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BMW and Jaguar Land Rover to jointly develop electric car tech

FRANKFURT – BMW and Jaguar Land Rover on Wednesday said they will jointly develop electric motors, transmissions and power electronics, unveiling yet another industry alliance designed to lower the costs of developing electric cars. Both carmakers are under pressure to roll out zero-emission vehicles to meet stringent anti-pollution rules, but have struggled to maintain profit margins faced with the rising costs of making electric, connected and autonomous cars. "Together, we have the opportunity to cater more effectively for customer needs by shortening development time and bringing vehicles and state-of-the-art technologies more rapidly to market," said BMW board member Klaus Froehlich. BMW and Jaguar Land Rover said they will save costs through shared development, production planning and joint purchasing of electric car components. Both companies will produce electric drivetrains in their own manufacturing facilities, BMW said. The BMW Jaguar Land Rover pact comes as rivals FiatChrysler and Renault explore a $35 billion tie-up of the Italian-American and French carmaking groups. Nick Rogers, Jaguar Land Rover's engineering director said, "We've proven we can build world beating electric cars but now we need to scale the technology to support the next generation of Jaguar and Land Rover products." BMW was in talks with rival Daimler about developing electric car components but was also in discussions with Jaguar Land Rover, a company it once owned, to explore an alliance on engines. BMW already has a deal to supply an 8 cylinder engine to Jaguar Land Rover. Carmakers are increasingly open to sharing electric car parts because the technology is expensive and because customers no longer buy a car based on what engine a vehicle has. "Carmakers are much less precious about sharing electric car technology because it is much harder to create product differentiation with electric car tech. They all accelerate fast, and everybody can do quality and ride and handling," according to Carl-Peter Forster a former chief executive of Tata Motors and a former BMW executive. Jaguar Land Rover is still run by former BMW managers, including Ralf Speth the company's chief executive who spent 20 years at BMW prior to joining JLR, and Wolfgang Ziebart, the engineer who oversaw Jaguar's I-Pace electric car program, who is a former head of research and development at BMW.

BMW i8's three-cylinder sounds like it's shaping up quite nicely

We've run across some rather interesting news... or perhaps we should say interesting sounds. The folks from Bimmerpost have scrounged up a short video showing a preproduction BMW i8 running through a few gears in Sport mode at a quick pace, and if you were concerned that the somewhat eco-friendly nature of the upcoming German sports car would neuter its ability to stir the aural senses, fret not.
Judging by the lovely noise coming from the engine compartment of the i8 in the video, BMW's expertise in tuning high-strung, small-bore engines - remember, BMW Motorrad has quite the penchant for well-conceived motorcycle engines - has come through loud and clear. Now, it's worth mentioning that BMW's controversial Active Sound technology will be included with the i8, so the production car may not sound exactly like this version, which is running with the tech disabled. Owners won't have the ability to disable Active Sound on production i8s.
In related news, Bimmerpost reports that BMW will equip the i8 with an external Active Sound Design system to go along with its Pedestrian Protection System. That means those on the outside will likely hear piped engine recordings from the rear and a sort of "howl" from the front in order to warn pedestrians that the otherwise quiet (when running on electricity, that is) car is approaching. It will also feature technology that can stop the car before contacting a pedestrian.

BMW names new head of M division

BMW's performance division has been run by Dr. Friedrich Nitschke since 2011, developing, among other products, the new M3 and M4. But soon the good doctor will be retiring, and BMW has just named his successor.
Taking Nitschke's place as chairman of BMW M GmbH will be Franciscus van Meel (pictured at right), who until recently served as managing director of Audi Quattro GmbH - the rival outfit that makes Ingolstadt's performance models, including the R8 supercar and RS line of performance models.
Van Meel will join BMW on October 1, presumably to learn the ropes from Nitschke before the 59-year-old executive steps down at the end of the year. Back in January, Audi named Heinz Peter Hollwerweger as head of Quattro GmbH and reassigned van Meel to its Beijing R&D center, a role which evidently didn't suit him as well as creating Autobahn-storming German muscle cars.