The BMW Group UK has partnered with “Off Grid Energy” to launch a new program that will re-purpose old EV car batteries into modules that power mobile supply units.
This will be a mutually beneficial program for the two firms, as well as the environment and the community. “Off Grid Energy” is a company based in Rugby, Warwickshire, and which delivers smart and efficient energy storage and supply solutions for locations that are out of the national grid’s reach.
This may sound like a niche market, but in fact, there’s a growing number of people who choose to live in remote locations and enjoy the gifts of the wilderness and the solitude that comes with it. Oftentimes, getting a grid connection in these areas is complicated, takes a lot of time, costs way too much, requires many approvals and application documents, and even then the line may not be reliable. “Off Grid Energy” solves this problem by offering environmentally-friendly and silent power units based on battery packs. These products can work either as standalone systems or as supplementary auxiliaries.
BMW believes that it’s a shame to throw away the EV car cells that are no longer operating up to a serviceable level, so they will now give them to “Off Grid Energy” for re-purposing.
Batteries used in BMW and Mini EV models have a warranty of eight years or 100,000 miles, and when they reach this point their capacity has fallen to about 80%. This may not be up to the operational standards of BMW, but these cells can be comfortably used in other applications, and they should be.
By the end of the decade, BMW will begin to take out a significant number of older cells from EV models, so finding a way to resell them is great for the firm. By 2025, BMW estimates that EV cars will account for almost a third of its total sales, so by 2030, they will have many warranty-expired batteries in their hands.
“Off Grid Energy” is already planning much higher capacity units than what they are currently offering, as they expect to receive a plethora of good enough cells to support this.
Image by Clker-Free-Vector-Images from Pixabay
Source: Mark Allen Engineering
