The BMW Group has announced that its Cell Manufacturing Competence Centre in Parsdorf, east of Munich, will officially open this autumn. As an important part of the company's overall electrification strategy, the battery cell manufacturing technology center will help the BMW Group to further deepen its technical reserves in this field, strengthen its advantages in battery system R&D and manufacturing, and accelerate the group's electrification transformation.

In 2019, the BMW Group Battery Cell Competence Centre was officially opened to promote the development of the BMW Group in battery cell technology, focusing on improving battery performance, such as energy density, peak power, service life, safety, load characteristics, etc.

The upcoming BMW Group Cell Manufacturing Technology Center covers an area of about 15,000 square meters, with a total investment of about 170 million euros in the initial development phase and about 80 employees. Here, BMW will verify the industrial feasibility of high-performance batteries in the future, comprehensively analyze and deeply understand the upstream value chain of batteries, and help suppliers to produce batteries that meet BMW Group specifications, thereby further optimizing the quality, production efficiency and cost of battery production. BMW Cells produced by the Group's Cell Manufacturing Technology Center are only used for R&D and verification functions.

At present, the planned capabilities of the BMW Group Cell Manufacturing Technology Center include production, development, and technical verification.

After the completion of the first phase of construction, the technology center will put into operation the electrode production system, including the battery electrode production part, the separate metering and mixing of graphite and lithium transition metal oxides; and the subsequent coating, rolling and Divide.

In the second phase, the Manufacturing Technology Center will install systems for battery assembly and activation (formation). Here, electrodes and other structural components are assembled into cells and activated (formed) and quality checked.

The BMW Group Cell Manufacturing Technology Center will support the development and production of the sixth-generation eDrive electric drive system for the "Next Generation" models, including a significant increase in the energy density of next-generation lithium-ion cells while reducing material usage and production cost. The sixth-generation eDrive electric drive system will take into account performance and cost control, and enable a new chemical system and cell form.

The powertrain plant in Shenyang is one of the three major battery production bases of BMW Group in the world. It not only meets the production of complete vehicle power batteries, but also integrates the production of prototype power batteries. The BMW R&D Center in Shenyang focuses on electrification. Its R&D scope includes localized development and verification of power batteries, including hardware design and simulation of battery sub-components, software function calibration and integration verification, and verification of battery safety and performance.

In 2022, the BMW Group will mass-produce and trial-produce 15 pure electric models, covering about 90% of the luxury car segment. At the same time, it will present 5 pure electric products in the Chinese market: including the innovative BMW iX, the innovative BMW i4, the BMW iX3, the new BMW i3 and the innovative BMW i7.