How do you translate an inspiring principle into real actions? With its Responsibility Days the German company wanted to explain its intentions with the ongoing initiatives
Responsibility. It is a word that often appears in the speeches of managers of large companies. Social responsibility, environmental responsibility, ethical responsibility. Concepts repeated frequently, but which often remain vague, so much so that one suspects that, in the end, they are just a way through which the industry tries to give itself respectability. And it is precisely to dispel this vagueness that f has been organizing an event called Responsibility Days. This year it was the turn of Munichthe heart city of the German group, welcome a few dozen international guests, with the aim of giving concreteness and even physicality to this concept, which would otherwise be too ethereal. A series of real examples of what a large automotive company can do – and actually does – to be responsible: towards everyone, customers, employees, the community, the environment and, ultimately, the entire planet.
the solution incubator
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The address itself is one that arouses curiosity: Freddy Mercury Strasse. It may be random, but it sounds good for a location that aims to grow creativity and imagination, so as to identify innovative and sustainable technological solutions, leaving maximum freedom of research and, above all, cultural interaction (a primordial soup always favorable to the development of ideas that go beyond the ordinary). The building, modern, transparent, obviously sustainable, is called Urban Colaballuding not only to the inevitable city context, but also to the concepts of laboratory and sharing. The spaces are open, to stimulate interaction between research groups and start-ups that use the structure; There is a battery of 3D printers available that everyone can use for their own projects. At the base there is a close collaboration between the BMW group and UnternehmerTUMone of the most cutting-edge European centers in innovation and the creation of new businesses, which in 2023 launched the Circular Republic initiativewhich wants to make Munich “the Silicon Valley of the circular economy”. Circular Republic is a platform that catalyzes the forces, experiences and solutions of – literally – dozens of companies from the most disparate sectors, engaged in projects aimed at reusing the resources we have. Recover materials and energy from produced goods at the end of their usesupply them to new production activities to reduce waste and pollution, share the use of goods and services with digital technology to reduce individual needs, encourage the sharing of products instead of owning them, extend the useful life of consumer goods by repairing, reconditioning them and putting them back on the market instead of sending them to destruction, promoting the efficient use of resources: these are the aims of the Circular Republic, whose cycle of activities is divided into production, distribution, use, collection and recycling of every possible good and product.
a neue class seat
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Seen in this way, the project may still seem surrounded by a certain vagueness, which, however, is its heart that dispels. Is called MakerSpace and it is a technologically equipped workshop of 2,700 square meters, supported by the non-profit UnternehmerTUM and close to the Faculty of Applied Sciences of the University of Munich, where ideas find concreteness. This is where, for example, the interiors of the BMW i3 Urban Suite presented at CES in Las Vegas in 2020 and that the idea of digitally changing the colors of the car’s bodywork was born BMW Vision Deealso exhibited at CES but in 2023. But the most tangible and interesting thing is the identification of the recycling process of the material currently used to create thethe covering of the Neue Klassethe long-awaited model destined to mark a turning point in the history of the brand. A sort of fabric that comes from the shredding of old coverings, treated chemically and mechanically in order to give rise to a new granulate that generates the new fabric, to be used to cover other seats. A process that, theoretically, can be repeated infinitely.
find resources
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Research, therefore, allows us to obtain savings, in environmental but also economic terms. But research has a cost and needs to be financed. This is also why it exists BMW i Venturesan investment fund whose aim is to support companies involved in defining the future of the automotive industry, its sustainability, production and the supply chain in the early stages of their development. With offices in Silicon Valley and Munich, the fund has a portfolio of oOver 85 companies spread across Europe, Israel and North Americawhich finances by disbursing from one to ten million dollars and managing overall assets for over 800 million dollars. From these investments, BMW will benefit in terms of innovation in terms of infrastructure, resources, industrialization processes and growth in know-how, which can also be extended to the supplier chain.
