BMW and Solid Power, a solid-state battery company backed by both BMW and Ford, have entered into an agreement that grants the German luxury automaker access to some of Solid Power’s intellectual property rights. This enables BMW to more swiftly develop its own cutting edge electric vehicle batteries at their facilities for future EV models.

Solid Power is a prominent leader in the EV battery market, and they further enhanced their status when they installed a pilot line for testing purposes back in June 2022. With these tests underway by the end of this year, Solid Power will then deliver their cutting-edge cells to BMW and Ford.

In the present day, a Colorado battery company is licensing its innovative solid-state battery cell design and manufacturing processes to BMW. To meet these terms, BMW must forward $20 million by June 2024 as well as invest in Solid Power and accept completed solid-state EV battery cells from the company going into the future.

Automotive News stated that solid-state batteries are dissimilar to current lithium-ion EV batteries because they possess a solid electrolyte, rather than a liquid one. These battery cells boast several benefits such as increased safety from decreased flammability risks.

Rather than surrendering its intellectual rights to the exclusive solid electrolyte material, Solid Power will provide BMW with said material when necessary. However, this won’t occur until after the carmaker has successfully constructed and launched its battery manufacturing lines.

BMW will replicate Solid Power’s trial battery production lines and construct them in one of their factories located in Germany. Like the original pilot line, BMW’s version is designed to initially create prototypes.

On December 2022, Solid Power made its way to the stock market. It is one of numerous companies that are heralding a future for electric vehicles with solid-state batteries. Although this technology seems quite promising, other firms have been researching it for many years and may not be ready to manufacture these types of batteries at scale or deploy them in EVs yet for several more years.

Source: Automotive News