Electrifying: BMW Group passes the 3,000,000 mark.

The BMW Group has manufactured 3,000,000 electrified vehicles, 1,500,000 of them fully electric – marking not one but two major milestones. What started in Leipzig in 2013 has long since become a global success story: from plug-in hybrid to battery-electric, the BMW Group now produces electrified models at every one of its plants. A journey through evolution, electrical expertise and electromobility as a factor in our growth.

The Portimao Blue car rolled into the limelight, its bonnet festooned with a golden bow: at the end of May, the 3,000,000^th electrified vehicle made by the BMW Group came off the production line in Plant Munich – a plug-in hybrid BMW 330e Touring for a customer in the UK.

That same month also saw another exciting highlight: our 1,500,000^th battery-electric vehicle. The MINI Countryman E, made at Plant Leipzig, was destined for Portugal. With that, the plant in Saxony has now come full circle, being the place that the BMW Group’s journey to electromobility began.

Series production of fully electric cars first launched in 2013 with the BMW i3. Its specialised architecture meant the compact city sprinter had to be made on a dedicated production line alongside the conventional lines. It was made in Leipzig for almost ten years. In 2014 Leipzig launched production of the BMW Group’s first plug-in hybrid too – the BMW i8 sportscar.

Today Leipzig makes BMW and MINI vehicles together, on the same production line, and with all types of drive – whether combustion-powered, plug-in hybrid or battery-electric. It also makes high-voltage batteries for its own vehicle production as well as across the production network.

The flexibility of Leipzig and the BMW Group’s other plants follow a clear strategy: “The BMW Group’s extreme flexibility in production means it can serve customers’ wishes in line with the markets and with demand,” says Milan Nedeljković, Board Member for Production. “With all the plants in our global production network now set up for electromobility, we are ready to carry on growing in this segment.”

Since 2013 the BMW Group has gradually been integrating electric vehicles into production at its plants around the world. Initially, it was mainly plug-in hybrids that rolled off the production lines alongside diesel and petrol cars, but in 2019, we extended our battery-electric offering to include our second brand, launching production of the MINI Cooper SE in Oxford, UK. Since 2020 our battery-electric portfolio has been continuously expanding, with the BMW iX3 manufactured in China, and the BMW iX and i4 made in Dingolfing and Munich from 2021.

Since 2022, upgrades to the BMW Group’s German and Chinese plants mean they can now all produce fully electric cars. Meanwhile, Spartanburg in the US is currently preparing for production of fully electric vehicles to start in 2026, followed by San Luis Potosí in Mexico in 2027, with the Neue Klasse. Both Spartanburg and San Luis Potosí are already making plug-in hybrids, just like Plant Rosslyn in South Africa, and further electrified models are made for the local markets in Brazil, India and Thailand.

The BMW Group has long expanded electric drive components to outside Germany as well. Since the launch of the BMW i3, Plant Dingolfing has been producing battery modules, high-voltage batteries and electric motors. And as the production network has progressively been electrified, Dingolfing has also become home to the Competence Centre for E-Drive Production. By 2022 capacity had already reached over 500,000 units a year.

As electromobility burgeons, fifth-generation high-voltage batteries are now being assembled in Regensburg, Leipzig and Spartanburg too. All the while, the expertise of the teams is being channelled seamlessly into the sixth-generation electric drive, which will launch in late 2025 in the Neue Klasse at BMW Group Plant Debrecen.

At the BMW Group, electrified vehicles are accounting for an ever-increasing share of sales. In 2024 they made up 25 percent of our production volume, and three quarters of them were fully electric models. In the first quarter of 2025, we sold 109,513 battery-electric BMW, MINI and Rolls-Royce vehicles, marking a year-on-year rise of 32.4 percent. So, fully electric cars account for almost one in every five vehicles delivered by the BMW Group. And the journey continues: we remain open to all technologies, strategically flexible and focused on achieving our goal of shaping future-proof mobility worldwide.

At the end of this year the BMW Group will start a new chapter in its history, with the launch of the new BMW iX3. The first model of the Neue Klasse will herald the arrival of the Gen6 e-drive. We are currently constructing high-voltage battery assembly plants in five countries across three continents: in Debrecen (Hungary), Irlbach-Straßkirchen (Germany), Shenyang (China), Woodruff near Spartanburg in the (US) and San Luis Potosí (Mexico).