GREENVILLE, S.C. — The Upstate auto industry that grew up around Greenville, S.C., added a new piece on Friday, Nov. 13, when BMW and state and local leaders opened BMW Plant Woodruff, a $700 million site built to assemble high-voltage batteries for electric vehicles.
BMW describes the Woodruff facility as the first plant in North America to assemble its sixth-generation high-voltage batteries. The packs will move by truck to Plant Spartanburg, about 15 miles away, where they will go into the iX5, an all-electric SUV that BMW has said will be its first fully electric model built in the United States.
The plant does not make battery cells itself. BMW says round cells are placed straight into finished packs under what it calls a cell-to-pack design. The company has said series production at Woodruff is set to begin before the end of 2026.
About 300 people already work at the one-million-square-foot building, according to BMW, which has not said how many more jobs may follow. Inside are a virtual reality training center, the production line and a quality testing area where each battery is checked on more than 90 points before final testing.
The project was first announced in October 2022, and ground was broken in 2023. The land along S.C. Highway 101 was once a peach farm, and BMW handed out peach pins at the opening as a nod to that past. Gov. Henry McMaster and Woodruff Mayor Kenneth Gist were among the officials on hand.
The opening came the same week a University of South Carolina study put Plant Spartanburg at about $36 billion in yearly economic output for the state. The study found that for every 10 jobs at the Spartanburg plant, roughly 32 more are supported elsewhere in South Carolina. More than 11,000 people work at Plant Spartanburg, which turns out roughly 1,500 vehicles daily.
State support helped the Woodruff project along. South Carolina gave BMW a $52 million grant to buy the land and pay for offsite environmental work, and the company has put its combined spending on the Woodruff site and its existing Greer factory at $1.7 billion.
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