Series production of BMW electric bikes begins

BMW has just started the series production of the all-electric CE 04 moped scooter and its police or public authority variant at the motorbike plant in Berlin. According to the company, all future new models from BMW Motorrad in the field of urban mobility will be 100 per cent electric.

On its German and British homepages, BMW Motorrad currently still lists the C 400 GT and C 400 X scooter models with combustion engines under ‘Urban Mobility.’ According to the new pledge from the German automaker for emission-free urban two-wheelers means that these fossil-fuelled versions will not receive any direct successors. Since the two C 400 mopeds are more conventionally designed scooters compared to the CE 04. Our German colleagues think it is likely that BMW Motorrad will put a more conventional electric scooter alongside the futuristic CE 04 in the future.

The production of an electric scooter is not new at the Motorrad plant in Berlin since the predecessor C evolution has been manufactured there since 2014. “We prepared our plant for E-production at an early stage and are thus able to serve a wide variety of BMW Motorrad segments from our Berlin plant,” says Helmut Schramm, Head of Production BMW Motorrad.

According to BMW, a highly flexible modular assembly area has been created for the assembly of the CE 04 on an area of around 1,000 square metres. Instead of a classic assembly line, a panel assembly line was installed on the area, which is elliptically aligned and constantly moving. In this way, BMW aims to make optimal use of the available space, keep material flows efficient and enable ergonomic workplaces.

In addition to the final assembly itself, the electric motor is also manufactured in Berlin, and the storage housing is also made in the capital. However, its contents come from Bavaria: the storage modules – the same technology used in the BMW iX – are supplied from the Dingolfing vehicle plant.

BMW Motorrad presented the 31 kW-strong CE 04 in July this year – at least the production version. The design study, many elements of which have been retained in the series, was unveiled almost exactly a year ago in November 2020. In October, BMW Motorrad announced the police version (and its series production) at the Milipol trade fair in Paris.

bmwgroup.com (in German)