It’s been a good week for battery metals stocks following a series of bullish announcements from car makers intent on lifting production of electric vehicles.

Volkswagen yesterday told Reuters it expected to sell more electric cars than expected by 2025.

Meanwhile BMW — which just announced it would ramp up electric car production by 2020 — has unveiled a wireless charger for its plug-in, hybrid electric cars. (More info below).

VW’s electric car boss Christian Senger told Reuters yesterday  the German car maker would “well exceed” an initial target of 1 million cars produced from its new Modular Electric Kit manufacturing platform.

The Modular Electric Kit or MEB is a system VW created to streamline production of electric cars.

VW is aiming to recover from the “Dieselgate” scandal — where it fitted devices to cheat exhaust emissions restrictions — by moving transition to battery-powered versions for all its car models by 2030.

“In the cycle plan where we again and again undertake forward planning for up to 15 years, we see that the markets even want more (electric) cars than we have earmarked,” Mr Senger said.

VW hopes to be selling 3 million electric cars by 2025, driven particularly by demand in China and India.

A new research report from Amadee + Company predicts sales of 100 million electric vehicles globally by 2025 and the phasing out of internal combustion engine cars by 2050.

That’s good news for ASX-listed miners with exposure to battery metals such as lithium, cobalt, graphite, nickel and copper.

BMW launches wireless charger

Meanwhile BMW — which just announced it would ramp up electric car production by 2020 — has unveiled a wireless charger for its plug-in, hybrid electric cars (pictured above).

Production of the “world-first factory-fitted, fully integrated inductive charging facilities” would be first available in Germany, followed by the UK, the US, Japan and China. No word yet on Australia.

Production starts in July.

The product uses an electromagnetic field allowing contactless electricity transmission.

“BMW Wireless Charging enables electric energy from the mains supply to be transmitted to a vehicle’s high-voltage battery without any cables – when the vehicle is positioned over a base pad,” BMW said.

“This can be installed in the garage, for example, and the charging process started as soon as the vehicle has been parked in position (without any further input from the driver).”

The ground pad can be installed in a garage or outdoors and will fully charge a BMW’s plug-in hybrid BMW 530e iPerformance model in 3.5 hours.

BMW has also been expanding its electric car factories.

Last week the car maker said it would expand annual production of its electric BMW i models at its Leipzig plant from 250,000 to 350,000 cars by 2020.

Daimler aims for 1o electric cars by 2022

Earlier this month Daimler said it would invest 500 million euros ($770 million) in a french plant to start making a compact electric Mercedes-Benz under the Smart brand.

“By 2022 we will be bringing more than ten different all-electric vehicles to market,” said Damiler’s head of development Ola Källenius.

“We will also be electrifying the entire Mercedes‑Benz portfolio and our customers will thus have the choice of at least one electric alternative in every Mercedes‑Benz model series, taking the total to 50 overall.”