BMW And Toyota Collaborate On More Than Just Hydrogen
From the press conference:
Toyota and BMW to collaborate on
– Joint sports car (joint technology, separate design)
Electric power train DROPPED from the list.
More to come …
Bertel Schmitt comes back to journalism after taking a 35 year break in advertising and marketing. He ran and owned advertising agencies in Duesseldorf, Germany, and New York City. Volkswagen A.G. was Bertel's most important corporate account. Schmitt's advertising and marketing career touched many corners of the industry with a special focus on automotive products and services. Since 2004, he lives in Japan and China with his wife <a href="http://www.tomokoandbertel.com"> Tomoko </a>. Bertel Schmitt is a founding board member of the <a href="http://www.offshoresuperseries.com"> Offshore Super Series </a>, an American offshore powerboat racing organization. He is co-owner of the racing team Typhoon.
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Toyota seems to be pressing the sports cars lately. It is probably a strategy to pollinate lessons learned onto the rest of their line up, because I don't see the Toyota brand directly benefiting from multiple sports cars. Unless we find a raw hydrogen source (e.g., new gas wells with high volume fraction H2), fuel cells are a waste in cars. Even with all their current limitations, batteries are superior, and I don't expect improvements in fuel cell tech to outpace improvements in batteries enough to change that.
How about partnering with Toyota on reliability? A BMW with Toyota-class reliability would at least mean that I wouldn't give up something that I value by look at a German cars. OTOH, the business school cases I've read suggest that Toyota's work-culture has as much to do with it as their engineering and their manufacturing. The company that needs to do this even more is Volkswagen. They're the people's car, and the people aren't trying to show off how rich they are (were) by owning a car that is expensive to maintain.