BMW and Toyota have confirmed they expand their existing collaboration to jointly develop a new sports car.
The announcement was made today at a joint press conference that was staged at BMW's Munich headquarters and saw Toyota boss Akio Toyoda and BMW chief Norbert Reithofer sign a memorandum of understanding.
It pledged four key ares:
Joint development of a fuel cell system
Joint development of architecture and components for a future sports vehicle
Collaboration on powertrain electrification
Joint research and development on lightweight technologies.
Speculation has already gathered pace as to the identity of the future sports car. The collaboration will likely see BMW offer their technical expertise to produce a new model in the Toyota brand's line-up with replacements for the Supra and the smaller Celica touted.
Today's announcement follows the original agreement between the companies that results in BMW providing their highly efficient 1.6 litre and 2.0 litre diesel engines to Toyota from 2014.
See the press release below for further details.
