Along with the latest economic instability in Russia, BMW has long postponed the manufacturing of the BMW X4 in the country, but the fruiftul partnership it has had for so many years with the local Avtotor company, led to the SUV`s green light, set for this summer.

Thus, the model will be built in Kaliningrad, with some of the parts being shipped from the BMW`s plant in Spartanburg, US. We are talking here about building the BMW X4 SUV for the local market and other Eastern European markets, the model receiving „semi-knockdown kits.”

BMW is thinking very strategicaly these days, as they foresaw the financial benefits in a corrupted and instable economic market, aiming towards the rich Russian people who love high-end models. And the BMW X4 SUV would supply the right demand.

Apart the BMW X4 SUV, the Avtotor plant located in Kaliningrad is also buidling other models from BMW, like the 3-, the 5- as well as the 7-Series cars, along with the X1, X3 or X5. Another reason for buidling German cars in Russia is the number of vehicles buing sold last year, which was around 25,000, and the positive figures for 2015, with the German based carmaker expecting 21,000 units.

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Marcus M.

http://www.bmwcoop.com

The post Avtotor and BMW Will Build X4 in Russia, Body Parts Will Be Brought from US appeared first on BMWCoop | BMW Blog, BMW News, BMW Reviews.

BMW’s intention with updated production materials for the cars they’ll be making in the future have been made well and truly clear.

The Bavarian giant is very interested in carbon fiber as the next big thing for production cars. While it was demonstrated for high end supercars and such, there are a few hurdles left.

Hopefully, the new partnership BMW worked over with famous airplane manufacturer Boeing, will make a difference towards that development.

The only somewhat mainstream manufacturer to have a similar collaboration with the aircraft industry giants for carbon fiber is Lamborghini.

Apart from being members of a rival group, the Raging Bull will obviously never specialize in making “Average Joe” vehicles.

Either way, there have been plenty of ideas swapped into the automotive industry from the airplane engineers. Occasionally some ideas did go back.

So maybe a couple of generations down the line the BMW M3 will come with a carbon fiber shell, to say the least, does that mean a new Boeing will be better to drive?

Unfortunately, we can’t tell. What we will be able to tell is what happens when future BMW models will lose considerable amounts of weight thanks to carbon fiber.

Compared to currently used lightweight panels made out of aluminium, up to 30% of the weight will be shaken off by the carbon fiber.

That’s always a welcomed bit of news as everything is better with less weight. One small niggle though, Rolls Royce should never make a car using this material.

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Marcus M.

http://www.bmwcoop.com

The post BMW teams up with Boeing for carbon fiber tech appeared first on BMWCoop | BMW Blog, BMW News, BMW Reviews.

This weekends agreement between Toyota and BMW to build a special new sports car was a surprise to most of us but the details have only now started to come in.

Nobody is making a Toyota style/powered BMW or any other doubtful decision like that. It’s actually the other way round that it’s going to happen.

A successor to the Toyota Supra is apparently being developed and it’s being done the best way round as it’s going to borrow some ideas from the 6 Series.

In short, BMW will develop the engine, the platform underneath it and maybe a few other components as well. Then Toyota would step in with their cost cutting efforts.

The Japanese company would also be in charge of the exterior design, interior accommodations and whatever toys they want to fit inside.

Allegedly BMW could make a cheap large coupe as well but the demands would be distinct from the 6 Series or whatever design Toyota comes up with.

It might even be a genuinely fast sports car, to create a different taste to platform, the kind the BMW 6 Series can’t really claim to have.

After all the F12/F13 BMW is a genuinely brilliant GT cruiser and though it can occasionally tackle the mountain road, it will never be a track beast the likes of some Japanese cars.

There’s some decent talk about the way the new Toyota Supra may actually borrow some technology from the BMW i8 as well.

Overall the next generation of the Toyota Supra and whatever BMW models may emerge from this collaboration sound better than expected.

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Marcus M.

http://www.bmwcoop.com

The post BMW – Toyota sports car details come in appeared first on BMWCoop | BMW Blog, BMW News, BMW Reviews.

The recent news of a partnership between Toyota and BMW have made corporate headlines all over the world, somehow us petrolheads just nodded in approval and went on with our lives.

We may have been a little hasty in our decision to dismiss the importance of this alliance. It goes well beyond the hybrid and fuel cell technology we’ve recently heard about.

There’s a “nasty” rumor going round about how Toyota and BMW’s future partnership also includes the words “sports car” which is where we take notice.

Toyota have produced some pretty good sports cars in the past and currently they’re doing the GT86 in alliance with Subaru.

BMW’s etiquette on sports cars and enjoyable vehicles to drive is far more impressive than that but it’ll probably be very interesting to see how the new collaboration pans out.

