According to British media reports,
BMW Group has decided to stop producing MINI electric models at its Oxford plant in the UK, while the production line is expected to be transferred to China by the end of next year. It is understood that BMW produces over 40,000 electric MINI models a year at the plant.|
China mold manufacturer
Stefanie Wurst, the new head of the BMW MINI brand, said in response that the Oxford plant was "not ready for electric cars" and that Great Wall would be responsible for the future The electric MINI and the electric MINI Aceman will be produced at the Zhangjiagang plant in Jiangsu province.
Wurst added that MINI's decision had nothing to do with supply constraints, but was mainly due to the fact that the Oxford plant, which produces both fuel and electric vehicles on a common line, would have been inefficient. Instead, the Oxford plant will focus on producing fuel models after the production line is transferred to China.
The media estimate that, based on the average product life of a model of seven years, the Oxford plant is not expected to see a return to electric model production until 2030.
According to MINI's brand strategy released last year, MINI will launch its last fuel model by 2025 and thereafter begin to focus on pure electric models. Pure electric models are expected to account for half of all MINI sales by 2027, with full electrification expected in the early 2030s.
MINI is not actually the first company to decide to move its electric production capacity out of the UK - back in 2016, Honda decided not to build electric cars in the UK and closed its plant in the South West of England for good in July 2021; in May this year, a person familiar with the matter said that JLR (Jaguar Land Rover) was in discussions to build a new electric car for its sourcing batteries for a range of future electric models to be produced in Slovakia.
However, just as MINI was rumoured to be moving its EV production to China, the only major battery plant planned in the UK said it would go bust if it was short of a £200 million bailout.
Some outside sources believe that Great Wall is interested in making an acquisition of the Oxford plant in addition to taking on electric MINI capacity. A source from Great Wall Motors said talks were already underway internally, but declined to give a specific timeline.
In response, Wurst said that there could indeed be a future situation where both MINI and Great Wall Motors build vehicles at the Oxford plant, but she denied rumours of a takeover. "Oxford will always be the home of MINI," she said.
In 2021, the BMW Group sold more than 2,251,500 vehicles worldwide, up 8.4 per cent year-on-year, according to its published financial results.
MINI Electric, the largest subbrand in terms of growth, saw its sales rise by more than 98% year-on-year in 2021.
In China, the BMW and MINI brands together delivered more than 846,000 new vehicles in 2021, an increase of 8.9 per cent year-on-year. And the growth trend continued in the following period - in the first three quarters of 2022, the BMW Group delivered more than 592,000 BMW and MINI vehicles to the Chinese market, with sales of purely electric models rising by 65 percent year-on-year in the first three quarters.
