BMW plans to announce in July it will build its first assembly plant in Mexico and has identified two regions where the site could be built, media reports said.
Audi is building a plant, Honda Motor recently launched NAFTA Fit production there and long established Nissan has recently opened a third plant.
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BMW’s Mexican factory will either be built in the state of Hidalgo or in San Luis Potosi and will initially produce as many as 100,000 cars per year, Automobilwoche said, according to Reuters. Models likely to be built at the site include the 3-series saloon (which launched US production years ago).
A BMW spokesman told Reuters there was no decision yet to build a new factory in the North American Free Trade Agreement area that includes the US, Canada and Mexico.
“We’re routinely looking at different locations,” the spokesman said.
Reuters noted that BMW said in March it would ramp up annual production capacity at its US factory in Spartanburg, South Carolina to 450,000 vehicles by 2016, in a move that cuts the manufacturer’s dependence on fragile European markets.
