BMW laid the inspiration stone on the Debrecen manufacturing facility in June 2022. A bit over three years later, the iX3 is already rolling off the meeting line. Sequence manufacturing started final month and, as soon as totally ramped up, the plant will construct as much as 150,000 autos yearly. To indicate the place all of the magic occurs, a brand new behind-the-scenes video goes deep contained in the Hungarian website.
As you’d anticipate from an ultra-modern facility, the iX3 is assembled by a military of robots working alongside a crew of extremely skilled specialists. BMW’s first manufacturing facility in Central Europe has almost 1,000 industrial robots within the physique store alone. As for the human workforce, the corporate says it has created greater than 2,000 direct jobs on the website.
Robots and people collectively can construct as much as 30 autos per hour, all of them the iX3 50 xDrive. Cheaper and dearer variants will comply with, beginning with all- and rear-wheel-drive “40” versions and persevering with with M Efficiency and full M fashions. The warmer ones are more likely to be provided solely with xDrive, with the flagship M doubtlessly delivering as much as 800 hp.
Wanting forward, Debrecen is unlikely to stay a one-model manufacturing facility for lengthy. It will make sense for the recently spotted iX4 to be produced on the similar website, because it’s basically the identical car beneath a extra steeply sloped roofline.
Though Debrecen at present has exclusivity on iX3 manufacturing, that’s about to alter. BMW is already teasing a long-wheelbase version for China, which shall be constructed on the Shenyang plant from mid-2026. Moreover, the Neue Klasse car slated for San Luis Potosí from 2027 is extensively anticipated to be the standard-wheelbase iX3.
For a greater grasp of BMW’s manufacturing footprint, it’s value noting the corporate operates no fewer than 33 production and assembly plants worldwide. Probably the most prolific website final yr was Spartanburg, South Carolina, with 396,117 autos. Dadong in China adopted with 343,973 items, simply forward of Regensburg, Germany, with 342,521. Debrecen was predictably final on the checklist, with solely 92 autos, all pre-production prototypes.
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