Akio Toyoda, President of Toyota Motor Corporation, recently met with Norbert Reithofer, Chairman of the Board of Management of BMW AG, at BMW Group headquarters in Munich to announce the planned expansion of their existing cooperation initiated in December last year. The two companies signed a MoU aimed at long-term strategic collaboration in four fields – joint development of a fuel cell system, joint development of architecture and components for a future sports vehicle, collaboration on powertrain electrification and joint research and development on lightweight technologies. A lto can happen from this partnership but what the two companies announced next shocked other motorcing giants. Apparently Toyota and BMW will also work together to develop a sports car. Really??? Well actually it has not been confirmed, but the notion of Toyota and BMW working together to create a sports car, and that to an electric one at that, has got us really excited. Akio Toyoda had this to say – “BMW and Toyota both want to make ever-better cars. We respect each other. And I think this is shown by our taking the next step only six months since the signing of our initial agreement. Toyota is strong in environment-friendly hybrids and fuel cells. On the other hand, I believe BMW’s strength is in developing sports cars. I am excited to think of the cars that will result from this relationship.”
Wow! We will certainly wait to see what will come of this partnership.
