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BMW Group investing €200M over four years in new Battery Competence Center; Gen 5 electric drivetrain in 2021; 700 km range

The BMW Group will invest €200 million (US$233 million) over the next four years in its new BMW Group Battery Cell Competence Center in Munich. This interdisciplinary competence center aims to advance battery cell technology and introduce it into production processes; the center will open in early 2019.

In the center’s research and prototyping facilities, specialist departments will analyze cell design and cell technology. They will also create prototypes of future battery cells, focusing on the chemical composition of the cells, use of different materials, how the cell behaves in critical or extremely cold conditions, charging and rapid-charging behaviour and evaluating cell sizes and forms.

We will be concentrating all our in-house expertise along the battery-cell value chain at our new high-tech competence centre. International experts working in the new development labs and facilities will conduct important research to refine cell chemistry and cell design. We will focus on further improvements in battery performance, lifespan, safety, charging and also costs. We will set the benchmark for the industry.

—Klaus Fröhlich, member of the BMW AG Board of Management, responsible for Research and Development

By producing battery-cell prototypes, we can analyse and fully understand the cell’s value-creation processes. With this build-to-print expertise, we can enable potential suppliers to produce cells to our specifications. The knowledge we gain is very important to us, regardless of whether we produce the battery cells ourselves, or not.

—Oliver Zipse, member of the BMW AG Board of Management, responsible for Production

The BMW Group will also gain build-to-print expertise and can then contract out production of battery cells produced to its exact product requirements and specifications. This core competence—which covers the entire value chain from selection of materials, cell design, integration into battery systems, manufacturability and production technologies—gives the company a competitive edge, while leveraging cost benefits and economies of scale.

The BMW Group has already completed years of research into battery cells and acquired a high level of evaluation competence, especially through the development of the BMW i models. The company will concentrate know-how from various specialist departments and locations at the new Battery Cell Competence Center and step up its efforts in this area to achieve faster impact. Research findings will be incorporated directly into the latest battery generation.revp

Fifth generation of electric drivetrains from 2021: electric motor, transmission and power electronics form new component. The BMW Group is already developing the fifth generation of its electric drivetrain, for release in 2021, in which interaction between the electric motor, transmission, power electronics and battery have been further optimized.

The electric drive unit will combine the electric motor, transmission and power electronics in a new and separate electric-drive component. With its compact design, this highly integrated new component takes up significantly less space than the three separate components used in previous generations.

Its modular concept means that it is also scalable and can be modified for a wide range of different packages and performance levels, increasing flexibility and making it easier to install the new electric drivetrain component in different vehicle derivatives. Integrating the electric motor, transmission and power electronics into a single component uses fewer parts and therefore saves costs.

A further highlight is that the new electric motor does not require the use of rare earths, making the BMW Group no longer dependent on their availability.

The fifth-generation electric drivetrain also uses new, more powerful batteries. Their scalable, modular design means they can be used flexibly in the respective vehicle architecture at different production sites.

Thanks to further development of the battery in particular, the new electric drivetrain extends the range of pure battery-electric vehicles to up to 700 km (435 miles). In BMW plug-in hybrid models, electric distances up to 100 kilometers (62 miles) will be possible.

Using the the scalable electric modular systems, from 2020 it will be possible to fit all model series with any drivetrain, according to demand. The fifth-generation electric drivetrain achieves high levels of driving performance and good range with much less weight. It will be integrated into both front- and rear-wheel drive flexible enhanced vehicle architectures, which will also be suitable for all drive forms. This flexibility means the company will be able to meet the predicted demand for several hundred thousand electrified vehicles in 2025.

The BMW Group benefits from a highly flexible production network that can respond quickly to demand for electrified models. All electrified vehicles are integrated into the existing production system.

The company already produces electrified vehicles at ten locations worldwide. The batteries needed for these models come from the three battery factories in Dingolfing, Germany, Spartanburg in the USA and Shenyang, China. The BMW Group plant in Dingolfing plays a leading role within the network as the center of competence for electric drive systems.

Between January and the end of October, the BMW Group delivered a total of 78,096 BMW i, BMW iPerformance and electrified MINI vehicles to customers worldwide—an increase of 63.7% on the previous year. With nine electrified cars currently available, the BMW Group is one of the leading manufacturers worldwide. The company is well on track to sell 100,000 electrified vehicles worldwide by the end of the year.

