This is why BMW's new EV battery is exciting
- BMW is developing a new EV battery that claims to offer 30 per cent more range and costs 50 per cent less than the current range of batteries.
BMW's future range of Neue Klasse electric vehicles would come powered by exciting battery technology. The automaker is reportedly developing advanced lithium-ion battery packs that will offer as much as 30 per cent additional range compared to the company's current range of EV battery packs. Automotive News has reported that the German luxury car brand is working on Gen 6 battery pack at the BMW Group Battery Cell Centre of Excellence in Munich. It also said the new battery cells come with a cylindrical shape that changes how the cell-to-pack is designed.
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The Gen 6 battery pack allows BMW to ditch the current prismatic cells. This new design allows the battery pack to be mounted directly into the EV's frame. This not only improves chassis stiffness and ride quality of the vehicle but contributes to 50 per cent cost savings as well. The report further claims that these batteries take 30 per cent less time to reenergize from 10 to 80 per cent, compared to the current BMW battery packs.
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The new battery cell is claimed to use more nickel and silicon and a lesser amount of cobalt. The cathode in the battery cell has 50 per cent less cobalt, while the anode has 20 per cent less graphite. The new battery also uses recycled cobalt, nickel and lithium and makes the cells using renewable energy, claims the report.
BMW has claimed that the new battery packs will promise significantly higher energy density. Also, the new design will allow the automaker to put more cells into the battery pack. As the automaker has claimed, with Gen 6 battery pack, it is integrating cylindrical battery cells straight into the vehicle as part of its body. The main challenge will be to achieve the right compromise between stiffness and flexibility, claimed the automaker.
The automaker aims to go fully electric in the coming years, and the Neue Klasse architecture will play an integral role in that strategy. BMW plans to build several electric crossovers based on this platform by the middle of this decade. Expect these EVs to come powered by the new Gen 6 battery pack.
