BMW Group will invest more than €100 million in its plant in Steyr, Austria, where it will begin assembling the inverter power module for its Gen6 electric motors in summer 2029.
Steyr builds the Gen6 electric motors for BMW’s Neue Klasse vehicles. The power module is the core of the inverter in each motor, which controls the flow of energy between the high-voltage battery and the motor. The plant will also take over the module’s upstream supply chain.
The investment includes a new assembly line in a new clean room, plus the supporting infrastructure. The plant also plans process improvements in its existing production system.
The module’s 10 individual parts will be assembled using large-area soldering and ultrasonic welding, processes that BMW Group says it has never used before.
Since 2022, BMW has been developing Steyr into an e-mobility site in its production network. The plant supplies more than one million gasoline and diesel engines a year to BMW Group vehicle plants worldwide.
“Building up new competencies at the site in the course of the transformation to e-mobility, for example for inverter production, has been successful, and our contribution to the success of the Neue Klasse is undisputed,” said Helmut Hochsteiner, Head of E-Drive Production at Plant Steyr. “Now we look forward to using this experience for the next step. Alongside setting up and integrating new equipment, we are preparing to qualify our employees for the new scope of work.”
“By producing the power module in-house, we are now moving even deeper into electrical engineering and can source components such as semiconductors flexibly on world markets,” said Harald Gottsche, Managing Director of BMW Motoren. “This improves our competitive position and reduces dependencies in a geopolitically sensitive technology field.”
Source: BMW Group
