Milestone at BMW Group Plant Steyr: Production facilities for next-gen electric drives completed

Steyr, Austria. The new halls for future e-drive production reached completion at the BMW Group site in Steyr. Construction began in September 2022, with the topping-out ceremony taking place exactly one year later. With some 60,000 square metres of production space, the 105 by 150-metre building was erected to a tight schedule. But now it’s standing. “The construction and installation of this production facility for Neue Klasse e-drives is running totally to plan. Now comes the next important stage, which is no less ambitious than the construction of the halls themselves,” explained Helmut Hochsteiner, head of electric drives at the BMW Group site in Steyr.

Approx. 300 items of plant and equipment worth over 500 million euros

Over the next few months, around 300 items of plant and equipment – many made to specification – will need to be installed, ready for pre-series production to launch as planned in July of this year. “The 300 machines are all shapes and sizes, from small, individual items to the over 30 metre-long ‘marriage’ station. Here, four robots and other systems will work in concert to fit the transmission to the main motor,” said Hochsteiner.

Klaus von Moltke, Senior Vice President of Engine Production at BMW AG and Plant Director of Steyr, outlined the economic dimensions of the project: “We are investing a total of more than 500 million euros in plant and equipment for Steyr, offering further confirmation of the BMW Group’s commitment to the site. Series production of e-drives for the Neue Klasse is scheduled for launch in the autumn of 2025.”

The first piece of plant was brought into the new assembly hall in the end of January. The ‘inaugural inhabitant’ is a crane that will lift power electronics components from the first floor – where inverter will be assembled in a clean-room – down to final assembly on the ground floor. Once the electronic parts have arrived, the inverter and e-drive will be ‘married’.

By 2030 the BMW Group will invest some 1 billion euros in total in e-drive production at its Steyr facility. The plant will manufacture over 600,000 e-drives a year alongside diesel and petrol units. Production of these will remain high as well, with combustion engines forming an important part of Steyr’s product portfolio well into the future.