SB LiMotive, the joint venture between Bosch and Samsung SDI, has been selected to supply lithium-ion batteries for the upcoming Megacity vehicle – an electric city vehicle from BMW.
The family of cars is scheduled to be introduced in the first half of the next decade and will feature pure electric drive or an efficient combustion engine – all will be very low emission vehicles.
Production of the batteries will begin next year and, according to a briefing by Dr Joachim Fetzer, the executive vice president of SB LiMotive, the company will focus on optimising the cell chemistry. Its goals are to produce a power density in excess of 4,000W/kg by 2012 for hybrid applications. It also wants to produce an energy density greater than 150Wh/kg for electric car applications – that’s a 30-40 per cent improvement within three years.
The company hopes to produce a battery pack for around €350 by 2015 – that’s around two thirds of the current cost.
The BMW Group meanwhile, has organised its electrical and urban mobility efforts within project I – an initiative from its Number One strategy. Its first output was the MINI E, which is currently undergoing a large scale field trial in the US, the UK and Germany.
