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General Motors Reveals Industry’s First Wireless Battery Management System

General Motors is on track to introduce the industry’s first and almost completely wireless battery management system, or wBMS, in its production electric vehicles.

The American automotive giant GM forms a partnership with the American Semiconductor company Analog Devices to develop wBMS as the primary driver to power many different types of EVs from a common set of battery components.  

GM plans to first implement the wBMS on the company’s Ultium-powered EVs to step up its market rise. The main reason for this is that there will be no need for the engineers to develop and design specific communication systems or redesign complex wiring schemes for each new vehicle type.

“Scalability and complexity reduction are a theme with our Ultium batteries—the wireless battery management system is the critical enabler of this amazing flexibility. The wireless system represents the epitome of Ultium’s configurability and should help GM build profitable EVs at scale.” said Kent Helfrich, GM executive director of Global Electrification and Battery Systems

The wBMS features include:

  • System can be upgraded through software-based features via smartphone-like update or expanded over-the-air updates provided by GM’s Vehicle Intelligence Platform.
  • Drives the amazing flexibility and configurability of GM’s Ultium Batteries to balance the chemistry within the individual battery cell groups for optimal performance.
  • Provides  battery health monitoring over the vehicle’s lifespan by conducting real-time battery pack health checks and refocusing the network of modules and sensors as needed.
  • Reduce wires within the batteries by up to 90% which opens up extra room for more batteries and enables the increase of charging range by creating lighter vehicles.
  • Equipped with an exclusive battery repurposing capability in secondary applications more easily than the existing wired monitoring systems.
  • Sheltered by cybersecurity and protective features within the hardware and software including the company’s all-new electrical architecture or Vehicle Intelligence Platform. 
Photo Credit: General Motors

According to Greg Henderson, Analog Devices, Inc. Senior VP of Automotive, Communications, and Aerospace & Defense, the company is proud to work with the highly respected automotive leader General Motors on the next generation of electric vehicles. He also added that this collaboration will accelerate the transition to electric vehicles and a sustainable future.

The wBMS will be standard on all GM’s planned EV powered by Ultium batteries. The modularity and flexibility brought by the development of wBMS not only focuses on a cleaner design, but also to empower a simpler, more established battery restructuring, and more robust manufacturing processes.

 

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