BMW has created a digital version of its upcoming electric vehicle (EV) facility in Hungary, in a move that exploits the value of the much-hyped metaverse for large manufacturing projects.

This so-called ‘digital twin’ allows for full-scale testing in a sandbox environment, identifying and solving potential issues with the factory — from floor layouts to validating the assembly process — before their physical counterparts are created.

The project, which was unveiled on March 21, has allowed the German automaker to start producing virtual EVs at a simulation of its €2bn plant in the city of Debrecen, which is still under construction. The plant is expected to be fully operational, with the first Neue Klasse EVs rolling off the production line, in 2025.

While automotive, aerospace and energy companies have worked with digital twins of individual products for years, a sophisticated ecosystem like BMW’s that shows an entire working facility, and allows interoperability between different digital twins, applications and 3D worlds was not possible before the metaverse.

BMW has created its digital plant through Nvidia Omniverse, the US technology firm’s metaverse platform that allows manufacturers to build projects using virtual worlds, artificial intelligence-powered digital humans and 3D assets. As the first company to completely design and validate a factory using Nvidia’s metaverse platform, the digital Debrecen facility represents a huge advancement for the ‘industrial metaverse’.

“This is transformative,” Milan Nedeljković, BMW’s board member for production, at the virtual factory’s inauguration. “We can design, build and test completely in a virtual world.”

In a blog post following the project’s inauguration, Nvidia described it as “a blueprint for reducing risks and ensuring success before committing to massive construction projects and capital expenditures.”

BMW is treating it as a blueprint for its own future operations, too, as it saves time and costs, and allow for a smoother launch of physical operations by detecting flaws, reviewing floor layouts and validating the assembly process in advance. 

Janne Strauss-Ehrl, sub-product owner for 3D real-time applications at BMW, tells fDi that Omniverse will be used to plan future plants as well as updates of its existing plants to integrate new car models into a production line. “Validating the whole process virtually before the hardware is installed and robots are programmed … brings us very close to a zero-loss launch, because the amount of rework to the production system can be reduced to nearly zero,” he said.

The metaverse’s real value

BMW’s digital factory is an example of the industrial metaverse, the lesser-known sibling of the consumer metaverse championed by Meta’s Mark Zuckerberg focused on gaming, entertainment and commerce which is failing to convince investors. 

The hype for all things metaverse is misdirected, according to a recent note by Jacques Bacry, executive vice president at the consultancy Capgemini. “Certainly, immersive technologies will impact on customer-facing sectors, [but] the true step change will take place in the industrial metaverse,” he wrote.

While the industrial metaverse may be “less obviously attractive” than its consumer applications, “it is actually more impactful to the wider community in economic terms,” Alex Embry, head of Capgemini’s Metaverse-Lab, tells fDi.

Technology intelligence firm ABI Research expects revenues from the industrial metaverse to hit $100.9bn by 2030 — more than double the size of the consumer metaverse’s market — as more firms adopt digital-first strategies and industry 4.0 technologies. 

“We are working with many industrial companies and manufacturers to build digital twins of warehouses and factories to optimise their layout and logistics,” said Brian Harrison, Nvidia’s senior director of software product management of digital twins for Omniverse. This includes automakers such as Mercedes Benz, Lotus Cars and Toyota. Capgemini is also aware of life science companies in the process of creating virtual factories. 

The industrial metaverse could benefit international manufacturers in particular, as it “potentially de-risks investment in another country in terms of simulation and virtual builds before significant investment is made,” said Mr Embry.