BMW and Toyota engineers are continuing to discuss sharing a platform to underpin new roadster models for each automaker to share, just-auto.com has learned.
“I’ve got a group of proud BMW engineers and a group of proud BMW engineers in one room sat around the table talking,” said BMW board member for sales and marketing, Ian Robertson.
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No more, tantalising details were forthcoming during a wide-ranging conversation on the eve of BMW’s 2014 annual general meeting here in Munich but Robertson clearly expects a decision in due course.
He said: “We’re talking to Toyota – can we have a platform that sits nicely under a roadster?” Clearly he thinks a project that shares architecture could and will ultimately work.
Toyota, of course, has recent form sharing sportscar development and underpinnings – the result was its GT86 and minor affiliate Subaru’s near-identical BRZ. More importantly, Toyota and BMW have even more recent form sharing diesel engines – the German company has recently started supplying 1.6-litre units for the Japanese firm’s Turkish-made Verso MPV, supplementing Toyota’s own petrol and diesel units with a well engineered – and cost efficient – engine for Europe’s most popular C-segment engine niche.
Robertson noted he signed the original engineering cooperation deal three years ago and is clearly well pleased with the start of supply.
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By GlobalDataHe said cooperation on battery technology, hydrogen fuel cells and electric sports cars are also on the discussion agenda.
“Both companies are strong. It’s a good marriage with both parties so strong and we’re moving the programme forward.”
Robertson believes that, despite BMW’s success with the new i electric vehicle range – 70/80 units were delivered in the UK alone last month with the order bank running at 5.8 months for that market – the combustion engine still has a long way to go; in that he echoes a number of other top auto industry executives who have made similar remarks recently.
“Look at the performance of the I3 [in-line, three cylinder engine] just a generation ago,” he said, to make the point. BMW has just introduced a range of new I3s for the Mini and smaller BMW models, including the new front wheel drive 2 Active Tourer. Ford, too has enjoyed success with new, low-capacity, turbocharged I3s in its A-C-segment models sold worldwide and PSA Peugeot Citroen has just introduced a new line shared with Toyota for the Czech-built minicars C1, 108 and Aygo.
“There’s [still] a lot to happen there,” Robertson said, adding that the petrol/diesel split globally generally is still Europe diesel, rest-of-world petrol – with a few minor exceptions as local conditions change.
Electric vehicles will continue to make gains in big cities. He cites the recent pollution issue in Paris and ongoing smog problems in the Chinese cities of Beijing and Shanghai – “there is more scope, zero emissions is a requirement”. He sees growth in both pure EVs and the various plug-ins and reckons 20% of combustion engines will come with some form of electrification within 10-20 years.
Here in Europe, BMW considers Norway the strongest market for EVs (as Nissan has also found with its Leaf) because, as Robertson puts it, it’s “joined up”.
By that, he means pro-EV state and local governments encourage infrastructure development, incentivise buyers with tax breaks and purchase incentives and even keep special lanes clear for EV vehicles.
“Where you’ve got active motivation, it affects [and encourages] early adopters and it works,” he said, adding, of course, that where you don’t, it doesn’t.
The US state of California is another encourager. Robertson notes with satisfaction that, with US$7,000 in federal tax breaks, and another $3,000 from the state, there’s already $10,000 ‘on the hood’ of a new $45,000 i3 before the buyer gets out his wallet.
With recent new model additions like the BMW 4 Gran Coupe, 2 Active Tourer and X4, plus a new Mini Clubman ‘concept’ likely to make production as that brand’s largest ever car, will the BMW group keep on creating new niches, we wonder?
“We have a few more ideas,” Robertson responds. “But probably more ideas than we’re going to do.
“There’s always lots of speculation (recent reports have suggested some lower volume, specialist Mini models like the coupe and roadster may be pruned) [but] as we go forward we have to think about what we do and what we want to do.
“There are clear challenges.”
Roadsters, he adds, are a case in point. They sell well in Germany, the UK and [east of Arizona north to the border and across to northern and eastern coastal] America. Full stop. Few other markets, especially those where the summer sun blazes down day in, day out, want them.
It’s a segment that’s been “very competitive” in the last five years with a “lot of pressure”.
But those BMW and Toyota engineers are still talking.
