"Range anxiety" — the fear of being stranded in your electric vehicle between charging stations — remains one of the major barriers to EV adoption. But BMW's new battery technology may go a long way toward addressing that fear, as it can reportedly offer over 600 miles of range on a single charge.
The new technology came about when the German automaker partnered with a Michigan-based company called One Next Energy to create a "dual-chemistry" battery called Gemini. Dual-chemistry means that the battery contains both a lithium iron phosphate cell for shorter trips and an anode-free cell which kicks in after 150 miles to power the battery for longer trips.
The specifics of how that all works are probably best left to the battery scientists, but the upshot is that the new BMW iX will be able to travel 608 miles on a single charge, as confirmed by the Worldwide Harmonized Light Vehicle Test Procedure.
Most other electric vehicles don't even come close to that. For context, the current longest ranges include the Lucid Sapphire Air, which can go 427 miles on a single charge, and the Tesla Model S, which the company claims has a range of 396 miles (although Tesla has been found to exaggerate the range of its EVs).
The 600-mile-range BMW iX is not available yet, however — One Next Energy still needs to refine the system for commercialization. But the early test results seem promising.
Another factor that should helpfully go a long way toward reducing consumers' range anxiety is that more and more EV charging stations are popping up all over the place, even in more remote areas, in large part due to federal funding intended to spur increased EV adoption.
That means that even if your EV doesn't have an insane 600-mile range, you should still be able to get around almost anywhere in the United States without being stranded between chargers.
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