MUNICH — BMW Group is creating a battery cell that guarantees to go farther, price much less and be gentler on the planet.
The brand new lithium ion cell will energy BMW’s next-gen Neue Klasse electrical automobiles.
The so-called Gen 6 battery, below improvement on the BMW Group Battery Cell Centre of Excellence right here, delivers as much as 30 % larger driving vary than the present era, in response to the corporate.
A key to the efficiency is the battery cell’s cylindrical form, mentioned Simon Erhard, who helps lead Gen 6 improvement at BMW Group.
Whereas present BMW batteries function prismatic cells configured in modules bolted collectively to type a pack, the next-gen design ditches the modules. Its new cell-to-pack design permits extra power-packing cells to be squeezed into the identical battery footprint. The Gen 6 battery has a diameter of 46 millimeters.
“Power density is way larger than earlier than,” Erhard instructed a bunch of journalists at a media briefing this week. “You may put extra cells into the battery pack.”
Maximizing vitality density additionally reduces battery weight and price.
BMW mentioned the brand new battery pack is 50 % cheaper. That might be important to reaching value parity with combustion engine automobiles, because the battery pack accounts for about 40 % of an electrical automobile’s price.