BMW & Daimler Teaming Up On An Electric Car

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Unlikely business partners, BMW and Daimler are teaming up for a small electric car. This shows how quickly the car industry is evolving.

It’s not very often you hear or the words BMW and Daimler without some sort of competition between the two, but this time the news from the German front is even stranger. BMW and Daimler will cooperate on an electric car.

Visio.M. The Viseo.M is an attractive design, part of a joint venture between both BMW and Mercedes-Benz parent corporation Daimler. To break it down further, the German Federal Ministry itself initiated the Visio.M project for Education and Research (BMBF) purposes with a $14-million start up fund. What is the point of this project? The idea is to get both companies to make a very light and capable electric car both companies could work with. Does this mean Daimler is letting go of its Smart ForTwo? Most likely not, but it seems to show the car conglomerate is now looking elsewhere.

BMW will certainly bring to the table its carbon fiber experience it gained with it acquired stakes into the SGL Carbon SE company. This has helped the company design the beautiful i8 and the amazing little i3, both using a lot of carbon fiber. But this is not the year of outrageous battery chemistry make up, this is the year better energy management. This is why both teams are having a second look in places no one thinks anymore, namely redesigning systems and components, such as anti-lock braking, seatbelts that alone could substantially save up to 15 percent.

The car is definitely a European brainchild, which leads us to believer we are not going to see version here until all of this technology morphs into what this market craves so much for, big, spacious cars. In the meantime, this Visio.M could pass for a SEAT or any other European street performance car. In the end, it is good to see two giant competitive companies teaming up to work on a shared electric car platform. It will be interesting to see what Daimler does with its Viseo.M and BMW with theirs.