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BMW says its next-generation Neue Klasse automobile structure is not only a technological leap for electrical automobiles, however a basic shift in how the German automaker designs, sources, and builds automobiles – from recycled supplies to fossil fuel-free factories.
Board member for improvement, Dr Joachim Submit, and board member for manufacturing, Dr Milan Nedeljković, each highlighted sustainability as central to BMW’s technique because it prepares to roll out 40 Neue Klasse-based or influenced fashions by 2027.
For Dr Submit, who oversaw product technique when the Neue Klasse platform was accredited in 2021, the round financial system is now not elective – but it surely solely works if it’s engineered into automobiles from the beginning.
“As soon as you concentrate on it from the primary day, I feel it’s not all the time a price case to combine recycled supplies,” he stated. “It’s a market which works very, very effectively as a result of you have got a excessive worth of the supplies in battery applied sciences. We additionally combine scrap and recycled materials, not from automobiles as a result of there’s too little quantity, however from client trade with our gross sales suppliers.
“So it’s a excessive price materials that is smart to combine the scrap and all of the issues there and the recycled materials, additionally on plastics. As you sink in from the primary day, you’ll be able to come to a method that it’s not all the time a price. It’s additionally, let’s say, a impartial case a minimum of.”
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The problem, he stated, shouldn’t be availability however high quality.
“You have to do it with the suitable companions to get the suitable high quality of the fabric. And I feel from designing, from the development aspect, that’s essentially the most difficult factor, to get the suitable materials, in the suitable high quality, that you’ve got stiffness, weak spot, all these items, the suitable high quality. That’s the principle difficult level. However when you arrange this with the companions in the suitable method, you’ll be able to handle them.”
Dr Submit argued that recycled supplies can’t but change all the pieces, however they’re very important for assembly BMW’s CO2 discount commitments.
“It’s restricted. It’s not a enterprise case for all these elements. However we even have a CO2 goal, which BMW all the time fulfilled. And to try this additionally with optimising the provision chain, recycling supplies is without doubt one of the greatest issues, and we determine all the pieces about recycling, additionally from a price perspective.”
For Dr Nedeljković, the manufacturing boss liable for BMW’s international community, Neue Klasse can be about rethinking how factories run.
The flagship instance is BMW’s new plant in Debrecen, Hungary, which can construct the primary Neue Klasse fashions and is the corporate’s most superior manufacturing website but.
“Our technique is known as the ‘I-Manufacturing unit’, primarily based on three foremost pillars: effectivity, sustainability and digitalisation,” he stated.
“It’s embodied on this new plant in Debrecen and, for sustainability, it’s our first plant operating with none fossil fuels. So it doesn’t also have a connection to a gasoline pipe. It runs absolutely on inexperienced electrical energy, and we’ve applied a photo voltaic panel park on website, which is 500,000 sq. metres, and it feeds an vital portion of the electrical energy into the grid of the plant.”
Heating was one of the crucial difficult duties, particularly within the paint store – sometimes the biggest client of gasoline in any automotive plant.
“Now we have the primary absolutely electrical paint store worldwide within the automotive trade to run.”
Debrecen additionally represents BMW’s most formidable use of digital twins and AI in manufacturing.
“The entire plant has been deliberate nearly within the new system, which we name the manufacturing unit verse, in our inside naming of it. It’s a challenge we began with Nvidia a few years in the past the place we synergise the competence of Nvidia from the gaming trade and our data of commercial planning. We’re utilizing all of the programs now we have for the totally different elements of the plant… however they’re now all linked to 1 digital, digital twin of the plant.”
The thought is that each planner can work inside a single simulation mannequin, making setup sooner and offering a everlasting stream of knowledge for optimisation.
“This enabled us to be very quick and efficient in organising this plant, but it surely offers us a really, very robust base for knowledge. We now have the total scope of this plant within the cloud, and we will apply AI purposes to make this plant more practical and utilise all this knowledge for optimisation, high quality inspection and logistics,” stated Dr Nedeljković.
He emphasised that whereas Debrecen is the primary fossil fuel-free manufacturing unit, each BMW plant worldwide will observe its personal sustainability path, tailor-made to native sources.
“Each website has a unique method. As an illustration, in Munich now we have geothermal power. That’s why now we have a plan with town, and it’s already in preparation to utilise geothermal power for heating and lowering gasoline consumption. We’ll use then the identical know-how from Debrecen within the paint store to get the paint store processes completed with electrical energy.”
Different BMW amenities will use hydrogen, bioenergy, or wind and photo voltaic, relying on what’s obtainable.
“So you can not reply with one technological method for each website on the way to do it. You have to use the native potentials,” stated Dr Nedeljković.
Each executives admitted the trail shouldn’t be easy. Fuel stays a less expensive power supply, and recycled supplies require cautious engineering. However each insisted that integrating sustainability on the core of Neue Klasse makes it achievable with out pushing prices unreasonably excessive.
Dr Nedeljković stated Debrecen is the blueprint.
“To arrange a brand new facility like Debrecen from scratch and to make it sustainable, it’s the best method you are able to do it, in case you evaluate it to making an attempt to rework an current construction into a totally sustainable plant,” he stated.
It stays to be seen how successfully the electrical automobiles of at the moment will likely be recycled and reused within the a long time to return.
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