Day 2 of BMW Duty Days 2025 shifted from strategic shows to the operational actuality behind the corporate’s subsequent part of electrification. The tour took us from Munich to Straßkirchen and Irlbach—two small communities in Decrease Bavaria the place BMW is constructing one among its most vital amenities—earlier than persevering with to Landshut to speak about provider readiness, AI integration, and extra.
A Excessive-Voltage Battery Plant in Rural Bavaria
The brand new Irlbach–Straßkirchen plant is located in the course of flat Gäuboden farmland, straight adjoining to a village of only some thousand residents. Regardless of the agricultural setting, the dimensions is unmistakably industrial: a 500-meter-long, 300-meter-wide meeting corridor, an power middle, logistics corridors, and a newly constructed hearth station already outfitted with six autos. Altogether, the location spans 105 hectares, with devoted inbound and outbound logistics zones, new highway connections, and a large-scale parking and loading infrastructure sized for over 1,000 staff and intensive each day truck actions.
By late 2026, the location is anticipated to provide 1,000 sixth-generation high-voltage battery packs per day, supplying BMW’s Munich, Dingolfing, and Regensburg crops as Neue Klasse manufacturing ramps up. At full workforce ranges by 2028, the plant will make use of round 1,600 individuals, supported by 540 truck actions per weekday, a 23,000 m² inbound storage facility, and a 32,500 m² provide middle.
The manufacturing course of follows BMW’s six-step Gen6 battery meeting logic—cell inspection, clustering, welding, foaming and sealing, power grasp meeting, and end-of-line testing—supported by digital twins of all main equipment and real-time high quality management.
Development progress displays an unusually compressed timeline for Germany. After a public allowing course of that generated greater than 6,000 pages of documentation, BMW acquired approval in April 2024. Simply 19 months later, the core buildings are standing, equipment is being put in, and greater than 1,000 employees enter the location each day.
Whereas BMW executives have referred to this fast tempo as “Bavarian velocity,” the comparability usually made internally is China—the place such industrial tasks can transfer even quicker. For Bavaria, that is as shut because it will get. The corporate now overtly refers to Straßkirchen as a flagship for its iFACTORY ideas: lean, inexperienced, digital, and people-focused.
Native Politics and a Tough Referendum
As anticipated with large-scale industrial tasks in Germany, this plant was not pushed by way of quietly. A citizen group mobilized vital native resistance. Considerations centered on land consumption, site visitors, noise, and the worry {that a} village identified for agriculture could be reworked into an industrial hall.
Their efforts triggered a referendum in 2023. Turnout reached 75 %, and two-thirds of voters in the end accredited the BMW challenge. The marketing campaign left social marks which might be nonetheless seen: some banners stay, and a few residents proceed to oppose the event. However the financial affect is simple.
Straßkirchen’s municipal price range has tripled. Lengthy-requested infrastructure investments—together with a bypass highway—are actually transferring ahead. Childcare funding, sewage upgrades, and a number of other native companies have benefited straight from the plant. The mayor overtly admits the challenge has “modified the trajectory of the municipality.”
A number of board members acknowledged that BMW needed to conduct an unusually intense allure offensive: info pavilions, public Q&A periods, and direct conversations in native eating places like “Jedermann,” the place executives answered questions late into the night. The corporate made concessions on site visitors routing, water administration, and environmental compensation zones, together with 500 newly planted timber and greater than 3,000 bushes.
In brief: the manufacturing facility has created winners and dissenters, nevertheless it has additionally introduced a scale of financial exercise the area has not seen earlier than.
Technical Foundations: BMW’s Sixth-Era Battery Structure
Inside the principle corridor, BMW is putting in manufacturing gear for its sixth-generation battery packs. These will use 46 mm cylindrical cells provided by CATL and EVE from Hungary, reflecting a blended sourcing technique influenced by each price and geopolitical issues.
The shift from prismatic to cylindrical cells is central to BMW’s subsequent EV structure. The brand new batteries promise:
- 30% extra vary,
- 30% quicker charging, and
- as much as 50% decrease manufacturing prices in contrast with present packs.
