Chinese-German would be luxury SUV maker Borgward has named Kuka as a strategic partner for manufacturing operations, at whilst also revealing the abbreviation by which its current and future vehicles' platform is internally known.
Borgward Group says it has formed what it terms to be a long-term strategic partnership with the Augsburg-based company KUKA Roboter AG.
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"The cooperation with Industry 4.0 pioneer KUKA is another milestone for Borgward in its endeavor to create a state-of-the-art production system," noted Ulrich Walker, CEO of Borgward Group, at the signing of the memorandum of understanding in Munich on 21 June.
Among other things, the partnership covers the joint development of production lines, the standardisation of processes, and the development of versatile systems and tools.
The Foton-controlled OEM says it has already introduced its Borgward Sustainable Platform (BSP) at its first plant, Miyun, which is near Beijing. "This platform strategy enables the plant to simultaneously produce a variety of models with different wheelbases and drive technologies on a single assembly line. The platform will also be used in all future Borgward plants," a media release states.
BSP is, however, a renaming of an existing body-on-frame architecture as used by the Foton Sauvana SUV, the vehicle which the BX7 is to be based upon. The Sauvana is similar in size to the Mitsubishi Pajero Sport, another ladder frame chassis SUV.
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By GlobalDataBorgward has plans to release a further two SUVs – the BX5 and BX6 TS – and both are expected to be on sale in China and Germany in 2017.
