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BMW against Merkel's female board member quota in Germany

There may soon be more women in power positions in the world of German business under a proposed law from Chancellor Angela Merkel's coalition government. If passed, the law would force large, publicly traded corporations to have female members make up at least 30 percent of their supervisory boards (which are responsible in part for business strategy) by 2016. In addition, all companies would have to increase the female proportion on their management boards, which conduct regular business. The law seems likely to pass next month. "We've decided to do this and it will happen," said Merkel in a speech about the new rule, according to Bloomberg. Women currently have just six percent of management board seats in the country. Big businesses in the country aren't on board with proposed law, including automakers. "BMW as a company doesn't believe in quotas," said spokesperson Jochen Frey to Bloomberg. "While we hold that opinion, we want and strive for diversity in our workforce in terms of gender, ethnicity and age." Currently, 25 percent of Bimmer's supervisory board is female, a bit higher than the national average in Germany of 22 percent. German car companies are hardly alone when it comes to having a paucity of women in positions of power. Honda only added its first female member to the automaker's board of directors earlier this year, and Toyota and Nissan showed similarly low numbers. A 2013 list from Fortune ranked many of the most powerful women in the auto industry as coming from North America.

BMW i Collection puts upscale treehugging in the palm of your hand

If BMW's new i sub-brand sounds more like it belongs to consumer electronics than it does to automobiles, that's probably no mistake. After all, electric vehicles bridge the gap between conventional automobile and electronic gadget - just ask our compatriots over at Engadget that report on them all the time. But to drive the point home even greener, BMW has, together with the new i3, launched a new collection of electronics accessories that make the Bavarian automaker as much a competitor with companies like Belkin or Griffin as it is with Audi or Mercedes-Benz.
The new BMW i Collection includes items like a solar charger for phones and MP3 players, a laptop bag made from felt-like recycled PET plastic and vegetable-tanned leather, and of course the requisite USB dongle. Other items include keyfobs, a shopping bag, notebook and ballpoint pen.
All the items, of course, are designed to extend the i3's upscale tree-hugging image to items you can hold and use while your EV is charging in the driveway. They go on sale starting next month with prices ranging from 15 euros ($20) for the pen or lanyard to 99 euros ($135) for the shopping bag. Details in the press release below and images of the whole collection in the gallery above.

Mercedes could make EV batteries with Audi, BMW

It's not a big leap from digital maps to batteries, it turns out.The head of Mercedes-Benz parent Daimler said recently that he envisions his company working together with German automotive competitors BMW and Volkswagen to further accelerate electric-vehicle battery technology. The three automakers recently worked together to enhance their in-car maps systems. Daimler CEO Dieter Zetsche talked about "commonalities" between automakers, not the least of which is the need for all of them to achieve increasingly stringent fuel-economy requirements in the European Union, at the Frankfurt Auto Show last week, according to Reuters. While these companies have made their own inroads as far as plug-in vehicles go, they are all behind the Renault-Nissan Alliance when it comes to public deployment of electric vehicles. This summer, Daimler, Audi and BMW hooked up to acquire the Nokia Here digital-mapping service for about $2.8 billion. The triad of automakers beat out companies such as Apple and Uber to buy the entity, which was founded in 1986 as Navteq. Nokia bought the company in 2007. The acquisition makes sense as the automakers work on improving their products with features like cloud-based data to warn drivers of icy roads and traffic jams. The technology will likely also eventually be used in autonomous vehicles. Automakers working together for a common goal of improved technology is nothing new, of course. General Motors and Honda agreed in 2013 to work together to accelerate hydrogen fuel-cell drivetrain development. Earlier that same year, Daimler said it would work with Ford and Nissan in a separate collaboration to speed up the development of hydrogen fuel-cell technology. Related Video: