BMW has ended production of its internal combustion engines (ICE) at its plant in Munich, Germany, as the company plans to reconfigure the plant to manufacture electric vehicles in the future according to Carscoops. The carmaker’s engine production in Austria and the UK however, will continue.
This isn’t something BMW has done out of the blue however, as the company announced back in November 2020 that production of its eight and twelve-cylinder engines will be shifted from Munich to Hams Hall in the UK. Its plant in Steyr, Austria on the other hand will be in charge of making its smaller engines.
The last ICE which the Munich plant made was a V8 that rolled off the manufacturing line on November 10, according to German outlet BR24. The 1,200 employees that have served at the plant will undergo retraining and will be repositioned to BMW’s other facilities with different roles.
Since October 2021, BMW’s Munich plant has been responsible for making its all-electric i4. The factory will also be in charge of producing the German brand’s future Neue Klasse-based EV line-up moving forward, as the company has mentioned that it will launch a total of six Neue Klasse EVs between 2025 and 2027.
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Besides the Munich factory, BMW also produces its other EV models at its Dingolfing and Regensburg plants. This includes the iX, i5, and i7, as well as the iX1 and iX2 respectively.
BMW is certainly not the only carmaker to have made the shift in making EVs instead of traditional ICEs, considering many carmakers around the globe have set goals on when they are planning to fully transition to making EVs exclusively.
But unlike its competitors, BMW has yet to do this as it has doubts about this kind of goal being achievable. Therefore, the German marque will be selling ICE vehicles and EV models simultaneously in many of its markets moving forward.
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