BMW is taking ‘Make in India’ very seriously. As part of their efforts to increase localization in their automobiles, BMW today announced that all of the cars that will be assembled at their plant in Chennai will have 50 per cent of their components manufactured within the country. The localized components will include engines and transmissions from Force Motors, axles from ZF Hero Chassis, door panels and wiring harnesses from Draexlmaier India, exhaust systems from Tenneco Automotive India, heating and air-conditioning from Valeo India and Mahle Behr as well as seats from Lear India.
This means that the 1 Series, 3 Series, 5 Series, 7 Series, the X1, the X3 and the X5 will all feature components that are locally manufactured. This does not however mean that the there will be any significant change in the pricing of the products on offer. According to Robert Frittrang, managing director of the Chennai plant the idea is to increase the amount of locally manufactured components without compromising on the quality of the end product. He is sure that the highly skilled workforce and the state of the art technology will make this possible.
