Leading premium car brands, Jaguar Land Rover and BMW have announced a collaboration for developing the next generation of Electric drive technology. Jaguar Land Rover, by producing the I-Pace SUV & hybrid cars and BMW producing the i3 hatchback and the i8 hybrid, have already showcased their capabilities of producing real-world EVs. With the expertise of both these automotive giants, they will be able to support the advancement of electrification technologies, a central part of the automotive industry’s transition to an ACES (Autonomous, Connected, Electric, Shared) future. 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.
A team of Jaguar Land Rover and BMW Group experts will engineer the EDUs with both partners developing the systems to deliver the specific characteristics required for their respective range of products. Manufacturing of these EDUs will be done by each partner in their own production facilities. In the case of 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. Employing 1600 people, this plant will be the centre of propulsion system manufacturing offering full flexibility between clean Ingenium petrol and diesel engines and electric units. This will be complemented by the recently announced Battery Assembly Centre at Hams Hall, near Birmingham, in supplying electrified powertrain systems to Jaguar Land Rover’s global vehicle plants.
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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 the 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.”