Current limitations of battery systems for fully electric vehicles (FEV) are mainly related to performance, driving range, battery life, re-charging time and price per unit. New cell chemistries are able to mitigate these drawbacks, but are more prone to catastrophic failures due to a thermal runaway. Therefore, new and more advanced management strategies are necessary to safely prevent the energy storage system from ever coming into this critical situation. In this paper, a novel battery management system (BMS) architecture is introduced, which will be able to meet these high requirements by introducing a network that has smart satellite systems in each macro-cell or directly in each individual cell. Particular attention will be put on safety and cost issues as well as on 48V application.