- Production of the fifth-gen powertrain commence at Dingolfing
- E-drive to power 500,000 EVs per year from 2022
Production of fifth-generation high-voltage batteries and battery modules that will debut in the upcoming BMW iX and the i4 has commenced at the new Dingolfing facility in Germany. And the production of the fifth-gen electric motor has been ramped up as well which has been powering the iX3 since 2020.
Although technical details of the battery pack and the electric motor remain undisclosed, we know that the iX3 has an output of 210kW (around 286 horsepower) and 400Nm. The electric X3 makes use of an 80kWh battery pack with 185Wh/km rated consumption and 460 kilometres of range under the WLTP cycle. Similar figures, more or less, could be expected from the upcoming pair.
BMW expects at least 50 per cent of the vehicles to be electrified by 2030 and this eDrive will lead the way with five lakh EVs planned to roll out each year from 2022. The BMW Group is investing more than 500 million Euros in expanding production capacity for e-drives at Dingolfing alone and will invest a total of around 790 million euros in expanding capacity for electric powertrain components at its Dingolfing, Leipzig, Regensburg and Steyr locations between 2020 and 2022.
The eDrive (as BMW likes to call it) is claimed to be scalable and will be optimally adjusted for different models and their variants. Its setup uses up to two integrated e-drives, which combine the electric motor, power electronics and transmission in a single housing. Based on the design principle of a current-excited rotor, the fifth-generation e-drive claims to not use any materials classified as rare-earth metals.
BMW Group agreed with its suppliers that they will only use renewable green power for producing fifth-generation battery cells. The technically standardised production process for battery modules is designed in such a way that different module variants can be produced on the same production line. Talking about the plant Dingolfing, this 50-year-old building has been modernised by huge investments and it is manufacturing high-voltage batteries and battery modules since 2013 with the i3, for the fully-electric Mini Cooper SE since 2019, and the iX3 joining last year.
Production of the iX will soon get underway at the same location in Dingolfin, followed by the production of the i4 at Munich later this year.
