BMW commits to UK for Mini EV (with £75 million government support)

BMW Group has announced today a new investment of more than £600 million in the MINI factories at Oxford and Swindon.

The Oxford plant is gearing-up to build two new all-electric MINI models from 2026, the 3-door MINI Cooper and the compact crossover MINI Aceman.

The UK investment will be backed by funding from the government – understood to be worth £75m.

By 2030 production will be exclusively electric and the BMW Group will have spent over £3bn on its Swindon, Hams Hall and Oxford plants since 2000.

“With this new investment we will develop the Oxford plant for production of the new generation of electric MINIs and set the path for purely electric car manufacturing in the future,” says Milan Nedeljković, Member of the Board of Management of BMW AG responsible for production.

Adds Business and Trade Secretary Kemi Badenoch:

“This decision is a big vote of confidence in the UK economy and the work of this Government to ensure the continued strength of our world-leading automotive sector. We are proud to be able to support BMW Group’s investment, which will secure high-quality jobs, strengthen our supply chains, and boost Britain’s economic growth”.

The Oxford plant celebrated its 110th anniversary this year and has been producing the current MINI Electric since 2019, where it is fully integrated into the production line with the conventional (ICE) models.

The MINI Plant Oxford currently produces the MINI 3-door, the MINI 5-door as well as the MINI Clubman and the MINI Electric. From 2024 the plant will start producing the next generation MINI 3-door and MINI 5-door with combustion engines, as well as the new MINI Convertible, before they are joined by the new all-electric vehicles in 2026 – the MINI Cooper 3-door and the MINI Aceman.

The factory will reach a production capacity of around 200,000 cars per year in the medium term, with ICE and battery electric vehicles (BEVs) initially being built on the same production line. From 2030, the Oxford Plant will produce all-electric MINI models exclusively.

The Oxford and Swindon plants already use digitalisation and virtual planning tools to configure buildings and systems today, streamlining the planning of logistics routes and material, traffic flows and even the movement of employees. The whole of Plant Oxford and Swindon will be 3D-scanned in minute detail this year to obtain a full set of digital data of both the building and its systems.