1.4 tons of water is approximately equal to two days of domestic water usage for a typical household.
This is also the water intake per unit produced by BMW Brilliance in 2025. More noteworthy is that this figure has decreased for eight consecutive years, reduced by nearly half compared to eight years ago.
This trend is clearly visible from data changes: In 2022, BMW Brilliance's water resource consumption per unit produced was 1.77 cubic meters/unit; in 2023 it dropped to 1.72 cubic meters/unit; in 2024 it further dropped to 1.57 cubic meters/unit; by 2025, it was compressed again to 1.4 cubic meters. Seemingly just changes after the decimal point, but looking at the Shenyang production base with an annual capacity exceeding 830,000 units, accounting for nearly 30% of BMW's global capacity, every decrease of 0.1 cubic meters creates very considerable resource saving benefits.
More importantly, this achievement is far below the industry average. According to industry standards, the advanced water quota for sedan manufacturing is about 4.0 cubic meters/vehicle, and the general value is about 6.29 cubic meters/vehicle. Currently, mainstream automakers generally remain in the 3.0—4.5 cubic meters/unit range, and even relatively advanced fuel vehicle factories domestically are mostly around 2.5—3.6 cubic meters/unit. However, BMW has almost "squeezed" single car production water consumption to the extreme.
But what BMW truly wants to answer is obviously not just "how to save more water".
For a long time in the past, the automotive industry focused more on sales, speed, and scale. After entering the new energy era, this competitive anxiety was further amplified, and the voice of "sales determine heroism" was once heard loudly. But after the industry entered the stage of deep competition, more and more people began to realize that a truly mature automotive industrial system is no longer just about how many cars are sold, but how to continuously reduce resource consumption and persist in the long-term commitment to low-carbon transformation within a huge manufacturing system.
In addition to the continuous decline in water usage, BMW Brilliance also gave its own thinking through 13 consecutive years of sustainable development reports. In 2025, its full value chain carbon emissions decreased year-on-year by more than 5.4 million tons, and supply chain carbon emissions decreased by 1 million tons compared to 2019. This means that sustainable development within BMW has long become a system capability that is executed long-term and iteratively.
And the efficient use of water resources is precisely one of the important benchmarks for measuring automotive green manufacturing capabilities. Compared to data that is easier to see like sales and capacity, water resource management often reflects a car company's long-term foundation at the manufacturing system level. In this regard, BMW is always committed to reducing water resource intake in production processes and daily operations, and relies on sound water resource management, as well as advanced water saving and water treatment technologies, to continuously reduce water demand from the source.
In 2025, BMW Brilliance achieved a dual decline in total water resource intake and per-unit production water intake. The total annual water resource intake was 752,100 cubic meters, a year-on-year decrease of 24% compared to 2024; the total water resource consumption was 439,481 cubic meters. At the same time, the total water intake of various factories has decreased for three consecutive years, with a decrease of over 40% compared to 2023.
Furthermore, BMW goes beyond "water saving" to rethink the relationship between industrial production and urban ecology. While strictly controlling the consumption of fresh tap water, it is also constantly exploring the potential for water resource recycling. Not only does it recycle wastewater by building efficient reclaimed water reuse facilities; it also creatively introduces municipal reclaimed water, integrating the factory water "small cycle" into the city water supply "large cycle". In 2025, the total use of reclaimed water exceeded 680,000 cubic meters, a year-on-year increase of 71.9%, and the saved water volume was enough to meet the annual domestic water needs of nearly 9,300 Shenyang households.
In fact, this exploration of BMW Brilliance's Shenyang production base is particularly important for Shenyang. As a typical water-scarce city in the north, Shenyang's per capita water resources are only one-sixth of the national average, and it is also a key region for the country to implement the "double control" strategy of total water usage and intensity.
Against this background, BMW Brilliance has continued to expand reclaimed water application scenarios since 2016, gradually covering municipal reclaimed water and internal reclaimed water systems. In 2025, the Shenyang Dadong Factory achieved breakthrough progress, where all production processes fully adopted reclaimed water substitution, and all production processes achieved zero tap water consumption. At the same time, based on the 100% use of municipal reclaimed water for factory greening and irrigation in 2024, it was further expanded in 2025 to the Tiexi Factory and Lida Plant coating workshop cooling tower operation, continuously improving overall water resource utilization efficiency and reducing the pressure on urban sewage treatment.
This concept revolving around water resource recycling is also continuously extending to BMW's entire supply chain system. Currently, 13 suppliers have installed advanced wastewater circulation and reuse systems, achieving the recycling and reuse of process water.
Not limited to the Shenyang production base, BMW is also promoting water saving practices at global production bases according to local conditions. For example, the Chennai factory in India and the Rayong factory in Thailand will collect rainwater intensively during the monsoon season, meeting about 50% of the water demand in the factory area throughout the year, and prioritizing its use for non-production scenarios such as toilet flushing, cleaning, and greening.
In fact, when the industry is increasingly competing on "parameters", "configurations", and "traffic", indicators like water resource utilization rate and supply chain carbon reduction, which seem "not eye-catching" or even "not mainstream", actually better reflect an enterprise's understanding of long-termism. Because a truly mature global car company must not only think about "how many cars were sold this year", but also think about ten, twenty years later, whether it still possesses the system capability and sustainable development capability to continue participating in global competition.
For the automotive industry today, this might also be an increasingly important question: What should a car company ultimately leave behind? Is it rapid overdraw after short-term scale sprinting, or the industrial system capability that can traverse cycles and continuously create long-term value.
In a sense, BMW's persistence on sustainable development over these 13 years has also made people re-understand another layer of meaning of "luxury". True luxury has never been just the accumulation of parameters and configurations, but rather a long-term awe of resource efficiency, environmental responsibility, and future development.
And as more and more car companies begin to rethink the relationship between "scale growth" and "long-term value", BMW's answer sheet regarding "water" may also be providing a reference with greater long-term significance for the entire industry to move towards a new stage of high-quality and sustainable development.
