Description
Added on the 07/12/2017 13:29:43 - Copyright : BANG Showbiz
The new BMW 5 Series, including the all-new fully-electric BMW i5, celebrated the official start of production today at BMW Group Plant Dingolfing, in the presence of Bavarian Minister-President Markus Söder. The site in Lower Bavaria, which is celebrating 50 years of BMW automotive production in 2023, has now ramped up its third fully-electric model in two years, following the BMW iX and BMW i7. Pure battery-electric vehicles’ share of total production at the BMW Group’s largest European manufacturing location is projected to increase to over 40 percent next year.To achieve this, the BMW Group is relying on flexible architectures and offering most of its models to customers around the world with different drive train variants. The BMW 5 Series – like the BMW 7 Series and BMW X1 before it – will be available with a fully-electric drive train or internal combustion engine, or as a plug-in hybrid. This requires a high degree of flexibility, but allows the company to utilise its plants’ capacity efficiently and adjust its offering to customer demand. Nedeljković: “We are following the market. Customer requirements determine what the actual drive train mix looks like.” This has been made possible by extensive investments in the production network. The BMW Group has invested more than one billion euros in integrating the BMW iX, BMW 7 Series and BMW 5 Series at the Dingolfing vehicle plant.
This was followed by more testing over the course of 2022, both at other BMW Group test facilities and in everyday driving in and around Munich as well as in the vicinity of BMW Group Plant Dingolfing. The task here was to continue refining the car’s chassis technology and acoustic properties under a wide variety of conditions, as well as honing the drive unit’s power delivery, in order to produce a well-resolved driving experience at all times.Here again, part of the development work was deliberately carried out during the colder months on icy and snowy roads in the Alpine foothills. This last winter, BMW i5 prototypes – now sporting less camouflage and near-production headlights – were regularly sent out for testing to verify the functionality and reliability of their powertrain and chassis control systems in extremely demanding road and weather conditions. The BMW engineers involved in the vehicle project were able to directly inspect the current state of development through testing in the BMW brand’s native Bavaria before it was time to return to endurance testing near the Arctic Circle in February 2023.
Dan Stagner, TRX vehicle integration manager, discusses the durability testing that the all-new 2021 Ram 1500 TRX endured to help exceed customer demands.