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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.

David Brown Automotive launches old-is-new-again Speedback [w/video]

Back in January, we reported on a new British coachbuilder called David Brown Automotive. In February, the startup released the first details and images of its inaugural project, and now it has revealed the finished product.
It's called Speedback, and it's based on the Jaguar XKR. But while it's built on a modern chassis (relatively, anyway - the XK arrived in 2006 and is soon to be discontinued), it's been rebodied to look like a classic British GT. That means that, while it may look like a classic Aston Martin, it's got a thoroughly modern 5.0-liter supercharged V8 under the hood with over 500 horsepower on tap.
Otherwise, little in the way of details have been disclosed - including what you can bet will be an astronomic price that tends to come with these sorts of coachbuilt customs. But the important parts are what you can see, and that means the finest British craftsmanship inside and out. Whether you like the particular style or not, of course, is entirely a matter of taste.

Jaguar F-Pace snapped inside and out

We've seen the Jaguar F-Pace undergoing testing before: at the Nurburgring, in the snow, and wearing a variety of different bodywork as development has progressed. But we've never seen it this close, and we've never seen it inside, until now. This latest batch of spy shots shows Coventry's new crossover out on the road undergoing warm-weather testing in what looks like Spain. It's tellingly parked in between a Jaguar XE and Range Rover Evoque, the gap between which the F-Pace is expected to bridge. It's still wearing heavy camouflage, of course, but this is our first glimpse inside the cockpit. The cabin rather similar to the one on the new XF sedan – and hardly any more upright, either, which tells us a bit about the handling character Jaguar is going after with the F-Pace. Expect to see the finished product at the Frankfurt Motor Show this coming fall – the same show where it unveiled the C-X17 concept two years ago to preview its arrival. Related Video: