Bosch launches electric drive production in South Carolina
Bosch has begun manufacturing electric motors for e-cars at its existing U.S. plant in Charleston. The German supplier also plans to invest more than $260 million at the South Carolina site to further expand production of electrification products.
The new electric motor production unit was established in an existing building of approximately 18,000 square feet on the Bosch Charleston campus. The new assembly area includes rotor and stator production and final electric motor assembly. However, Bosch is not disclosing what type of electric motors will be built there.
Since Bosch has received another major order, the production space now opened is not enough. As the company announces, the building will be expanded by another 7,000 square meters as part of the aforementioned investment to make room for future production. The expansion is scheduled to go into operation at the end of next year. This is expected to create another 350 jobs by the end of 2025.
Incidentally, the newly launched production of electric motors is located in a building that was previously used for the production of diesel components. Bosch has been slowly scaling down production of diesel powertrain components since January 2020. However, high-pressure injection nozzles and pumps for internal combustion engines will continue to be manufactured in Charleston.
“We have grown our electrification business globally and here in the North American region,” says Mike Mansuetti, president of Bosch in North America. “We’ve invested more than $6 billion dollars in electromobility development and in 2021 our global orders for electromobility surpassed $10 billion dollars for the first time. Local production helps to advance our customers’ regional electrification strategies, and further supports the market demand for electrification.”
The Bosch plant in Charleston, which opened in 1974, is the largest manufacturing site in the U.S. for Bosch from an employment perspective, with about 1,500 associates. Charleston is not the only Bosch location in South Carolina: last August, the supplier announced plans to build a fuel cell stack production facility in Anderson. Around 200 million dollars will be invested there by the planned start of production in 2026, and at least 350 jobs are to be created.
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