The German luxury auto maker BMW will discontinue making internal combustion engines at its primary factory unit in Munich by 2024, said the company’s chief of manufacturing while speaking at a conference marking the beginning of production of its electric i4 vehicle.

In the future, its factories in Austria and the United Kingdom will be utilised for manufacturing of the company’s ICE engines from its current production location of the firm’s Munich facility, according to the company’s production chief Milan Nedeljkovic. However the company will continue to assemble the cars that would be powered with that engine in at BMW’s Munich facility.

However the company will continue to achieve its target of making at least half of the vehicles produced in Munich to be all electric ones – either powered by batteries or of a plug-in hybrid nature, by 2023.  

For the entire company however, BMW has announced a goal of having at least 50 per cent of its new worldwide car sales to be electric only by 2030. The company would be prepared with an all-electric vehicle offering if any country imposed a ban on ICEs by then, company’s CEO Oliver Zipse indicated last week at a conference.

A shared assembly line with ICE and hybrid models was used to make the i4 battery-electric car, according to BMW, which also included the BMW 3 Series Sedan and Touring. This change in its production infrastructure was completed by the company at an expense of 200 million euros ($233 million).

At BMW’s Dingolfing facility, where the BMW iX is manufactured alongside hybrid and ICE cars, a comparable mixed assembly line is already being operated by the auto company.

According to plant head Peter Weber, manufacturing of the new model will be prioritised when the company takes a decision on where to deploy semiconductor chips which are scarce to access presently because of a global shortage. Nedeljkovic stated that the company had plenty of other raw materials on hand for use in manufacturing.

Because of the semiconductor chip scarcity that has affected automakers globally, BMW has previously stated that it expects to produce 70,000 to 90,000 fewer cars than it could have sold this year.

Without setting a specific deadline, the company has also pledged to cut down on emissions from transportation logistics at the company’s largest factory in Munich to zero within the next few years.

This will be accomplished by increasing the use of rail and battery-powered trucks to transfer vehicles in and around the plant, according to the statement.

(Adapted from MoneyControl.com)