2023-11-09 05:43:00
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09.11.2023 08:43, Alexey Razin
Even taking into account the active participation of Panasonic engineers in the creation of 4680 size battery cells, Tesla presented their creation as its own personal achievement. As it turns out, BMW hasn’t been idle either, and has improved cylindrical battery cells, improving their performance to a level that surpasses Tesla.
Image source: BMW
In any case, as explained Electrek with reference to an interview with BMW representatives to the resource Automotive News, the Bavarian company itself insists on this. “Tesla will have to catch up with us. In fact, we don’t pay attention to the gap with Tesla… We are dealing with a battery design that matches our products and our ideas regarding how the driving performance of our cars should be realized“, BMW said.
BMW’s own research center in Germany has achieved improvements in the performance of cylindrical lithium-ion traction batteries according to several criteria. If the 4680 cells proposed by Tesla have a diameter of 46 mm and a height of 80 mm, defining the size designation itself, then BMW, while maintaining the same diameter, increased the height of the cylinder to 95 or even 120 mm, depending on the modification.
At the same time, the charge storage density was increased by 20%, and the amount of carbon emissions during production was reduced by 60%. The range was increased by 30% to approximately 800 km, but not all of this increase is provided by optimizations at the level of individual cells; it is partly achieved by layout improvements at the battery level. BMW Group production director Milan Nedeljkovic even declared technological superiority over Tesla – according to him, the latter will be forced to catch up with BMW. The Bavarian company itself will be able to focus on improving the driving performance of its cars, something it has always valued.
It is noteworthy that BMW is going to produce sixth-generation traction batteries, which have the advantages listed above, in cooperation with the Chinese company CATL, but will begin it only in 2025. Perhaps by then Tesla will offer something new, and another important aspect of competition remains the cost of production, which Tesla, due to the scale of its business, can maintain at a fairly low level. In this regard, BMW can only count on the production potential of CATL, which is the world market leader.
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