BMW Group has signed a €540-million contract with China’s Ganfeng Lithium for the supply of raw lithium from mines in Australia. The carmaker has restructured its supply chains for its upcoming fifth generation of battery cells. From 2020 on, it will directly source both lithium and cobalt. The raw materials will then pass on to… Read more »
A consortium of companies led by the BMW Group has launched the Bidirectional Charging Management (BCM) research project to develop backfeeding power technology, which will allow vehicles to transfer energy back into the power grid or customers’ homes when plugged into a compatible charging station or wallbox. The goal is to allow EVs to operate… Read more »
BMW’s i3 was ahead of its time, but it has had few upgrades since its 2013 unveiling, and the company has fallen behind in the electrification race. Now the Bavarian automaker is making a bid to get back on the lead lap, launching three new EV models over the next couple of years. The iX3,… Read more »
BMW plans to install 4,100 charging points at its German locations by 2021. The charging points will include AC and DC fast chargers, and will be powered by renewable energy. Most of the stations will be installed around Munich – other sites include Berlin, Leipzig, Regensburg, Landshut, Wackersdorf, and Dingolfing. BMW anticipates that, by 2021,… Read more »
BMW i Ventures plans to invest in CelLink, a San Carlos, California-based manufacturer of flexible circuit technology. The funding will support CelLink as it moves several projects into full-scale production. CelLink, which plans to continue to ramp production of large-area flexible circuits for power and data transmission in its first manufacturing facility through the end… Read more »
In July of this year, BMW launched a high-voltage battery production plant in Thailand, in partnership with parts maker DRÄXLMAIER. The investment, worth a total of 500 million baht ($16 million), was supported with incentives from Thailand’s Board of Investment. The assembly lines, located at the DRÄXLMAIER plant in Chonburi assemble both battery modules and… Read more »
BMW plans to bring its Induction Charging Pilot Program to the United States. The company launched the program in Germany in 2018. BMW’s Wireless Charging allows for automated charging via an induction GroundPad when a CarPad is fixed to the underside of the vehicle. The system has a charging power of 3.2 kW, which is… Read more »
BMW has doubled its production capacity of high-voltage batteries at its plant in Spartanburg, South Carolina. The battery facility now produces new fourth-generation batteries for the plug-in hybrid models of BMW’s new X5 and its future X3, both of which are also produced in Spartanburg. In the past four years, the plant’s battery assembly team… Read more »
BMW can’t seem to make up its mind about electrification (the same could be said about most of the legacy automakers). In 2013 it released the i3, which was a giant stride forward at the time. The once-revolutionary city car continues to sell in respectable numbers in some European markets, but BMW never followed up… Read more »
Jaguar Land Rover and BMW will partner to develop next generation electric motors. The partnership will include joint investment in R&D, engineering, and procurement. Engineers from both companies will work to develop the fifth generation of BMW’s eDrive technology, which contains the electric motor, transmission, and power electronics in a single housing, and does not… Read more »