Like it or not, BMW drive towards its electric ambitions is only accelerating. As production of the BMW iX and i4 commences, the company pumps more than €500 million into its Dingolfing plant to expanding its E-Drive drivetrains production capacity for electrified cars.

According to the BMW Group, this investment will enable them to produce E-Drives for 500,000 electrified cars annually from 2022. To give you an idea of how big of an expansion this is, in 2019, the Group sold 2.5 million cars, 146,000 of which featured an electrified drivetrain. That is a production capacity of more than three times its 2019 sales.

The key reason behind this expansion is to accommodate the production of BMW’s new fifth-generation batteries, modules, and motors that will go into the iX SUV and i4 sedan. Since the drivetrain can be flexibly scaled to suit different models, you can expect more models to come out from Dingolfing.

Though that isn’t all on BMW’s plate. The Group is also expanding the production capacity of electric powertrain components at BMW’s other plants in Leipzig, Regensburg, and Steyr with an additional €290 million allocation.

Dingolfing’s “Competence Centre for E-Drive Production” has been responsible for producing key electrified drivetrain components for the i3, iX3, MINI Cooper SE, and various plug-in hybrid models. In accordance with BMW’s goal for an environmentally responsible manufacturing model, the Dingolfing plant is powered using renewables and its fifth-generation E-Drive systems do not use any rear-earth metals.

These expansion plans are necessary to accommodate the BMW Group’s master plan to shift towards electrified drivetrains taking up a majority of its production share, with 2023 earmarked as a “tipping point” for this change.

Between now and 2025, BMW Group hopes to increase its all-electric models by over 50 per cent annually, with all-electric models comprising of at least half its global sales by 2030.