- David Hort
Toyota and BMW join forces
Toyota and BMW will join forces to develop green car technology, paving the way for a new generation of electric vehicles.
While Toyota has led the alternative-fuel market with the Prius, neither it or BMW have a full electric car on the market at the moment, despite a number of electric concepts on show in Tokyo, including the BMW i8 concept and the Toyota Fun-Vii.
Manufacturers such as Renault, Nissan, Mitsubishi and Peugeot have already forged ahead with all-electric cars as Toyota has pushed further into plug-in hybrid technology and BMW has focussed on improving the efficiency of petrol and diesel engines.
As a result the partnership – first announced in 2007 but only confirmed yesterday – will see Toyota focus on battery technology and BMW focus on more efficient, low emission diesel engines.
The first tangible results of the cooperation are expected by 2014, when Toyota will launch new 1.6-litre and 2.0-litre diesel engines – courtesy of BMW – across its engine line-up.
The new turbodiesel engines will use the same kind of energy-saving technology such as brake energy regeneration from BMW’s EfficientDynamics programme.
“These engines offer customers a combination they truly value: More performance, with lower fuel consumption, and the lowest level of emissions," said Ian Robertson, management board member at BMW.
According to Toyota, BMW will also benefit from the Japanese manufacturer’s standing as a “leading provider of environment friendly series technology in the volume segment".
More importantly the agreement, which at this stage is a memorandum of understanding (MOU), will help both brands improve their presence in important foreign markets.
While BMW has improved its sales in Japan by eight per cent for the year to date, Toyota’s support should help the brand gain a bigger foothold in the lucrative market by developing technologies more suited to it.
Toyota, already a major player on the European market and in the UK – where it has the eighth largest share of the market in the country – will also benefit from BMW’s efficient diesel engines, which are traditionally popular in Europe and make up more than 50 per cent of all sales on the continent.