The Munich based company has an ambitious plan to build a completely CO2 neutral brand by 2050. To go further, it now announces that it will start recycling batteries for its electric vehicles and forklifts in China.
In order to sell its vehicles in the Asian market, BMW signed an agreement with the local manufacturer brilliance automobile. The joint venture will be responsible for recycling these batteries. Among other things, China's policy requires the establishment of a tracking system for high-voltage batteries. This ensures that these important components in the operation of electric vehicles can be tracked throughout their life cycle. And this allows complete recycling at the end of its life cycle.
Batteries arriving at BMW will be evaluated to determine whether they will be reused or recycled.
The system implemented by BMW uses coding to track batteries along the entire value chain. It also tracks the batteries used in vehicles under development and in vehicles already on the market.
At the end of their service life, these batteries are returned to BMW, which evaluates them to determine whether they should be reused or recycled. The German company has used forklifts powered by reusable batteries in various factories. In the case of recycling batteries, so-called "rare metals", such as nickel, lithium and cobalt, are recovered from them. These will be used to make new battery cells.
Through this recycling, carbon dioxide emissions are reduced by 70%.
At present, BMW recycles batteries from prototypes used in testing, development systems, rejected production units and, to a lesser extent, batteries from scrapped production vehicles.
The German company claims that the closed-loop recycling can reduce carbon dioxide emissions by 70% compared with the use of newly mined raw materials.
"In view of the increasing scarcity of limited resources and the rising prices of raw materials, it is particularly important to promote a circular economy, increase the share of reusable materials and reduce dependence on raw materials. In the future, BMW Group will expand its recycling concept in China, which will not only contribute to environmental protection, but also effectively support China's transformation to a low-carbon economy," said yoheng Gaole, head of BMW Group in China
BMW will achieve zero carbon dioxide emissions by 2050 at the latest
China Automotive Technology Research Center predicts that by 2025, the recall of batteries will reach 780000 tons nationwide.
As we said at the beginning, BMW is committed to achieving climate neutrality in its entire value chain by 2050 at the latest. For this reason, about 10% of all vehicles it plans to sell this year are all electric. But by 2030, this figure will rise to 50% globally.
