 variant, which is BMW M division’s first electrical car. Each are inbuilt the identical Munich facility, together with the three Sequence Sedan and Touring, the M3 and the 4 Sequence Gran Coupe.
BMW says that 90% of the present programs within the Munich physique store can be utilized for the i4, though extra ones have been required for the EV’s ground meeting and rear finish. A brand new, totally automated battery meeting system that works from beneath was additionally wanted to bolt the high-voltage battery pack onto the physique.
This makes use of a high-resolution digital camera system to scan the floor to make sure it’s spotless and with none impurities that might trigger injury. In whole, built-in the i4 into current manufacturing constructions required an funding of 200 million euros (round RM968 million), which additionally serves as a basis for the upcoming Neue Klasse fashions designed purely for electrical powertrains that can be inbuilt Munich and different vegetation from 2025 onwards.
Apart from the brand new i4, the Munich plant additionally will get elevated digitalisation, with 3D scans carried out to acquire a full set of the constructing’s fundamental digital information, which has already been performed on the Spartanburg and Regensburg vegetation, simply to call just a few, whereas Plant Dingolfing is presently present process the method.
By the top of 2022, the construction of all the foremost automobile vegetation within the BMW Group manufacturing community can have been scanned, and digital information can be obtainable for everybody. The BMW Group already utilises digital planning instruments to plan buildings and programs in the present day, together with RFID-tagged elements for elevated effectivity and high quality throughout manufacturing.
Sustainability in manufacturing is one other space that BMW Group is concentrated on, with the purpose of decreasing CO2 emissions and useful resource consumption. Between 2006 and 2020, useful resource consumption per automobile produced fell greater than half, and CO2 emissions have dropped by 78%. The goal is to scale back CO2 emissions per car produced by one other 80% by 2030.
At Plant Munich, measures embrace utilizing a reverse osmosis system to scale back freshwater consumption, which was put in within the spring of this 12 months. The brand new system is anticipated to scale back whole annual freshwater consumption by greater than six million litres. The holistic method may also see native emissions from transport logistics at Plant Munich regularly fall to zero because of better use of rail transport and battery-electric vehicles.
BMW additionally confirmed that manufacturing of four-cylinder engines can be relocated to Hams Corridor, UK and Steyr, Austria by the top of the 12 months. The relocation of engine manufacturing as an entire from Munich will attain completion by 2024 on the newest.
