Recently, BMW announced further cooperation with State Grid EV Service Company, including collaboration on charging service products and promotion, promoting new energy power and charging technology innovation in three aspects.
Expanded Charging Infrastructure
As of mid-2021, China’s new energy vehicle ownership was around 6.03 million vehicles, accounting for approximately 50% of the global new energy vehicle ownership. In addition, due to certain difficulties in installing home charging piles in the Chinese market, the demand of new energy vehicle owners for public charging services exceeds that of the European and American markets.
It is expected that by the end of this year, BMW will access over 360,000 charging piles, including 150,000 DC fast charging piles. Among the major charging service operators cooperating with BMW, State Grid EV Service Company provides the highest proportion of charging piles and DC fast charging piles.
In addition, the first integrated green energy station combining solar power generation and energy storage with charging, jointly built by BMW and State Grid, has been completed and put into operation at Junbaohang in Beijing. According to official sources, the station is expected to provide 130,000 kWh of solar green electricity per year, equivalent to 1,757 full charges for the BMW iX3 and a range of approximately 770,000 kilometers. BMW and State Grid plan to build 100 more green energy stations with solar power generation, energy storage, and charging within the next three years.
Green Certification Charging Piles
State Grid has already applied green energy to public charging services. In the future, BMW new energy vehicle owners can use My BMW App to find green certified charging stations authorized by State Grid and obtain green energy traceability certificates. Additionally, it is worth mentioning that BMW states that users may enjoy the benefits of low-priced green electricity in the future.
Improving Charging Experience
In the field of charging technology research and innovation, BMW and State Grid EV Service Company are currently collaborating on technology such as plug-and-charge and high-power charging.BMW and State Grid EV Company are expected to launch their latest plug-and-charge service this year. Currently, the plug-and-charge service is already available in State Grid’s e Charging App as soon as the vehicle is bound. It is reported that in the future, BMW models will eliminate the steps of account binding, registration, and top-up.
On the market, the maximum power of State Grid’s DC charging pile is 160 kW, which has a certain gap in experience compared to Tesla’s V3 charging pile with 250 kW, and the high-power charging pile of State Grid is relatively rare, mostly 60 kW. I wonder what kind of technological breakthroughs will be achieved after the cooperation with BMW.
Finally
BMW, like many traditional luxury brands, is accelerating its electrification transformation. The BMW Group plans to offer approximately 12 pure electric vehicle models globally by 2023. In China, BMW plans to have pure electric vehicles account for at least one-quarter of its sales volume by 2025. However, among BMW’s current models, only the iX3 is a pure electric model, with sales of only 1,854 units last month. To achieve this expectation, they need to accelerate their product layout.
However, this cooperation shows that BMW is accelerating its electrification transformation in China. Tesla, as one of the benchmarks for new energy vehicles, has arranged two light storage and charging integrated super charging stations in China, and will also arrange more in the future. However, the 100 sites that BMW cooperates with State Grid can be seen as a precedent in terms of quantity, but if they want to achieve Tesla’s charging efficiency, BMW and State Grid still need to strengthen the charging power.
Information source: BMW official
This article is a translation by ChatGPT of a Chinese report from 42HOW. If you have any questions about it, please email bd@42how.com.