At cell degree, power density improves by round 20%, whereas pack-level prices fall because of a transfer towards cell-to-pack development, eliminating modules solely. The Gen6 pack additionally helps BMW’s upcoming pack-to-open-body integration, the place the automobile construction turns into an energetic ingredient of the battery housing.
Increased nickel content material, decreased cobalt use, and silicon-enriched anodes drive these features. Half of the uncooked materials enter will come from recycling streams, and the rest will likely be sourced by way of suppliers’ world networks. Battery cell manufacturing at accomplice websites in Hungary operates on 100% renewable power.
Notably, the plant consumes virtually no course of water. Rainwater is collected, and non-production wants—canteens, sanitation—are dealt with by way of a separate water system. A 62,000 m² photovoltaic set up on the roof will assist offset power demand starting in 2026.
A Roundtable on Provide Chain Resilience
Later within the day, BMW hosted a roundtable targeted on provide chain stability and the business’s transition towards electrification. BMW Board Member for Buying and Provider Community, Nicolai Martin, emphasised a transparent level: long-term provider well being is tied on to competitiveness.
“We don’t go away suppliers behind,” he stated, “however each firm should guarantee its competitiveness. Innovation, effectivity, and knowledge readiness are decisive elements.”
Martin underscored BMW’s operational scale: the corporate processes greater than 36 million elements per day, backed by an annual buying quantity of €90 billion. Electrification magnifies the complexity—battery cells are actually the only largest supply of upstream CO₂ in BMW’s worth chain, making provide chain decarbonization a core strategic lever.
Transformation velocity varies vastly by area, and BMW continues to depend on suppliers that efficiently navigate the transition—from combustion-era elements to EV-ready manufacturing. BMW makes use of digital instruments similar to Catena-X digital twins to extend transparency from uncooked supplies to meeting, a functionality Martin described as important for each sustainability reporting and long-term resilience.
Localization stays a precedence, however full regional self-sufficiency shouldn’t be all the time possible. Martin reiterated BMW’s choice for open markets and decrease commerce limitations, although present coverage tendencies level in the wrong way.
Landshut: Provider Improvement and AI Deployment
The second half of the day moved to Landshut, the place BMW’s Zero Defect Campus serves as a structured coaching and transformation atmosphere for suppliers. Roughly 70–80 suppliers per yr take part within the two-day workshops, which mix operational concept with on-site store flooring work.
Suppliers evaluate BMW’s manufacturing routines, KPIs, transparency instruments, and communication methods—then determine 5 to seven components they’ll implement themselves. BMW later follows up straight at provider websites to evaluate progress.
Landshut itself is one among BMW’s most superior part crops, using 3,800 individuals and producing greater than 5 million elements yearly. These span mild metallic casting, plastics, cockpit modules, cardan shafts, energy-master elements for EVs, and extra. The sunshine metallic foundry makes use of two-thirds secondary aluminum, and BMW goals to attain 50% recycled sand utilization in casting by 2026.
High quality management is more and more automated. Each e-motor housing undergoes a CT scan capturing 2,400 photographs in 42 seconds, enabling structural evaluation that may be inconceivable with handbook strategies. Finish-of-line testing is absolutely digitalized and built-in with plant-wide knowledge methods.
Subsequent door, the AI Lab highlights BMW’s digitalization push. The corporate has developed an inside multi-agent generative AI interface that connects LLM capabilities with real-time operational instruments similar to coaching platforms, high quality databases, and manufacturing monitoring methods.
One instance is AIQX, BMW’s in-house pc imaginative and prescient system used for optical inspections. Conventional rule-based picture processing couldn’t deal with reflective surfaces or inconsistent lighting. AIQX trains customized fashions for every use case, bettering detection charges and decreasing the necessity for handbook rework. Greater than 1,000 AIQX use instances are already deployed throughout BMW crops. By means of an initiative known as AI Lab on Tour, BMW is now coaching suppliers to undertake comparable methods.
These instruments are usually not experimental—they’re being built-in into manufacturing environments and utilized by line employees, planners, and high quality engineers.
What grew to become clear on Day 2 is that BMW sees electrification not solely as a technological shift however as an operational restructuring—one requiring new crops, new workflows, new provider talent units, and new digital instruments.
[Photos: Rainer Haeckl © BMW AG]
