BMW and Jaguar Land Rover (JLR) have announced that they will be teaming up to produce electric car technologies.
The two automakers said that they will work together to develop electric motors, transmissions and power electronics.
The collaboration comes amid the automotive industry’s transition to an (Autonomous, Connected, Electric, Shared) future. The transition has pushed carmakers to find ways of spreading investment costs.
Nick Rogers, JLR’s engineering director, said that the transition to ACES “represents the greatest technological shift in the automotive industry in a generation.”
Rogers added: “The pace of change and consumer interest in electrified vehicles is gathering real momentum and it’s essential we work across industry to advance the technologies required to deliver this exciting future.
“We’ve proven we can build world beating electric cars but now we need to scale the technology to support the next generation of Jaguar and Land Rover products. It was clear from discussions with BMW Group that both companies’ requirements for next generation EDUs to support this transition have significant overlap making for a mutually beneficial collaboration.”
A joint team of BMW Group and Jaguar Land Rover experts located in Munich will work on further developing BMW’s fifth generation (“Gen 5”) eDrive technology. Production of the electric drivetrains will be undertaken by each partner in their own manufacturing facilities.
BMW board member Klaus Fröhlich said: “With Jaguar Land Rover, we found a partner whose requirements for the future generation of electric drive units significantly match ours [BMW’s]”.
“Together, we have the opportunity to cater more effectively for customer needs by shortening development time and bringing vehicles and state-of-the-art technologies more rapidly to market.”