German luxury car maker BMW is partnering with a new Swedish battery manufacturer plus a Belgian recycling company that will build a sustainable future battery supply chain.
The partnership
The two companies BMW will work with are Northvolt, and Umicore. Northvolt is building the largest battery factory in Europe for EVs in Sweden. Umicore is a Belgium-based materials processing company. It will develop battery reuse and recycling systems. The company will dismantle battery packs down to their cells and recycle the cell material into new cells which in turn will be built by Northvolt. Before being disassembled the packs could be used for grid or home storage of electricity until their useful life is spent according to a report in Automotive News Europe.
Advantages of the new system
Besides the systems being good for the environment, it has a couple of advantages for BMW. The system could bring down the price of batteries which have become more expensive since 2015. European automakers and also auto manufacturers in other parts of the world are being made responsible for ensuring that their installed batteries are properly disposed of when they no longer function. Reusing and recycling the materials from the batteries could also lower the disposal costs of companies.
The new agreement could also suggest that BMW will turn to Northvolt to supply batteries for its future EVs, rather than the Samsung batteries it uses now.
Northvolt's plans
The company intends to invest $4.6 billion in order to build a battery factory that will be a rival to Tesla's Gigafactory in the US. It should eventually produce up to 32 gigawatt-hours of batteries each year. Northvolt intends to begin producing as much as 8 gigawatt hours worth of batteries in 2020 and to have its plant fully operational by around 2025. However, BMW gave no timeline for developing it end-to-end recycling system.
BMW plans to add many new EVs to its lineup
Last month, BMW claimed it will add 25 different battery-electric and plug-in hybrids to the market by the year 2025. The figure was released at a company presentation and interview last year in early December.
BMW already offers the reasonably priced battery-electric i3 as shown in the appended photo and video. It has the plug-in hybrid i8 and also a half dozen of plug-in hybrids of its sedans and crossovers.
The present electric cars with the larger batteries produced last year are termed their fourth generation of EVs. The fifth generation will be reworked versions of two basic BMW architectures.
BMW says it expects that by 2025 fully a quarter of its sales to be plug-in electric vehicles.
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