The long awaited moment we’ve all been anticipating is here: the first BMW iX3 rolled off the production line in China. The moment bears a special significance, as BMW is trying to stay relevant in a market that includes more and more electric vehicles by the day. The iX3 is also the first car to use the potential of the ‘Power of choice’ principle BMW has been raving about, which sees all three types of cars (ICE, PHEV, BEV) built on the same platform.
According to BMW, using this modular way of building cars should offer the Bavarian company the freedom to make whichever model they please without huge costs and at a fast pace, adapting to the demand on the fly. As you may very well know, the new BMW iX3 will be built exclusively in China, another premiere for the Bavarian car maker, which has been making the X3 at the Spartanburg plant nearly exclusively since it was unveiled in the first place.
“Today, we begin production of the BMW iX3, the first pure electric model from our core BMW brand. With a production system like this, specialized for high quality, we are able to deliver what customers worldwide demand from premium vehicles,” said Franz Decker, head of BBA’s Technology and Production division, during the event which took place on September 29.
The location wasn’t picked at random. The BMW Brilliance Automotive facility in Shenyang has all the tools needed to manufacture the model, including a battery plant and state of the art technology for quality management dubbed the ‘zero defect concept’. According to BMW, this should ‘ensure that the globally high market requirements for electric mobility are met’.
128 mechanical tests and 994 software functionality tests ensure the high quality of high-voltage batteries throughout the entire lifecycle. 140 functional tests check every aspect of the vehicle during acceleration, in particular road conditions and on rocky roads. BBA produces the fully-electric BMW iX3 on the same line as the BMW X3 with combustion engine to ensure a high level of efficiency and flexibility in production.
