JLR and BMW join forces on electric engine development
Jaguar Land Rover and BMW Group are joining forces to develop next generation electric engines.
Each car giant will make the electric drive units in their own production facilities.
For JLR this will be at its Engine Manufacturing Centre at the i54 to the north of Wolverhampton.
The EMC was confirmed as the home for the luxury car maker’s global EDU production in January.
The plant, which employs 1,600 people, will continue to produce clean Ingenium petrol and diesel engines and electric units.
It will be complemented by the recently announced Battery Assembly Centre at Hams Hall, near Birmingham, in supplying electric power systems to JLR’s vehicle plants around thw wotrld
The collaboration will build on the considerable knowledge and expertise in electrification at both companies.
JLR has demonstrated its leading technical capability in bringing the world’s first premium battery electric sports utility vehicle to market - the 2019 World Car of the Year, the Jaguar I-PACE, as well as plug-in hybrid models.
BMW has a lot of experience in developing and producing several generations of electric drive units in-house since it launched the BMW i3 in 2013.
Nick Rogers, JLRr engineering director, said: “The transition to ACES (autonomous, connected, electric, shared) 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.”
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 combined team of JLR and BMW experts will engineer the EDUs with both partners developing the systems to deliver the specific characteristics required for their respective range of products.
