Today’s production landmark marks another milestone in the nearly 40-year history of the BMW Group’s Regensburg location, as the one-millionth BMW X1 rolled off the Regensburg assembly line late in the morning. The milestone vehicle is a BMW iX1 battery electric vehicle (BEV) in Alpine White. The BMW X1 is BMW’s smallest Sports Activity Vehicle – and became the first fully-electric model produced at the BMW Group location in Regensburg in November 2022.
“The BMW iX1 is proof that we can build highly attractive electric vehicles for the premium compact class at our plant in Regensburg. This a very popular car with customers around the world,” says Plant Director Carsten Regent. “To meet different market requirements worldwide, we rely as a company on technological diversity. Specifically, 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.”
In this year’s readers’ choice for the trade journal auto, motor und sport’s “Best Cars 2023”, the pure electric BMW iX1 xDrive30* from Regensburg came out on top, with 8.4 percent of votes. It won best-in-class in the compact SUV (Sports Utility Vehicle) segment, closely followed by the conventionally-powered variant of the compact Sports Activity Vehicle (8.3 percent), which is also built at the site.
From the end of this year, BMW Group Plant Regensburg will also produce a second BMW BEV, the fully-electric BMW iX2, in Upper Palatinate for the high-volume compact class. “Electromobility is a growth driver for our plant. We are currently operating at full capacity and hope this trend will continue,” says Regent.
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. In November, we will add an additional night shift and transition to three-shift operation. We are already working extra shifts on certain Saturdays,” confirms Davide Vitolo, head of Human Resources at BMW Group Plant Regensburg.
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, destined for customers all over the world. BMW Group Plant Regensburg 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). This represents another step towards the digital and intelligently connected BMW iFACTORY for the facility in Upper Palatinate. The entire plant was already digitally measured in 3D in 2022 as part of a pilot project. The resulting “digital twin” of BMW Group Plant Regensburg enables highly efficient planning of future plant structures and production facilities.
