DETROIT, MICH.–Ford and Volkswagen have reached an outline agreement to share electric and autonomous car technologies, extending their alliance beyond a cooperation on commercial vehicles, a source familiar with the matter said on Friday.
VW will share its MEB electric vehicle platform with Ford, say press reports.
The exploration for cost savings, though, will extend to systems such as steering, brakes, chassis, wire harnesses, etc.
Volkswagen‘s supervisory board is due to discuss deepening the alliance at a meeting on July 11, 2019.
A Ford spokeswoman said, “Our talks with Volkswagen continue. Discussions have been productive across a number of areas. We’ll share updates as details become more firm.”
Last January, the two companies announced an alliance that pointed to sharing capital and development costs and technical innovation for electric and self-driving vehicles. The alliance will extend to small commercial vehicle cost sharing, as well as providing a pickup for VW to sell outside of North America.
Automakers are having to create alliances in order to share costs in these two areas of EVs and AVs because of the high development costs and relatively long range return on capital.
