The German carmaker Volkswagen wants in the development of commercial vehicles and other stores the forces with the US rival ford bundle up. The corporations confirmed on Tuesday after the US market close, explore opportunities for a strategic alliance. According to insiders, the VW supervisory board had already agreed to talks with Ford on Monday. The goal is an alliance to share development and production costs.
The companies announced to examine possible projects in a number of business areas. “The market and customer requirements are changing at a rapid pace,” said Thomas Sedran, Unfortunately, the VW Group strategy. Both companies already had strong and complementary skills in various commercial vehicle areas.
VW and Ford made clear that in the possible partnership no mutual investments are planned. “We look forward to exploring cooperation opportunities with the Volkswagen team to respond to the changing needs of commercial vehicle customers and to identify further synergy potential,” said Ford manager Jim Farley.
CO2 requirements soon also for vans
The aim of the cooperation is to save costs in development and production. This also happens significantly against the background of increasing regulatory pressure. Because new EU rules pose major challenges for van manufacturers in Europe: From 2020, they will be faced with stricter limit values for CO2 emissions. If manufacturers sell more than their value on average, they have to pay a fine.
In the VW Group, each of the individual brands has reportedly created these specifications for themselves. For transporter models, however, it is difficult to keep the limits due to the weight and the higher air resistance, so penalties are difficult to avoid. The impending costs must therefore be saved elsewhere. About progress and details of their planned cooperation, VW and Ford want to comment in the course of the talks.