BMW greenlights its Wackersdorf battery test facility

German carmaker BMW announced in September of last year that it was investing an extra €100 million in its Innovation Park Wackersdorf campus near Regensburg to set up a new battery testing center that would be integrated into the existing buildings.

The first section of the new battery testing center now has the green light to start ‘around the clock’ testing of battery cells during their early development phase. That means testing the electrical performance of individual battery cells in charging and discharging before they get installed in a car developed for the road.

The 55-hectare campus built in the 1980s was initially intended as a nuclear reprocessing facility. BMW has located its cockpit production and parts supply for overseas plants there. Hall 80 is being remodeled to include high-voltage batteries and other electric powertrain components for future BMW models at their paces very early in the development cycle.

Operational from 2024

The new test center was planned to become operational by mid-2024 with the first setup of ‘battery testers.’ However, as it was commissioned now, that eventually took a few months more.

“The Wackersdorf location is set to become a major facilitator for the transformation toward electromobility,” Site Manager Christoph Peters said in September 2023. “In addition to supplying our overseas plants, cockpit production, and, from 2024, door production for Rolls-Royce models, this will become Wackersdorf’s fourth main area of activity.”

Validate BMW’s EVs

Later on, starting in 2025, the Wackersdorf test facilities will also be used to ‘validate’ BMW’s new electric models before the official launch of serial production. According to BMW, this includes subjecting the batteries to vibration and shock tests, for instance, using so-called ‘shakers’ – highly complex testing devices of which there are currently only a few across Europe. Complex driving patterns, including charging and discharging cycles, can also be simulated in endurance tests.

The Wackersdorf campus is technically part of BMW’s Regensburg vehicle plant, which has operated since 1986. At the same production line, some 1,000 cars are built daily of the BMW 1 Series, BMW X1, and BMW X2 models, with different drivetrains from ICE to PHEV to BEV. High-voltage batteries are also produced locally and nearby.

BMW Innovation Park Wackersdorf’s campus also accommodates several third-party companies and employs around 2,500 people. In the Regensburg region, BMW provides jobs for about 9,000 people.