BMW & Toyota agree joint development of new sports car

BMW and Toyota have signed a binding agreement to co-develop a new sports car and continue with co-developed and shared technology.

The way forward for car makers seems to be either to be as big as possible for the benefits of economy of scale, or to work together on joint products to cut development costs. Which is why BMW and Toyota are getting cosy.

We already know that BMW and Toyota have agreed to work on next generation lithium ion battery technology and that Toyota is getting BMW diesels and BMW getting Toyota hybrid know-how.

Now BMW and Toyota have signed a binding agreement which goes even further than the current collaboration and includes a new co-developed sports car.

The new BMW/Toyota sports car is to be based on a new, jointly developed platform, a feasibility study for which will be completed by the end of 2013. The end result seems likely to be a new sports car for Toyota to sit above the new Toyota GT86 and perhaps a replacement for BMW’s Z4.

The new sports car is likely to include some of the other stuff Toyota nd BMW are working on. That includes fuel cell technology – including fuel cell stack, hydrogen tank, motor and battery – which they hope to complete by 2020, development of lightweight technologies for car bodies – like reinforced composites – and work on post-lithium-ion technology to develop a lithium-air battery with a much greater capacity than current lithium-ion technology allows.

Looks like the partnership between BMW and Toyota could yield some very interesting technology and new cars.