Siemens builds battery plant for rail vehicles in Bavaria

Siemens Mobility and its partners celebrated the groundbreaking ceremony for a new production facility for rail vehicle battery systems in Luhe-Wildenau, Bavaria. A production facility is being built on a site covering around 20,000 square meters, where battery systems for Siemens regional trains, locomotives, and external customers will be manufactured in the future.

The buildings are scheduled for completion in spring 2027, and according to current plans, series production with up to 200 employees is set to begin in October 2027. In the future, complete battery systems will be manufactured in Luhe-Wildenau, including a new battery management system (BMS) that Siemens Mobility is developing in collaboration with the Munich-based company Stercom. The battery cells will come from external manufacturers such as Toshiba, with system integration carried out by Siemens Mobility.

Battery systems for trains must meet significantly higher requirements for robustness and durability than comparable solutions in the automotive sector. According to Siemens Mobility, typical capacities are around 500 kilowatt hours for regional trains and up to 2,000 kilowatt hours for locomotives. Until now, battery systems have been pre-assembled in Luhe-Wildenau. “Building on this long-standing expertise, Siemens Mobility is now establishing full-scale system production at the site,” the company wrote. In the future, up to 120 megawatt hours of battery capacity per year can be produced here in three shifts.

The construction of the battery system plant is expected to cost a total of €35 million. According to Siemens Mobility, it will invest €22 million of this itself, although €2.7 million of this will come from Bavarian subsidy programs. The subsidy approval was presented by Bavaria’s Minister of Economic Affairs, Hubert Aiwanger (Free Voters), who also took part in the groundbreaking ceremony. Other investors include regional project developer and property developer Dirnberger Real Estate GmbH and DIMONDA Projektbau GmbH.

With this construction project, Siemens Mobility is underscoring “commitment to Germany as a production and innovation hub,” as the company states. “With the new battery system production facility in Luhe-Wildenau, we are making a clear commitment to Germany as a production and innovation hub. We are investing specifically in key technologies, creating high-quality jobs in the region, and strengthening the competitiveness of the domestic rail industry. At the same time, we are making an important contribution to the mobility transition and sending a strong signal for the future viability of Germany as a business location,“ said Karl Blaim, CFO of Siemens Mobility.

According to its own information, Siemens Mobility has been the market leader in battery-electric regional trains since 2017 and also plans to build battery-electric locomotives for freight transport.

siemens.com, bayern.de (in German)

This article was first published by Sebastian Schaal for electrive’s German edition