Six months ago, a battery startup called Our Next Energy remove the battery from the Tesla car Model S and replace them with batteries its own design. Engineer then take the Teslaaim for the far end of Michigan (in the freezing cold of January, miss you) and drove 752 miles before they needed to stop to charge. That’s huge – the current longest range Model S is rated at just 405 miles. Now, the company wants to once again nearly double the range of an electric vehicle – this time, a brand new BMW iX ONE says it will be able to go 600 miles on a single charge.
Last year, BMW invests in ONE as part of a Series A funding round. That backing makes it is likely that ONE’s technology will will one day appear in a BMW product, and for now the partnership looks set to bear fruit. This upcoming prototype, an iX EV retrofitted with the ONE Gemini battery, which could be the first step towards the automaker making full use of the battery start-up company Skill.
That technology is ONE’s Gemini battery, what the company calls a “range-extending dual chemical battery”. ONE explains that the battery uses two distinct chemical formulations, both based on lithium-ion battery chemistry but each optimized for a different use case, to store more energy per cubic inch than other battery technology.
At the same time, ONE said the battery Gemini uses less than lithium, graphite, nickel and cobalt. However, this statement doesn’t say anything than – a traditional single-chemistry lithium ion battery of the same vehicle (for example, a reserve battery from iX) or a battery with the same theoretical maximum range.
Of course, that 600-mile range remains in theory – until later this year, when the BMW prototype is expected to be completed. The company claims that the mileage figures are the result of iX-specific computer simulations, but that testing has yet to begin with Gemini technology in the chassis itself.
ONE’s Model S prototype proves that the company definitely has anything else up its sleeve with this battery technology. If the iX prototype can make that technology work reliably, at large scale, and cheaply, we could see it power more BMWs in the future.
