BMW is hedging its battery bets with Samsung and LG

The badge on the car is important, sure – but it matters far less than the supply chain behind the brand. You realize it the moment you pull into a charging station with a cold battery pack and watch the charging crawl at a fraction of its advertised speed. Carmakers used to treat batteries like commodity parts they could simply order from a catalog on the other side of the world and bolt into the existing car. But as BMW prepares for the next phase of its sixth-generation electric architecture, the company is tying its future much closer to South Korean battery giants Samsung SDI and LG Energy Solution to make sure its batteries are built right next door to the factories that assemble the cars.

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