While in the Netherlands, at VDL Nedcar in Born, for the 2,000 employees, the curtain fell in February for the production of the MINI, BMW shows it is capable of keeping production within its own factories. The first fully electric MINI Countryman models are rolling off the line in Leipzig.

Leipzig is the birthplace of BMW’s first electric car, the i3, which was phased out. From 2013 to the summer of 2022, this BMW plant manufactured over 250,000 BMW i3s and some 20,000 plug-in hybrid BMW i8 sports cars. In July 2022, production stopped to prepare for the conversion of the plant for assembly of future electric models, the MINI Countryman EV to begin with.

BMWs and MINIs on a single-line

Four months after launching the production of the combustion-engined MINI Countryman, the electric version is now made here too. That’s done on a single line alongside the BMW 1 Series, the BMW 2 Series Active Tourer (including the plug-in hybrid version), and the BMW 2 Series Gran Coupé.

It is the first plant where BMW and MINI brands are manufactured together, demonstrating flexibility. A core workforce of 5,600 employees has produced around 1,000 cars daily. Yearly production should be 100,000 more, up to 350,000. Since 2018, BMW has invested some 1.6 billion euros in upgrading the body shop, paint shop, assembly, and logistics.

Workforce of 7,000

With the MINI Countryman Electric added, the plant will see a production boost of 500 MINIs and some 800 BMWs daily, with 900 additional employees in vehicle production alone. Starting in 2005 with 2,500 employees, that number grew to 7,000 today.

The MINI built in Leipzig comes in two fully electric variants: the Countryman E (150 kW, 204 hp) with a range of up to 462 km (WLTP) and a more powerful all-wheel Countryman SE ALL4 (230 kW, 313 hp) with a 432 km range.

Gen 5 battery production

The carmaker says all three stages of the Gen 5 high-voltage battery production process are now represented at BMW Group Plant Leipzig: cell coating, module production, and battery assembly. Operations in all three are ramping up, with five cell-coating, three module-production, and two high-voltage battery-production lines in place.

In August, BMW broke ground on a new plot next to the existing factory, consisting of 12 hectares in total, eight of which will be built in the first stage of construction. That includes a new logistics hall for the current fifth-generation high-voltage batteries and an office building, which will be completed by mid-2024.

In total, BMW is investing €100 million in this Leipzig Supply Center North for high-voltage batteries, which will offer jobs for an additional 500 employees, up to 1,000 today. The e-component production unit at Leipzig will now manufacture not just the high-voltage batteries for the MINI Countryman Electric but also e-components for the BMW iX1, BMW iX2, BMW i4, BMW i5 and BMW iX made at other sites.