Text / Liu Zeran
The news about the domestic production of MINI models has been rampant as early as 2018. At that time, the joint venture company Spotlight Motors jointly established by BMW and Great Wall Motors made the industry generally believe that the future electric MINI models will be domestically produced. And this news, which has been shelved for 4 years, has made further progress recently.
According to reports, the BMW Group has decided to stop the production of MINI electric models at the Oxford plant in the United Kingdom, and is expected to transfer the production line to China by the end of next year. It is understood that BMW produces more than 40,000 electric MINI models at the plant every year.
Stefanie Wurst, the new head of BMW’s MINI brand, said the Oxford plant was “not ready for electric vehicles” and that Great Wall would be responsible for the production of future electric MINI and electric MINI Aceman models at the Zhangjiagang plant in Jiangsu.
Wurst added that MINI’s decision has nothing to do with supply constraints, mainly due to the inefficiency of the Oxford plant if the production of gasoline and electric vehicles is on the same line. After the production line is transferred to China, the Oxford plant will focus on the production of gasoline models.
Foreign media estimates that based on an average product life of a model of seven years, the Oxford plant does not expect to see the possibility of re-producing electric models until 2030.
According to MINI’s brand strategy released last year, by 2025, MINI will launch the last gasoline-powered model, after which it will focus on the development of pure electric models. It is expected that by 2027, pure electric models will account for half of all MINI sales, while the time point for full electrification is expected in the early 2030s.
MINI isn’t actually the first company to decide to move electric capacity out of the UK – as early as 2016, Honda decided not to make electric cars in the UK, and in July 2021 completely closed its factory in the southwest of the UK; this year 5 JLR (Jaguar Land Rover) is in discussions to procure batteries for a range of electric models it will produce in Slovakia in the future, a source familiar with the matter said.
However, just as MINI was rumored to be shifting electric car production to China, the UK’s only planned large battery factory said it would go bankrupt without a £200m bailout.
Some outside sources believe that in addition to undertaking the production capacity of electric MINI, Great Wall also intends to acquire the Oxford factory. A source at Great Wall Motors said the talks were already taking place internally, but declined to give a specific timetable.
Wurst said that it is indeed possible that MINI and Great Wall Motors will produce vehicles in the Oxford plant in the future, but she denied the rumors of acquisitions. “Oxford will always be MINI’s home,” she said.
According to the financial report released by the BMW Group, in 2021, the BMW Group will sell a total of more than 2.5215 million vehicles worldwide, an increase of 8.4% year-on-year.
Among them, new energy vehicles contributed the most increments (pure electric and plug-in hybrid models). BMW Group will sell more than 328,000 new energy models globally in 2021, a year-on-year increase of 70.4%. MINI Electric, as the sub-brand with the largest increase, will see a year-on-year increase of more than 98% in sales in 2021.
In the Chinese market, the BMW and MINI brands will deliver more than 846,000 new vehicles in 2021, a year-on-year increase of 8.9%. And it will continue to maintain the growth trend in the following time. In the first three quarters of 2022, the BMW Group delivered more than 592,000 BMW and MINI vehicles to the Chinese market, of which the sales of pure electric models in the first three quarters increased by 65% year-on-year.
media coverage
NetEase News CNBeta TechWeb IT Home Fast Technology TechWeb Sina Technology
event tracking
- 2022-10-16BMW MINI moves electric vehicle production line to China, Great Wall may acquire its original Oxford factory
- 2022-10-12BMW announced that it will bring in-car game function next year
- 2022-09-27 BMW expects to deliver 400,000 electric vehicles in 2023
- 2022-07-09BMW Group’s global sales in the second quarter decreased by 19.8% year-on-year, and the sales of electric vehicles doubled in the first half of the year
- 2022-06-23BMW invests 15 billion yuan to build a new factory in China to start production
This article is reprinted from: https://readhub.cn/topic/8kamUaMJPaW
This site is for inclusion only, and the copyright belongs to the original author.