Construction has been completed at a BMW Group site in Steyr, northern Austria, which will be dedicated to assembling the company’s “e-drives” for electric vehicles.
Work began on the 150m-by-105m building, complete with 60,000 sq m of production space, in September 2022.
Some €1bn will be invested in the factory by 2030, with €500m to be spent on 300 pieces of equipment, installation of which has just begun.
The first element to be installed is a crane that will move power electronics components from the clean-room where they are made down to the ground-floor assembly line.
Helmut Hochsteiner, head of electric drives in Steyr, said: “The 300 machines are all shapes and sizes, from small, individual items to the over-30m-long ‘marriage’ station. Here, four robots and other systems will work in concert to fit the transmission to the main motor.”
When operational in 2025, the plant will make 600,000 e-drives a year.
