The BMW Group has no plans to manufacture in-house electric car batteries, with the German automotive giant’s CEO telling CNBC that his firm had a robust network of suppliers to meet its demands.
“We have strong contracts with various battery manufacturers from China, from Korea, also from Europe, and that is a very strong network,” Oliver Zipse said.
“They will supply us with enough batteries for our ramp up for the next couple of years,” he added. “And for us, there’s no necessity to go into our own production.”
Zipse’s comments come shortly after German rival Volkswagen Group said it was aiming to establish several “gigafactories” in Europe by the end of the decade.
“Together with partners, we want to have a total of six cell factories up and running in Europe by 2030,” Thomas Schmall, CEO of Volkswagen Group Components, said in a statement issued Monday. This move, he added, would guarantee “security of supply.”
On issues connected to the supply of semiconductors — which has affected a number of companies — BMW’s Zipse explained that, so far, the company had not experienced any production interruptions connected to chip shortages.
“Our forecast is of course cautious, we do not exclude (that) … there might be some volume interruptions in the near and short term, but we have to see,” he said.
“We have a very strict management of our suppliers and we … ordered our set of chips very early last year already,” he added. “And our general position is that we expect that our orders … will be delivered.”
Zipse was speaking on the same day BMW said it would have approximately 12 fully electric models on the road by 2023. In addition, it wants fully electric vehicles to account for at least 50% of global deliveries by the year 2030.
For 2021, BMW said its automotive segment was “forecast to record a solid year-on-year increase in deliveries to customers worldwide.” Its earnings before interest and taxes margin is expected to be between 6% and 8%.
Shares of BMW were up by around 4.81% on Wednesday.