BMW and Toyota Sign Lithium-Ion Battery Agreement

So to tally this up, Toyota has partnerships with:
-Tesla on electric vehicles
-Ford on hybrid truck development
-BMW on Li-Ion battery development

This makes me wonder where Tesla comes into play in this Toyota-BMW battery R&D. ...And doesn't A123 Systems supply Tesla with batteries?

Does anyone know who supplies BMW with the batteries they are using in the 1-Series ActiveE ?

 

toyota owns panasonic batteries (in rough terms)
tesla is teaming up with toyota and panasonic (more panasonic in a sense) to build it's next gen batteries.
bmw teams with toyota (so i assume panasonic) to build next gen batteries..

maybe it's all about panasonic?...

 

Panasonic consumer cells are assembled by tesla to power the roadster. Panasonic cells also will be in the tesla S and Rav4 EV and these may be different than the roadster. Panasonic cells, based on Sanyo technology are assembled by PEV (joint venture between Toyota and Panasonic) in the prius phv and alpha.

A123 is in the fisker karma
A123 replacing battery that failed Fisker Karma during testing - chicagotribune.com
A123 is also supposed to be in the upcoming chevy spark, but pending the fisker incdent, they may change vendors. LG chem is in the volt and focus EV.

A joint venture SB LiMotive between samsung and bosch provides batteries in the Active E. SB LiMotive owns US battery maker Cobasys which does joint research with A123. JCI-Saft provides the Li batteries in BMW ActiveHybrid 7. A23 the Activehybrid 3 and activehybrid 5.

 

is SB LiMotive also not the owner of the current Nimh patents?
i did read something about them buying it from the chevron/texaco deal

i think its the other way around
tesla ford and bwm have partnered with toyota

link did not work for mee but

--
A defect in A123 Systems' prismatic lithium ion cells can cause batteries to short out and prematurely fail. The company said it is confident that it has isolated the problem to a single automated welding machine at its Michigan plant, CEO David Vieau said during a conference call today.

An incorrect calibration of one welding machine caused a misalignment of certain components in a battery cell. That misalignment can cause a break in the electrical insulation and a potential short, Vieau explained.

Prismatic cells made in another location and cylindrical cells made at A123 Systems' manufacturing plant in China are not affected.

http://news.cnet.com/8301-11128_3-57404394-54/a123-systems-stung-by-faulty-batteries/

 

Yes, they were the part of chevron with the patents. Panasonic currently has the ability to use those patents. The last one of the original ovonics patents expires in 2014.

On the Tesla/Toyota deal tesla is the driving partner, with tesla taking a RAV 4 glider and Panasonic consumer cells and transforming it into an EV. They are doing this for a future MB ev also. Toyota and MB have each bought part of tesla.

It is expensive to perform R&D on this technology. Toyota is going to buy diesel engines from BMW. They will share R&D costs of some battery developments, but its likely Toyota is that driving partner. It is difficult to select the best cells, but R&D from automakers needs to determine SOC and charging strategies. BMW seems to be further along on short time burst usage for acceleration. Supercap additions to the pack may be also on the table. BMW will likely buy batteries from the best vendor at the time.

On the Ford deal for truck hybrid it seems like to true joint venture. Ford does appear to be sourcing Panasonic that are similar to the prius phv in the energi models. They will be assembling the cells themselves into battery packs.

 

i think its just the name
tesla was having financial trouble so think they where just intressed in some stock

 

On tesla, it wanted the business of adding the electric drivetrain to the rav 4 EV. Toyota wanted to get an EV to market quickly and to get rid of the pr headache of nummi. The investment was secondary, but toyota needs tesla to stay viable if its their ev partner

Tesla is using consumer cells today and doing a great deal of manufacturing and battery management to get the less expensive cells to work well. This is a different approach than toyota or bmw. If auto specific cells stay more more expensive than consumer cells, I'm sure toyota is willing to try tesla's approach. BMW & Toyota are working together on auto specific celled battery packs and control.

 

most of these small battery companies will go under, toyota is only one that has invested for years into technology and has volume ability to lower the prices. hence the bmw deal.

i read few days ago in european interview, toyota europe boss said they will produce 1.1m hybrids in 2012. thats level of scale that nobody else can approach.