Jaguar Land Rover and BMW join forces on electric cars

BMW and Jaguar Land Rover (JLR) will join forces to develop electric car technologies.

The automakers have announced that they would work together on the development of electric motors, transmissions and power electronics.

Both companies struggled to maintain their profit margins in the face of declining car sales, rising costs and the need to invest in future technologies.

Automakers are forced to manufacture low-emission vehicles to comply with stricter anti-pollution rules.

A number of similar associations have been held to share the development costs of electric cars.

Volkswagen and Ford, for example, are working together on new vehicles. At the same time, rivals FiatChrysler and Renault are considering a merger of 35 billion dollars.

BMW Executive Board member Klaus Froehlich said: "Together, we have the opportunity to respond more effectively to customer needs by reducing development time and by rapidly commercializing advanced vehicles and technologies."

Tie-up

BMW and Jaguar Land Rover have announced a cost reduction through shared research, shared production planning and the joint purchase of electric car components.

Jaguar Land Rover is still headed by former BMW executives, including Ralf Speth, the company's managing director, who spent 20 years at BMW before joining JLR.

BMW has developed an electric motor, transmission and power electronics in a case called "Gen 5" of its "eDrive" technology.

A joint team of BMW and JLR engineers in Munich will further develop this generation 5 technology, and then both companies will produce their own electric drives, BMW said.

JLR will produce these transmissions at its Wolverhampton plant, which employs 1,600 people.

Nick Rogers, technical director of Jaguar Land Rover, said: "We have proven that we can build exceptional electric cars, but we now have to adapt this technology to support the next generation of Jaguar and Land Rover products."

Automakers are becoming more open to sharing electric car parts because technology is expensive.

"Automakers are much less concerned about sharing electric car technology because it's much harder to differentiate between products and electric car technology, they all speed up quickly and everyone can do quality, ride and handle, "according to Carl-Peter Forster, former managing director of Tata Motors and former CEO of BMW.

JLR belongs to the Indian car giant Tata Motors.