I must admit that I really don't understand why BMW has made charging the battery so complex. While I am not an "expert," I have looked into the theory and practical aspects of battery charging quite a bit in the past, and it appears that appropriate charging can be best determined simply by the voltage-amperage curve/response -- no need at all to know if the battery is new or old. In fact, since batteries have a variance in aging, as most things do, it is much better to determine the charging program from the amperage/voltage response, rather than "knowing" how old the battery is.

I've been working with electronics for 50 years as a hobby, starting with vacuum tubes, moving to transistors, then integrated circuits, and then surface-mount components. I;ve even designed a few simple circuits.
I can see no reason that a battery would need to be "registered," other than having an unsophisticated system that could not sense the voltage/amperage response.

Perhaps some Electrical Engineer out the could enlighten this Mechanical Engineer as to why a new battery should have to be "registered."


P.S. I can understand the need if the type of battery was changed from a simple lead-acid vented battery to an AGM (since they have different maximum charging voltages), but if the battery is replaced with an identical type and the same. or similar, AH capacity, I cannot understand the need to do anything beyond switching-out the batteries.