BMW plant in Debrecen ramps up paint shop
BMW has been building its vehicle plant in Hungary on an area of more than 400 hectares since June 2022. The site in the north-west of the city of Debrecen will include a press shop, body shop, paint shop and assembly. The German car manufacturer estimates the future capacity of the full vehicle plant at around 150,000 units per year. An assembly line for high-voltage batteries will also be built at the site.
The paint shop, which was built on a floor area of 33,000 square metres and comprises three floors, is already online at the site. Operations are currently being ramped up there with bodies for the iX1. According to BMW, this is the first paint shop in its own production network “to operate entirely without fossil fuels.” New processes and systems (‘such as power-to-heat, heat grid and eRTO’) will be used for this purpose. This section will soon be able to paint 30 vehicle bodies per hour. This capacity could be significantly expanded at a later date, according to an accompanying press release.
Overall, the New Class is the largest investment in BMW’s corporate history. It is an electric vehicle architecture which, thanks to its modularity, should be able to cover all segments from the compact class of the current 1 Series to the luxury saloon. There are some technical changes: BMW is switching from 400 to 800 volts system voltage and from prismatic battery cells arranged in modules to round cells with a cell-to-pack concept. BMW’s sixth generation of e-drives is also making its debut. Although externally excited synchronous machines are still used, they are said to be lighter, smaller, 40 per cent cheaper and 25 per cent more efficient than the current fifth generation. Theoretically, the Neue Klasse vehicles can also integrate combustion engines, but it is primarily designed for electric drives.
There are already initial indications of the first model for Debrecen: With the Vision Neue Klasse X SUV concept, BMW gave a preview in March of the first electric model based on the Neue Klasse vehicle architecture, which is scheduled to start production at the Hungarian plant in the second half of 2025. Production ramp-ups are then planned at other factories. The second model is scheduled to roll off the production line at the main plant in Munich in 2026. In 2027, the Neue Klasse cars will also be built at the Mexican plant in San Luis Potosi. Production is also being prepared in China.
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