BMW Plans to Move MINI Electric Car Production Line from UK to China

BMW Plans to Move MINI Electric Car Production Line from UK to China

From Global Times reports,

Following Volkswagen's announcement of a 2.4 billion euro (about 16.8 billion yuan) investment project in China, another German car company, BMW Group plans to relocate the MINI electric vehicle production line from the UK to China.

The British "Times" reported on the 15th that the BMW Group intends to stop the production of MINI electric car e models at the Oxford plant in the United Kingdom and plan to transfer their production line to China. It was another blow to Britain in electric vehicle manufacturing after Honda's 2016 closure of its British factory.

According to reports, the BMW Group's plant in Oxford, England, is capable of producing 40,000 pure electric MINI new cars a year. In addition to preparing to transfer the MINI electric car currently produced at the Oxford plant to China for production, the BMW Group will also hand over the production of the company's next-generation pure electric model, the MINI Aceman, to a joint venture between BMW and China's Great Wall Motor. As of press time on the 16th, only Reuters reported that BMW denied the above-mentioned news of shifting the production line.

In recent years, German car companies have increased their investment in China in the process of transforming into an intelligent strategy. On the 13th of this month, Volkswagen of Germany announced that it would invest 2.4 billion euros to jointly establish a new company with Chinese intelligent computing platform provider Horizon, focusing on technology development in the field of autonomous driving. Regarding the news that BMW will relocate the MINI electric vehicle production line to China, the market also believes that this is an important step for BMW Group to promote the strategic transformation of new energy.

According to the strategic plan previously released by the BMW Group, the last BMW MINI fuel vehicle will be launched in 2025. By 2030, all MINI models will be fully electric, and the MINI brand will also become the first fully electric vehicle within the BMW Group. s brand.

On September 28, BMW MINI's first pure electric concept car, MINI Concept Aceman, appeared in Shanghai, making its Asian debut. Recently, foreign media reported that this concept car will be produced by Spotlight, a joint venture between BMW Group and Great Wall Motors, and is expected to go on sale in 2024.

China is the world's largest new energy vehicle market. According to data released by the China Association of Automobile Manufacturers on the 13th of this month, China's new energy vehicles continued to maintain rapid growth in September, with monthly production and sales hitting a record high, with a market share of 27.1%. The complete industrial chain and huge market capacity make China a strategic focus that global car companies cannot let go of. Similarly, the Chinese market has become one of the most important markets for German car companies. Taking Mercedes-Benz as an example, China has been its largest single market in the world for the past seven years. Germany's BMW MINI also said that the Chinese market has become a key area of MINI's global strategy.

It is precisely based on the long-term and in-depth cooperation with China that German companies are still accelerating their investment in China despite the warning from the German political circles to "get rid of dependence on China". Data from China's Ministry of Commerce shows that in the first eight months of this year, Germany's investment in China increased by 30% year-on-year, ranking among the countries with the highest growth in investment in China during the same period. According to data released by the German Institute for Economic Research in August this year, in the first half of this year, German investment in China was about 10 billion euros, a record high.

Bai Ming, deputy director of the International Market Research Institute of the Ministry of Commerce, told the Global Times reporter on the 16th that since the establishment of diplomatic relations between China and Germany 50 years ago, under the influence of globalization development and market laws, the industrial chains and supply chains of the two countries have been deeply integrated. Difficult to transfer political consciousness. Bai Ming further stated that, on the one hand, China is the country with the most complete industrial categories in the world, especially the automobile industry with a long industrial chain and complex supporting industries, and China is the most ideal production base in the world. On the other hand, China is also the sales market with the greatest potential in the world. Bai Ming's analysis believes that the importance of cooperation with China is even more prominent in the context of the increasing risk of global economic recession and the sluggish German economy.

China's Ministry of Commerce spokesperson Shu Jueting previously said that China and Germany are each other's important trade and investment partners. From January to August this year, the trade volume between China and Germany reached 155 billion US dollars and continued to grow, and the stock of two-way investment exceeded 55 billion US dollars. Shu Jueting pointed out that the close economic ties between China and Germany are the result of the development of globalization and the laws of the market. The complementary advantages of this economy are beneficial to the enterprises and people of the two countries, and both sides have benefited a lot from practical cooperation.