According to a comment made by Tesla’s Chief Executive Elon Musk in an interview with German weekly Der Spiegel, the US electric automaker has entered negotiations with BMW over the use of batteries and lightweight vehicle components.
The youngest publicly-traded US automaker – Tesla Motors – has enjoyed a spectacular rise over the last few years, with investors treating its stock more akin to the high-valued Silicon Valley technology companies than a regular carmaker. It also enjoyed the fruits of successful alliances so far with Germany’s Daimler and Japan’s Toyota. Now Tesla looks ripe to form another automotive alliance – with the largest global luxury automaker – even as the companies could be viewed as rivals.
“We are talking about whether we can collaborate in battery technology or charging stations,” Musk was quoted as saying by Der Spiegel and in the interview published on Sunday the billionaire CEO also considered BMW’s production of carbon fibre reinforced car body parts as “interesting” and “relatively cost efficient.” The German carmaker has a joint venture with supplier SGL for the production of the carbon fiber reinforced panels used for the assembly of the i3 electric city car and range-topping 8 plug-in hybrid sports car.
Via Reuters
Source: http://www.inautonews.com/tesla-and-bmw-negotiating-partnership-over-batteries-and-parts#.VHV7rfmSygR
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