BMW & Jaguar Land Rover join forces to develop electric vehicles

BMW and Jaguar Land Rover will be working together to develop next-gen electric drive units for their future vehicles. A joint team of BMW and Jaguar Land Rover engineers will be working in Munich on the project. 

BMW and Jaguar Land Rover have announced a strategic alliance to develop next-gen electrification technology for their vehicles. The partnership between the two brands will see them share their know-how and resources to engineer electric drive units for their vehicles. At the moment, neither of the brands has committed a timeline for the launch of their joint efforts, but they are hinting that the results of this partnership will only be out at the start of the coming decade, meaning after 2020.

As per a statement released by the BMW Group, the German car maker believes that Jaguar Land Rover share the ‘same strategic vision of environmentally-friendly and future-oriented electric drive technologies.’ Which is precisely why they decided to join forces with the Tata-owned British car marque. As for the ‘next-gen’ electrified vehicles, it’ll be based on the BMW’s fifth generation or ‘Gen 5’ electric drive unit that will debut in 2019 with the BMW iX3. Both the companies will work together on the subsequent evolution of the Gen 5 drive units, and will then incorporate them in their respective products as per the specific requirements.

For the new project, a team from BMW and Jaguar Land Rover will work jointly in Munich, and then each partner will produce the electric drive units in their own manufacturing facilities. The partnership will allow both the brands to take advantage of cost efficiencies – because of shared development – as well as economies of scale since they are also expected to have common suppliers.  

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