BMW Plant Munich has a storied history with the brand. With 100 years of service circa 2022, it’s a bit of a mainstay – not only in the BMW history books but in automotive history. It’s one of the oldest factories in the world, and it has seen a lot: motorcycle production in the 1930s, Isetta production in the 1950s, i4 production in the present, and everything in between. A recent press gathering at the iconic Munich plant highlighted several interesting facts.
The most produced standalone vehicle at BMW Plant Munich is the i4. While the 3 Series technically boasts greater production numbers, BMW counts each individual body style and drivetrain configuration separately. In order, the 3 Series Touring and M3 models are in second and third place. Impressively, it only took eight days to reconfigure production and attain 98% of their target production level when the i4 assembly started.
Plant Munich also revealed that building a vehicle takes roughly 40 hours. Ten hours are spent in the workshop, followed by another ten in the paint booth. Assembly takes around 12 hours, and eight more hours are dedicated to quality assurance testing. To put that in perspective, building a typical BMW engine takes between 12 and 16 hours. Reflecting the limited availability and exclusivity of the M vehicles, Plant Munich builds only 70 S58 engines per day. Furthermore, Plant Munich rolls out 17 V12 engines per day – These are dedicated to Rolls Royce.
BMW hopes to continue to use its one-line philosophy to build all sorts of powertrain and drivetrain configurations on one line. Building hybrid, full EV, and gasoline-powered engines on the same assembly line is no small task. But using clever timing and more autonomous processes helps streamline that. With 213,000 cars built in 2019, Plant Munich will continue to receive the most cutting-edge upgrades going forward. An interesting tidbit: Only 2 cars of the 213,000 produced were identical.
After the fallout of the so-called “chip crisis,” BMW considers it a point of pride that their one-line philosophy emphasizes model…
