BMW’s electric/hybrid vehicles battery supplier Lion Smart has managed to triple the battery capacity for the BMW i3. Using new battery-pack architecture, Lion Smart’s 100-kilowatt-hour battery gives the i3 a possible range of 435 miles on a single charge while sitting on the same footprint as the original battery pack.
Lion Smart has developed a modular battery-pack design that makes cooling more efficient and eliminates wiring inside the pack to reduce weight, size, and cost.
Within the same dimensions, a modular pack can be designed to produce 101 kwh at 400 volts, 98 kwh at 600 volts, or 106 kwh at 800 volts, depending on the sizes of the modules and how they are connected.
Lion Smart calls its modules supercells, which house cylindrical battery cells in a hexagonal arrangement. The company says the supercells can be adapted to any cylindrical cell format, including 18650s (used in Tesla Model S and X), or the latest 21700 design used in the Tesla Model 3.