Maybe BMW can make a great sports car and maybe Toyota can cut back on the costs while still keeping it as fun a product as possible.

Akio Toyoda, CEO of the Japanese company, had a major role to play in the emotional appeal of the GT86 so maybe we’re not going to end up with a boring BMW Z2 or something along those lines.

The Japanese leader actually went on record to say he’s a big fan of BMWs and that he had a bit of a nightmare at the Nurburgring race because of them.

It’s not that big a surprise to see him actually admit to such an idea, in front of the media and, more importantly, in front of Norbert Reithofer, CEO of BMW.

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Marcus M.

http://www.bmwcoop.com

The post BMW – Toyota partnership to extend up to sports cars appeared first on BMWCoop | BMW Blog, BMW News, BMW Reviews.

If you guys remembers how BMW and Toyota decided to partner up on the development of lithium-ion batteries a while ago you’re going to love this.

It seems that the two companies are looking into taking that partnership further than that. The expansion should take things a little further but along the same lines.

The Bavarians are going to work together with the Japanese on the future of hybrid powertrain development.

Let’s rejoice at the idea that nobody had some brilliant thought about the two working together on the steering systems or anything like that.

The idea of the new partnership is quite simple and is following the idea of efficient spending of money on certain powertrain developments.

BMW will be helping Toyota build better, more efficient small capacity engines and in return, the Japanese will be offering them some help with the electric part of the equation.

When it comes to the actual paperwork, the partnership is supposed to help both companies develop some projects in hybrid technology, fuel cells, vehicle electronics and weight loss.

While the partnership expansion is far from a surprise, it’s not exactly what we were expecting since BMW were working on these things with the French at Peugeot.

I’m not very proud about saying this but it kind of has to be said. The new R&D money saving effort does kind of seal the deal about the i range having trouble.

Even though BMW denies this it does seem to be the actual case of what’s going on.

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Marcus M.

http://www.bmwcoop.com

The post BMW and Toyota talking about expanding their partnership appeared first on BMWCoop | BMW Blog, BMW News, BMW Reviews.

Our favorite kind of Germans, the Bavarian ones that make BMW, have announced that they will be creating a partnership with the Japanese at Toyota.

I’ll be honest, I didn’t read through the entire press release but hoping there’s no Berlin-Tokyo axis involved in the affair.

On a less jovial front, BMW and Toyota will be partnering up in order to cut back on the costs of developing new battery technology.

If you have a bit of a memory over boring stuff, you might even remember that this is stage two of an agreement between the two companies.

They must have sorted out everything about the engines because new they’re moving to what they plan to get the power from.

There’s plenty of interesting battery technologies to sort from these days, each with their own plus and minus points. The two associates have chosen to go for Li-Ion ones, the oldest and most popular one around.

There’s reason in their choice. Having gone for the batteries that everybody has experience with will eventually imply certain lowered costs.

What BMW and Toyota will be focusing on is the materials used for the vital parts of the battery, namely the cathodes, anodes and electrolytes.

Their aim is not to make batteries cheaper but to improve on the performance and overall capacity of the “juice” boxes.

This should in turn give us better batteries on all fronts for us in a few years and, given BMW’s partnership with Brilliance, they might be getting a lot cheaper as well.

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Marcus M.

http://www.bmwcoop.com

The post BMW and Toyota partner up on batteries appeared first on BMWCoop | BMW Blog, BMW News, BMW Reviews.

The Bavarians seem to be on a partnership plan these days as just before showing us the new BMW 6 Series Gran Coupe, they’ve announced a partnership with Brilliance.

That partnerships was to end in the creation of a new EV brand for China. The new partnership BMW has announced with General Motors hasn’t fallen far from that tree.

It sees the American company collaborate with the Germans into the eco trend that’s for the slightly further away future, namely fuel cells.

Fuel cell technology is reserved for the future but it’s really been with us for quite some time. GM’s Hy-Wire concept showcased this back in 2002, then later in 2008 the Honda FCX Clarity.

Both of these vehicles are special and they really pave the way for a different understanding of transportation.

Sadly the astronomical costs of fuel cell technology are going to keep these cars off the roads for plenty of years to come.

This is where BMW and GM partner up and try to speed things up. BMW have also signed a deal with Toyota earlier in the year that’s meant to help interest in eco technology. Bringing the trio together will push yet more money into fuel cell technology research.

Bottom line is that GM is a leader in terms of fuel cell research, Toyota in intermediary green tech and BMW is willing to spend considerable money to get its hand on their tips.

It will be interesting to follow where the collaboration between BMW and GM goes, with the main result being cheaper ways of coming up with fuel cell powered cars.

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Marcus M.

http://www.bmwcoop.com

The post BMW to partner up with GM for fuel cell technology appeared first on BMWCoop | BMW Blog, BMW News, BMW Reviews.

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.