BMW Group’s Regensburg plant marked another milestone in its near 40-year history, when the one-millionth BMW X1 rolled off the assembly line last month. The milestone vehicle was a BMW iX1 battery electric vehicle (BEV) in Alpine White. This is BMW’s smallest ‘sports activity vehicle’, and became the first fully-electric model produced at BMW Group’s Regensburg plant in November 2022.
Carsten Regent, the Regensburg plant’s director, said: “The BMW iX1 is proof that we can build highly attractive electric vehicles for the premium compact class at our plant in Regensburg. To meet different market requirements worldwide, we rely as a company on technological diversity, and here in Regensburg we have the flexibility to produce different types of drive train for the BMW X1 on a single production line — models with a combustion engine and plug-in hybrid systems, as well as with a pure electric drive train.”
From the end of this year, BMW Group Plant Regensburg will also produce a second BMW BEV, the fully-electric BMW iX2 for the high-volume compact class.
Mr Regent added: “Electromobility is a growth driver for our plant. We are currently operating at full capacity and hope this trend will continue. As previously announced in March, the BMW Group will invest more than 350 million euros in vehicle production in Regensburg by the end of the year, creating permanent jobs for around 500 new employees. We are still recruiting production staff for our plant, and in November we will add an additional night shift and transition to three-shift operation.”
A total of up to 1,000 units of the BMW 1 Series, BMW X1 and BMW X2 models are currently coming off the production line at Plant Regensburg every workday, and the facility recently became the automotive industry’s first plant worldwide to use an end-to-end digitalised and automated process for inspection, processing and marking of painted vehicle surfaces in standard production that relies on robots controlled by AI (artificial intelligence).