Earlier in the year, BMW and Ford announced they’d be working with Solid Power, to develop solid-state batteries for EVs. Solid-state batteries are the future of EV technology, as they offer better range, faster charging, better thermal management, and—perhaps more importantly—lighter weight. Solid Power build a new facility in Colorado earlier this year but it seems that BMW is going to help manufacture some of Solid Power’s batteries in Germany.
BMW has reportedly made a deal with Solid Power to use its intellectual property, and its solid-state cell design, and make batteries at one of its German plants. BMW is said to pay Solid Power $20 million through June 2024 for the rights to use Solid Power’s proprietary cell designs and manufacturing techniques.
There’s currently no word on when BMW might use solid-state batteries in production vehicles but if it’s going to start manufacturing some in its own facilities, it might be sooner than we all thought. Even if BMW doesn’t sell any solid-state EVs anytime soon, there’s a chance we could see a working test vehicle within a year or two. If BMW can even build a test mule with solid-state batteries, it would have quite the head start among its competitors.
Solid-state technology is the future of battery technology. Not only do solid-state batteries have more relative capacity than typical lithium-ion batteries, they’re faster to charge, too. And because they don’t have a liquid electrolyte, they’re considerably lighter than current EV batteries and don’t heat up as quickly. Just decreasing the weight alone is a huge help, even with the same battery capacity, as that allows the EV to be more efficient, which means more range. But if it can lower the weight and increase capacity, it wouldn’t be outside the realm of possibility to see a car like the BMW iX get 400-500 miles of range, instead of 300 miles. This could be huge for BMW and we’re very much going to keep an eye on this story as it develops.
[Source: Auto News]