Comments

HarveyD

Higher performance batteries and BEVs with 700+ Km range by 2021 is (may be) what the world requires to quickly replace polluting ICEVs?

Let's hope that BMW, TESLA and many others will succeed.

sd

Up to 700 km under whose standards? EPA's? Probably not. I wish everyone would adopt EPA's standards. From the road tests that I have seen, the GM Bolt seems to get the EPA range or a little better in practical driving but most of the European and Japanese ratings need to be cut by about a third.

Arnold

There seem to be problems with many efficiency claims and standards.
Reputable reports of 40% lower than advertised fuel efficiency and emissions @ as high as 10X times emissions are not hard to find.
Plug in hybrid claims of ~100 to as high as near 200klm gasoline equivalents are meaningless to me.
I tend to trashcan the manufactures as well as the authors of such rubbish on the basis that not only are they unreliable, but deceitful and so I turn my back to that.

The upside is that progress towards accurate and understandable consumer info is understood and proposed although i see no evidence of it's general application.

There are always occasional examples of plain explanations of consumer relevant information.But it's often a long wait. The other observation that we often acknowledge is that fanciful and exorbitant claims are lapped up by gullible consumers and those that spruke successfully can do well -- For a while but in the end consumers cotton on.
To be fair - in the meantime- faced with this reality should everyone make false claims on some imaginary level playing field in some other universe so we can make some form of comparison or do the authors and manufactures go ethical and keep it real?

Thomas Lankester

It will be interesting to see how the switch from the discredited NEDC to WLTP in Europe pans out over the next 2 years of phase in. We have several car models to bench mark the new figures against (and WRT EPA).
https://www.contracthireandleasing.com/car-leasing-news/wltp-replaces-nedc-september-2017/

Thomas Pedersen

I think it's relevant to point out, regarding average gas mileage that the user has a great influence as well. I average 15-20% better gas mileage than my wife, despite driving faster, because I understand the physics of the driving and the combustion engine.

Sticking to speed limits also helps (a lot). Or so I've been told ;-)

And it's OK to maintain enough distance to the car in front to not have to brake all the time, when it reduces its speed a bit.

I have a 4-cyl BMW 325d (the one with a small and a large turbo working in parallel) with, I suppose, an inflated NEDC rating. However, if I stick to the speed limits, drive in ECO PRO mode and avoid a greater fraction of city driving than in the standards, I can almost reach the advertised value. However, I can also make it use twice as much fuel. Easily!

To me it's fair that fuel economy ratings reflect what a trained driver can achieve with predictive driving. It's obviously not OK to tweak all other parameters like car weight, taping over openings, tire pressure, and all those other tricks they play before they resort to outright fraud.

Arnold

Totally agree with driver massive influences on fuel economy outcomes.
But there are examples described (I'm thinking the recent testing on board on road and in traffic! emissions tests)where a precisely selected set course is run on multiple passes and a number ~ 5 test drivers with a range of experience and driving style are compared against each other to obtain the statistically relevant variation or tolerance figures.
Of the 3 or 4 reports Iv'e read the variations have been measured as average <5% or ranging from 2% to 10%.

I was quite surprised but the take home message was that the variation can be designed out by crefulldesign.

Arnold

After thought it is worth mentioning that to run a test as described required test driver/s multiple runs an emissions (lab) machine operator, data analyst assembler etc and so is very time consuming of specialised labour.

Equally it not hard to see that data loggers and programs to analyse the data collected directly from today's connected cars (as we see in much motor racing track side telemetry) would suggest that the cost to monitor and log every new car in real time would suit automating if done at volume the cost would be tiny.

And Bri

I don't believe a single bit that bmw can predict that they will INVENT a 700 kms battery in 2021. If they know something now then they can at least prove it in an actual working certified prototype. they are scammers that do the same as all the corrupted scientific community, I"E lying permanantly. I will never buy a battery car and i will keep my actual small gasser fpr the future eons of time. But if ever someone really invent and commercialise a really good battery and he know what he is doing than this battery will be cheap and do over 2000 miles, so i will buy it at this time.

Till then im hoping that somebody else will be elected to replace deceiving trump and that he cansel ALL SUBSIDIES toward green scammers and remove all carbon targets.

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