By Kylie Madry

SAN LUIS POTOSI, Mexico (Reuters) – German automaker BMW will make investments 800 million euros ($866 million) within the central Mexican state of San Luis Potosi to supply high-voltage batteries and totally electrical “Neue Klasse” fashions, the carmaker stated Friday.

The enlargement, set so as to add round 1,000 new jobs at its operations within the Mexican state, is BMW’s newest push into electrical automobiles (EVs) because it seems to be to transform greater than half of its gross sales into all-electric automobiles by 2030, it stated.

Greater than half of the funds to be invested in Mexico – 500 million euros – are earmarked for the battery meeting heart on the carmaker’s present plant grounds, BMW stated, and a few 500 extra staff will work there.

One other 500 jobs can be created in different areas, it stated.

The remaining 300 million euros will go to adapting and lengthening the physique store and constructing a brand new meeting line to put in the battery packs, plant head Harald Gottsche informed Reuters.

“We are going to begin constructing, developing the extensions and the brand new battery meeting to start with of 2024, and we are going to begin (to ramp up) manufacturing at the start of 2027,” he stated.