To capture Tesla, BMW doubles investment in Hungarian electric vehicle factory

BMW is investing 200 million euros (about 277.4 billion won) in an electric vehicle factory in Hungary, doubling the previous plan.

Bloomberg reported on the 25th (local time) that BMW has decided to build an additional high-voltage battery assembly plant at the plant it is building in Debrecen, Hungary’s second largest city.

BMW said the establishment of a battery assembly plant will improve logistics flow for the production of new electric vehicle models. The battery factory is expected to create around 500 jobs. The electric vehicle equipment and battery factory are scheduled to start production at the end of 2025.

BMW is building an electric vehicle factory in Debrecen as part of its effort to catch up with Tesla. The company plans to produce 150,000 vehicles a year.

The new EV-centric platform will cut the cost of battery cell assembly in half compared to current EV models and improve charging speed by 30%, the company expects. The construction of the battery assembly plant covering an area of ​​140,000 square meters has already started.

“We are building our most advanced factory in Debrecen,” said BMW Director Milan Nedelikovic, “This investment highlights a new approach to enabling e-mobility.”

The reason why BMW is building a battery cell assembly plant in Debrecen comes from establishing a plan for a large-scale battery cell manufacturing plant here. CATL, the world’s largest battery cell manufacturer, signed a contract to build a 7.3 billion euro battery cell factory in Debrecen in September. CATL already supplies battery cells to BMW from its factory in Erfurt, Germany. CATL is expected to supply battery cells to BMW in the future. Through this, BMW is expected to be able to further reduce the logistics costs required for the Debrecen plant.

Silicon Valley = Correspondent Seo Gi-yeol philos@hankyung.com