A company, with more than 90 years of experience, dedicated to the design and manufacture of e-mobility systems, seeks to offer innovative and sustainable mobility solutions for the vehicle market. We have been chatting with Pablo Alarcón, Plan Manager at BorgWarner, who tells us all the details.
What is your assessment of the new edition of Mindtech?
We did not participate directly with a stand, but we did attend as an audience, looking for options for collaboration and solutions from other companies in the sector, and we were surprised by the wide range of very powerful participating companies and the full agenda of high-value activities that were organised.
What novelties will the extension of the Viana factory bring?
The expansion of the Viana factory is due to the need to accommodate a series of products resulting from the reduction in the number of production plants in Europe, as a result of the integration of several of BorgWarner’s business units, as well as the adaptation to the new reality of the combustion market in Europe, which has suffered strong reductions in recent years. The expansion is completed and fully operational. In addition, another division of BorgWarner, different from the one to which the Vigo and Viana plants belong, has decided to invest in the same industrial park with the opening of a new factory dedicated to the assembly of motors and inverters for electric vehicles.
What growth plans do you have in mind?
BorgWarner’s commitment as a corporation is to grow in the electric vehicle market, but without abandoning our key technologies in combustion. In the Vigo plant, after a couple of years of reduced sales linked to the reduction of the combustion market, we have been able to weather the storm thanks to the acquisition of new projects that even allow us to return to growth in the short term to record highs. The key to the future lies in being able to take advantage of this growth to adapt to new market demands, gaining competitiveness and flexibility that will allow us to carve out a niche for ourselves in the electric vehicle sector.
You are working towards more sustainable mobility solutions. What are your milestones in this regard?
We are currently developing several new products for battery cooling and power electronics that will be essential in new electric and hybrid vehicles. We are at an advanced stage of collaboration with several manufacturers and expect to have fully functional and validated parts within the next few months.
What has BorgWarner done to adapt to the pandemic?
During the pandemic we have all had to learn to work in new ways, to use new tools, to apply new protocols, to collaborate in innovative ways. I think this has helped us to adapt to the demands of today’s society by further increasing flexibility, teleworking and work-life balance.
“We are currently developing several new products for battery cooling and power electronics”.
In terms of automotive, what innovations and trends are here to stay?
In terms of propulsion systems, what seems to be a clear and unstoppable trend is the penetration of electric vehicles in the short/medium term, as well as the clear decline of diesel and, to a certain extent, petrol. The question is not whether this change will happen or not, but when and how fast. The other change is that the production volumes for the various engines are becoming smaller and smaller. This will become more pronounced in the future as new manufacturers enter the European market and as the population tends increasingly not to own a car. All this translates into an even greater need for manufacturing flexibility and cost reduction in an increasingly competitive market.