Jaguar Land Rover and BMW have announced they’ll work together to build next-generation electric drive units and technologies in general.
Jaguar Land Rover and BMW will work together to “develop next generation Electric Drive Units (EDUs),” the two brands have said in a statement. Both JLR and BMW agree this collaboration will support the automotive industry’s agreed shift to an ACES (Autonomous, Connected, Electric, Shared) future.
Nick Rogers, Jaguar Land Rover Engineering Director said: “The transition to ACES represents the greatest technological shift in the automotive industry in a generation. The pace of change and consumer interest in electrified vehicles is gathering real momentum and it’s essential we work across industry to advance the technologies required to deliver this exciting future.
“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. It was clear from discussions with BMW Group that both companies’ requirements for next generation EDUs to support this transition have significant overlap making for a mutually beneficial collaboration.”
While both brands will have shared R&D teams working on the development of these electric drive units, the actual powertrains will be tweaked to suit the company’s application and will be built in their own factories, rather than a shared production facility. For Jaguar Land Rover this will be at its Wolverhampton-based Engine Manufacturing Centre (EMC), which was confirmed as the home for the company’s global EDU production in January of this year.
“The agreement will enable both companies to take advantage of efficiencies arising from shared research and development and production planning as well as economies of scale from joint procurement across the supply chain,” the statement read.
