- BMW will refrain from increasing the battery size of its EVs.
- The company's head of development alluded to large batteries not making sense.
- Instead, BMW will focus on making its EVs more efficient.
Getting the most driving range out of an electric vehicle usually means strapping a huge battery pack to its floor and calling it a day. However, as Tesla and other automakers have shown over the years, efficiency is as important as the battery capacity in enabling an EV to drive as far as possible without having to stop for a recharge.
One of those legacy automakers is BMW. They make great EVs, including the i4 and the iX, and they know a thing or two about squeezing everything from a vehicle design to make it as efficient as possible. The quirky i3 is a testament to that, especially its skinny tires that were specially designed for it.
And while BMW has fitted its fair share of large batteries to EVs—over 100 kilowatt-hours for the i7 and iX—that’s probably as far as it will go. In an interview with Automotive News quoted by BMW Blog, BMW development boss Frank Weber said that companies can’t “make batteries bigger and bigger because then BEVs don’t make sense anymore.”
He mentioned that there is much talk about EVs capable of driving over 620 miles on a full charge. But building such a car creates an “unnecessarily bad” carbon footprint. Instead, working on the car’s efficiency is “much more important than ever-larger batteries.”
According to some internal customer polling, EV drivers are happy with a vehicle that can drive between 250 to 310 miles on a full charge in real-world conditions. BMW already has several EVs that cover that need, and with the introduction of the upcoming Neue Klasse models, the company claims the real-world ranges will increase by roughly 30% compared to current models.
“From the data we have, only very few people travel distances of several hundred kilometers with a BEV,” Weber said, underlining once again the need for more efficient EVs as opposed to heavier cars with bigger batteries. The latest battery tech is also a big factor in making EV owners’ lives easier. The upcoming Neue Klasse EVs will be powered by new cylindrical cells that were developed in-house by BMW, with the automaker claiming they will offer 30% faster charging compared to current cells, enabling top-ups of roughly 190 miles in just ten minutes.
When it comes to solid-state batteries, which are described as the next best thing in cell technology, Weber believes that we’re still roughly a decade away from seeing solid-state-powered EVs on every road. “They will come, but they are still at least one vehicle generation away.”
