BMW is the world’s largest luxury automaker, but it may be feeling Audi breathing down it’s neck which is why the Bavarian company announced a massive cost cutting program.

BMW will get some assistance from a partnership with Daimler AG’s, Mercedes-Benz unit, in order to significantly reduce spending on components and suppliers by $5.2 billion by 2012.

Mercedes may be a rival but BMW can’t really afford not to have this pact with the devil as the savings that are to be amounted boggle the mind.

In an interview for Bloomberg Herbert Diess, Director of BMW Motorrad, stated that the talks between BMW and Mercedes-Benz have lead to the creation of new projects over the past several months that will help both companies cut spending by about another 100 million euros a year by 2012.

Efficiency is always a key word within any BMW product and now it will be applied to the brand economy as well, BMW is looking into every cost lowering aspect and they will even be helping component suppliers improve efficiency as well as develop systems, such as start/stop technology, that they may be able to sell to other manufacturers.

It seems that BMW have realized that efficiency cannot be achieved just through high volume of sales and, according to Diess, new projects with Mercedes-Benz will lead to significant savings as well as technical advances.

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Marcus M.

http://www.bmwcoop.com

The post BMW teams up with Mercedes in order to cut costs appeared first on BMWCoop | BMW Blog, BMW News, BMW Reviews.

Sales in the United States of America of BMW Group product, namely BMW and Mini have registered a 9% increase over the past month.

The increase posted 21,111 vehicles sold and is recorded by comparison to sales of the same month of the past year .

Statistics on a year-to-date level indicate that the two brands of the BMW Group were able to sell a total of 76,162 units, or to put it in perspective, there’s a 7.9% growth when put against the sales volume registered in the first four months of 2009. Last month, the BMW brand recorded a 10% sales increase, sales reaching 17,268 vehicles, the year to date sales figures meanwhile post an expansion of 8.8% to total up 63,591 units.

Jim O’Donnell, President of BMW of North America is completely pleased with the result of the past month especially when considering the short supply of the two high volume models as they near the end of their life cycles. For now, O’Donnell is eagerly expecting the new 5 Series and the new X3 to hit the showroom floor unsurprisingly since the F10 5 Series got superb early reviews for the new models.

MINI was able to sell 3,843 units last month, posting a 5.1% sales increase and if you bump the level to a Year to date, MINI posted a 3.3% sales growth reaching 12,571 units shifted.

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Marcus M.

http://www.bmwcoop.com

The post News on BMW sales in the US appeared first on BMWCoop | BMW Blog, BMW News, BMW Reviews.

About a week ago BMW has announced that they will be launching a car named, at the moment, Megacity Vehicle  by 2013.

The Megacity Vehicle is destined to be a zero-emission urban vehicle that will feature lightness as it’s key selling point. This lightness will be achieved as a result of use of more carbon fiber in the overall construction.

BMW’s head of global sales Ian Robertson has declared that this move will make BMW be the first manufacturer to take carbon fiber to effectively high volume, effectively turning the light polymer fiber into something that can at the moment only be found on the most expensive of cars into a product obtainable by the masses.

To be fair, people that buy BMWs in the first place aren’t “the masses” but i’m anticipating a revolution of the likes Ford brought along by bringing motorsport to the masses through stock cars.

Furthermore Robertson said that carbon fiber will be making it to more and more cars as general rules of construction that are used in the Megacity Vehicle are applicable everywhere. Another point Robertson made during his speech was that carbon fiber technology could help generate better economies of scale.

BMW and SGL Group have started building a $100 million carbon fiber manufacturing plant in Washington state to supply parts for its vehicles. That plant will produce the carbon fiber that a plant in Germany will mold it into paneling for the Megacity vehicle and, eventually, for other cars currently in the BMW range.

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Marcus M.

http://www.bmwcoop.com

The post BMW cars will get more carbon fiber appeared first on BMWCoop | BMW Blog, BMW News, BMW Reviews.