The BMW Tower photographed in Munich, Germany, on March 6, 2021.
Anne Czichos | iStock Editorial | Getty images
The BMW Group has no plans to produce in-house batteries for electric cars, and the German car giant’s CEO told CNBC that his company had a robust network of suppliers to meet its requirements.
“We have strong contracts with several battery manufacturers from China, Korea, also from Europe, and that’s a very strong network,” said Oliver Zipse.
“They will provide us with enough batteries for our advance for years to come,” he added. “And for us there is no need to go into our own production.”
Zipse’s comments come shortly after German rival Volkswagen Group said it plans to establish several “gigafactories” in Europe by the end of the decade.
“Together with partners, we aim to have a total of six cell factories operational in Europe by 2030,” said Thomas Schmall, CEO of Volkswagen Group Components, in a statement released Monday. This move, he added, would guarantee “security of supply”.
On issues related to semiconductor supply – which have affected a number of companies – BMW’s Zipse explained that the company had not experienced any downtime related to chip shortages so far.
“Our forecast is of course cautious, we’re not ruling out (that) … there could be some short and short term volume outages, but we have to see,” he said.
“We have very strict management of our suppliers and we … ordered our set of fries very early last year,” he added. “And our overall stance is that we expect our orders … will be delivered.”
Zipse spoke on the same day that BMW said it would have about 12 all-electric models on the road by 2023. In addition, it wants fully electric vehicles to account for at least 50% of global deliveries by 2030.
For 2021, BMW said its auto segment “is expected to show a solid year-over-year increase in deliveries to customers around the world.” Earnings before interest and taxes are expected to be between 6% and 8%.
Stocks of BMW are up about 4.81% on Wednesday.