BMW plans to turn old i3 EV batteries into home energy storage systems
When your BMW i3's battery finally conks out, you can use it at home as an energy storage system.
Electric vehicles' lithium-ion battery packs have a finite lifespan. However, just because a battery can't hold enough juice to power an electric car anymore doesn't mean it's ready for the recycling plant. In fact, if removed from the car, the battery can be turned into an energy storage solution for your home. At least, that's what BMW and Beck Automation have in mind.
On Tuesday morning at the Electric Vehicle Symposium & Exhibition 29 in Montreal, Quebec, the German automaker announced plans to turn old batteries from its i3 model into energy storage solutions for both residential and commercial applications.
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Although the i3 EV isn't old enough to have battery packs that need replacing, they some day will, however. When that time comes, BMW and Beck will offer a 2nd Life Battery plan. Smartly, the solution is essentially plug and play. That means, the battery can be unbolted from the car and plugged into the Beck-designed charging module.
The benefits are many. By giving the still-useful battery another assignment, it saves it from being sent out for recycling, which is an energy-intensive process. What's more, it allows homeowners and businesses to capture solar energy (if they have a solar system) during the day that they can use to charge their EV with at night. You know, when the sun is down.
Short of solar, the Beck system could be programmed to charge the 2nd Life Batteries when energy prices are at their lowest, thereby saving the EV driver cost on charging. In this way, it's doubly eco-friendly.
Now, before you get too excited about this plan, there's of course a caveat. As mentioned before, there aren't any used i3 batteries ready for 2nd Life. Accordingly, this program is not yet in place. That said, BMW confirmed to Mashable that it could start trail programs here in the U.S. as soon as 2017 with larger scale rollout after that.
This announcement seems to beg another question: Are the BMW i3 2nd Life Batteries greener than the Tesla's Powerwall?
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Topics Cars
