BMW Is Beating Tesla At Its Own Game
Their upcoming Gen 6 battery looks very familiar…
Tesla has been crushing the EV world since the ’00s, and with the advent of their new battery, the 4680, they seem set to dominate the next decade of zero-emissions vehicles too. Or at least, that was the plan. You see, Tesla is struggling to build these revolutionary batteries. In fact, Tesla is now years behind where they said they would be with the 4680. As a result, the Model 3 and Y are more expensive than expected, and 4680-dependent models such as the Cybertruck, Roadster, and Semi have been delayed for years. Meanwhile, BMW seems to have copied Tesla’s homework and is planning their own revolutionary battery, except theirs may actually be better than Tesla’s. So the question has to be asked: can BMW take on Musk?
BMW’s new battery is known as the Gen 6, and it is a complete departure from any battery design they have used before.
The Gen 6 is a large cylindrical battery, 46mm wide and either 95mm or 120mm tall. With such a large battery, it will only take a few hundred to build a battery pack, rather than the thousands it currently takes. It is also built as a “structural pack” where the battery pack is part of the car’s chassis. To do this, the cells aren’t bolted together like they are in other packs, but rather set in a block of resin.