for young people
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However, responsibility also means looking to the future, to the next generations. For this reason, the group BMW is a partner of the One Young World Summitone of the most important international conferences for the world’s young leaders which this time brought together delegates from 196 countries in Munich, from 3 to 6 November, ready to discuss sustainability, circularity, social responsibility and much more. And, above all, to listen to the testimonies of leaders who, with their example, have made concrete contributions to these developments. Like – to cite a few examples – those who fought for the end of apartheid in South Africa, a journey which – it turns out – is still far from being completed; or as Miguel Ángel Moratinos, Undersecretary General of the United Nations and High Representative of the Alliance of Civilizations of the United Nations (Unaoc) and Gabriela de laTorre, responsible for talent education at the Ministry of Education of Mexico and director general of program adopt a talent (Pauta), which supports Mexican children and young people in their scientific careers by offering targeted extracurricular activities. At their side, Ilka Horstmeier, member of the BMW Board of Directors with responsibility for Human Resources and Real Estate, for whom “supporting One Young World means promoting responsible leadership and encouraging young people to take a stand by facing the challenges of the future with commitment and determination”. Or how, finally, Bob Geldolfthe rock star who took to the event park to remember how, forty years ago, he gave life to Live Aid, the largest global benefit concert of all time, and how the world today more than ever needs the spirit of solidarity and social humanity that animated that event.
study to grow
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For the creation of a new young and aware leadership, training is essential and this is why BMW, in addition to supporting the One Young World Summitdedicates attention and important resources to its Talent Campuses, one of which is located in the group’s historic first factory in Munich, while the others are scattered in Austria, Hungary, the United Kingdom, the United States, Mexico, Brazil, South Africa, Thailand and China, as well as in other areas of Germany. BMW has 66 schools, eleven colleges and ten universities as partners, where it trains apprentices and students in advanced subjects such as robotics, 3D printing, virtual reality, artificial intelligence (the one within the group is called Gaia) and production processes, also preparing company staff to manage the new models.
mega-real estate agency
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A group like BMW also inevitably has many “physical” structures, from office buildings to production plants, all of which pose inevitable sustainability problems. To give an idea of the volumes, we are talking about over 3,000 buildings spread across the world, for a total operational area of 20 million square metres, with 366 construction projects underway and an energy requirement of 6.2 TWh (one TWh is equal to one billion kWh). To make all this sustainable, the group works on several fronts: in Leipzig using wind and hydrogen as energy sources, in San Luis Potosì (Mexico) extensively using photovoltaic panels, in Shenyang in China experimenting with the use of geothermal energy, in Steyr (Austria) and Dingolfing obtaining heat from biomass, while the Hungarian Debrecen plant is the first entirely electrified without the use of fossils. The Talent Campus in Munich is also housed in a bio-sustainable building, created from the demolition of an old multi-storey car park that was part of the historic factory, dating back to 1922, profoundly renovated and ready to host the production of the Neue Class (after having churned out 83,500 electric BMW i4s already in 2024); being fully inserted into the city context, the structure is not separated from the external reality by a wall or gates, but instead opens up to the world, resulting transparent and partly accessible to anyone.
the car as art
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For BMW, extending the concept of social responsibility also means exercising a form of patronage applied to the world of art. A philosophy that has also found application with the creation of Art Carseries of cars transformed into works of art by some of the greatest protagonists of our era. An initiative born exactly 50 years ago, when the French driver Hervé Poulain, with the support of Jochen Neerpasch, director of BMW Motorsport at the time, asked his artist friend Alexander Calder to paint the 3.0 CSL with which he would participate in the 1975 24 Hours of Le Mans. The result was a masterpiece, which over the course of half a century was followed by 19 equally astonishing works signed by great artists such as Andy Warhol, Frank Stella, Roy Lichtenstein, David Hockney and the Italian Sandro Chia. The most recent is the M Hybrid V8, a car also destined for Le Mans, designed by Julie Mehretu, an Ethiopian-American artist known for her large-format paintings. The project involves his Art Car being accompanied by an extensive cultural program, created in collaboration with the African film and media arts collective, which will end in December 2026 in Cape Town, South Africa. Because, ultimately, this is also a way to exercise our sense of responsibility as a company.
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