With BMW’ s push toward circular production and carbon neutral manufacturing, how are you challenging suppliers to innovate through secondary materials or even digital traceability? And how do you see supplier partnerships evolving from transactional to codevelopment in early phases?
NICOLAI: We are in constant dialogue with our existing suppliers to search for the right innovations in the product, but also in the production processes and how we work together.
We are also on a daily search for new suppliers, new partners bringing in their innovation and their product ideas.
What is clear to our existing suppliers is that we are not only asking for innovation, but we are strict in our contracts for further partnerships in terms of use of renewable energies. That is accepted without a feeling of pressure because it’ s part of the negotiations.
For the iX3, it is the first vehicle where we not only collected what was able to be collected, but we clearly negotiated and contracted the use of energy, the use of secondary raw materials and therefore we could secure that progress because it was planned and delivered.
78 January 2026