Collaboration between Toyota and BMW

This new announced collaboration between Toyota and BMW is an interesting one but I see Toyota benefiting more than BMW.

Here are the reasons:
- Toyota will be able to get hold BMW's awesome turbo diesel technology
- Toyota will learn BMW's engine down sizing technology
- Toyota will learn BMW's suspension setup and chassis technology

Toyota currently does not have the best turbo diesel engine for passenger cars and this has an impact on their sales in Europe where more than 50% of new cars sold are turbo diesel. Acquiring this technology will enable Toyota to have better market penetration in Europe.

All these technology from BMW are currently at the forefront of automotive engineering. It is not that Toyota is unable to develop similar technology but by collaborating with BMW they can short cut the development time and learn from the industry leader of such technology.

BMW will benefit in some ways by collaborating with Toyota if not they wouldn't collaborate.
Here are some of the potential areas they can benefit:
- BMW can learn about Toyota's small car and compact engine technology
- gain better understanding of Toyota's hybrid technology

Ultimately the collaboration is aimed at lowering development cost of new engines and new technology.

In the previous case of BMW's collaboration with Peugeot, the one that benefited the most was Peugeot as the 1.6 Prince engine co-developed by both companies were used in more Peugeot models than BMW models. BMW only used it for the Mini and the 116i model while Peugeot used the same engine for their 308, 408, 508, 3008, 5008 and RCZ.