The 34Ah battery is an upgrade version of the Korean battery maker’s predecessor 26Ah battery model.
The Korean battery maker will produce 500,000 PHEV 34Ah battery cells per month. As 96 battery cells is used to build one battery module to power a PHEV, the Samsung SDI’s production capacity will be enough to supply 5,000 PHEVs.
BMW is currently selling its full-size SUV ‘X5’ and luxury premium sedan ‘7 series’, both of which are PHEV model.
The new 34Ah PHEV batteries are expected to be integrated into ‘X5’ and ‘7 series’ PHEV models sometime in the second-half of the year or in early 2019.
The German carmaker is also selling ‘i8’ that was developed only in PHEV model. As the typical car uses different size battery of 20Ah, the new batteries will not be used for the model.
BMW’s move of adopting the upgraded 36Ah battery is to increase its PHEV’s maximum driving distance and fuel efficiency.
PHEV is a hybrid electric vehicle that can be recharged by plugging it in to an external source of electric power as well by its on-board engine and generator.
Meanwhile, Samsung SDI can gain better profit by selling of higher energy density PHEV batteries. The profit margin increases as the energy density of a PHEV battery cell increases.
Samsung SDI said “The 26Ah PHEV battery for BMW was almost a zero-margin, so the company has worked on developing and supplying high energy density PHEV batteries.”