BMW Investing € 200 million to Develop Battery packs for Electric Vehicles

You must be noticing that there has been a lot happening lately in the electric vehicle space. Now BMW has also announced that they will be investing € 200 million ( around Rs 1530 crore) to develop battery cell competence centre. The German car manufacturer says that it will create 200 more jobs. The corpus of € 200 million will be invested during a period of four years and not at once. (Do you know? Each Volvo will be Hybrid-electric 2019 onwards)

This high-tech battery cell competence centre will be built in Munich and will be operational by early 2019. This facility will be used by BMW’s experts to research and develop battery cell design and chemistry. With this investment, the company aims to improve following things- Battery lifespan, safety, charging capacity, cost efficiency and battery performance in general. (Read: Mercedes EQC electric SUV launching in 2019)

bmw i8 ev
bmw i8 electric sportscar

Don’t be mistaken to think that it’s a battery production plant. This centre will be purely dedicated for research & development and to create battery cell prototypes. Once, the design and chemistry is approved, the third-party battery manufacturers will then supply the battery packs to BMW as per their specifications.

bmw 5th-generation electric powertrain
BMW’s 5th-gen electric powertrain

 

BMW is now new in the EV space. We have already seen unique BMW electric cars like BMW i8 and BMW i3. Apart from the electric powertrain, those cars also featured some other revolutionary technologies like BMW’s patented carbon-core that emphasises on using high-strength steel, aluminium, magnesium and carbon fibre for chassis construction. BMW will soon introduce a production model based on its fifth-generation electrical drivetrain. This system combines electric motor, battery, transmission, and controller into a single unit. Whereas, presently these components are separate units. BMW says that the focus is on electric mobility, digitalisation and autonomous driving vehicles for the future while eliminating the dependence on rare metals and other non-renewable resources for battery construction. With this investment, BMW electric car technology could potentially challenge Tesla. Would you like to own a BMW electric car over a Tesla if they were in the same price range? Read: Tesla Roadster revealed by Elon Musk

Know all about BMW’s 5th-gen electric powertrain:

Siddharth Sharma
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Siddharth Sharma

Siddharth has always been passionate about Cars and Bikes. He was the kind of kid that always had the latest Auto magazine in his school bag. He had this dream- to become a professional racecar driver. Finally, in 2012 he found himself racing as a rookie driver in the Polo R Cup national racing championship. Over time he had to readjust the sail and get into automotive journalism to continue enjoying machines on wheels.