Toyota & Bmw To Co-Develop New Iq And Mini Minor?

[FROSTYBALLS]

Rumours circulating in the press suggesting Toyota and BMW are co-developing a replacement IQ and a new Mini Minor - both as premium city cars:

http://www.autoblog.com/2015/01/26/mini-minor-rocketman-toyota-report/

http://www.carscoops.com/2015/01/bmw-reportedly-working-with-toyota-to.html

http://www.aronline.co.uk/blogs/ar-cars/news-bmw-toyota-co-develop-new-mini-minor-next-generation-iq/

[Soeley]

Sounds interesting, the Mini is too big now. I was wondering if they were going to use the iQ floorpan, but it doesn't sound like it?

[Grumpy Cabbie]

Yeah the Mini is anything but.

Way too big, not especially reliable and everyone's got one. The IQ was nice n small, rare and bl**dy marvelous as a city car. You could park two to the space of a mini (almost).

I'm not convinced by Toyotas join ventures either. The Aygo, including the new one isn't that great and not on our IQ replacement list at all.

[craggle]

Not sure about that, looks way too much like a Mini and not enough like an iQ.

I popped to the dealer the other night and had a wander around the cars outside as I always do and had a look at the new Aygo. I quite liked it, looked stylish and fairly well built but I was a bit disappointed to find out they only do 1.0 engines. I thought that would be the ideal car for the iQ3, 1.33 engine or offer a sporty model with a 1.6 engine in it?

Craig.

[Soeley]

Craig I had read that the Peugeot or Citroen version of the Aygo would be offered a bigger engine. (I also think they look better than the Aygo - not in to the X factor front)

[FROSTYBALLS]

The Citroen C1/Peugeot 108 also offer the 1.2 version of PSA's 3 cylinder engine - different engine to the Toyota unit that is used in the 1./0 litre versions.

Having said that later this year Toyota should be offering their new Atkinson cycle 1.0 litre engine in the Aygo (cannot see it being offered in the PSA cars) -

http://www.gizmag.com/toyota-atkinson-engines-improved-thermal-fuel-efficiency/31615/

[Guest]

I would say its likely that BMW are after the ingenuity of Toyota in their miniaturisation of what we take for granted in our iQ's, the A/C, Heater system and so on. We all know that BMW are not thick either, take a look at their i3 and i8 for example. The fact that Toyota squeezed so much into a small car when others like BMW could only produce the bloated Mini... just saying. I don't think we can count the Smart Car, as it is small, but not really ground breaking like our iQ's.

Of course we all know that making things small that work just as good as something larger provides more passenger and luggage room in a smaller package. Also, I think they know they would be on to a good thing with Toyota.

[Parts-King]

I thought that would be the ideal car for the iQ3, 1.33 engine or offer a sporty model with a 1.6 engine in it?

Craig.

That has never been the plan. Toyota will only offer the 1.0 version, there are no plans for a bigger engine

As for the joint partnership, BMW wanted Hybrid technology and Toyota wanted diesel technology, joint ventures offer very cost effective research and development costs, I would imagine there are lots of areas of collaboration that we could only dream about

[Grumpy Cabbie]

Toyota should be careful.

Diesel is on the way out in future, at least for passenger cars. Hybrid, plug in hybrid and fully electric are the future and Toyota have much experience of that. Why give BMW your secrets and patents so they can give you obsolete tech?

Hydrogen on the other hand, is so far in the future it's up there with cold fusion - always 10 years away.

[FROSTYBALLS]

For the time being though, the tie-in with BMW provides Toyota with a diesel engine in a capacity that has largely become the norm for diesel engined medium sized cars - 1.6 litres - without having to go to the expense of designing a new engine.

[Parts-King]

Toyota should be careful.

Diesel is on the way out in future, at least for passenger cars. Hybrid, plug in hybrid and fully electric are the future and Toyota have much experience of that. Why give BMW your secrets and patents so they can give you obsolete tech?

Hydrogen on the other hand, is so far in the future it's up there with cold fusion - always 10 years away.

Toyota have openly given away their tech secrets for Hydrogen in a bid to get hydrogen to market much quicker by allowing other partners access the technology. It might not be mainstream but it will be in 10 years

[Grumpy Cabbie]

Toyota should be careful.

Diesel is on the way out in future, at least for passenger cars. Hybrid, plug in hybrid and fully electric are the future and Toyota have much experience of that. Why give BMW your secrets and patents so they can give you obsolete tech?

Hydrogen on the other hand, is so far in the future it's up there with cold fusion - always 10 years away.

It might not be mainstream but it will be in 10 years

lol are you taking the p**s? :)

On another forum I posted about 5 links from 2007 from Hyundai and GM where they'd released a small fleet of hydrogen vehicles and proudly announced that they would be availbe to buy in 5 years time. Hmmm, 2 years later and they're not even available to lease, let alone buy.

Hydrogen might be viable in 15 years, but at the moment the way I describe it is as follows;

"It's a hybrid car with a £50,000 engine and a 10,000 psi petrol tank."

People complain about the cost of a Tesla and limited range, but at least I can buy one tomorrow if I had £50k. I can't buy the Mirai even if I wanted to and I couldn't fill it up anywhere either. And if I did manage to find somewhere to fill it, how much would it cost? The only way a £50k Tesla seems viable is that the fuel costs are so low and free in many places. A Mirai (same cost apparently) is expensive for a small car and costs money to fill it up. What's the point? Why not just buy a plug in or traditional petrol car?

Only Toyota and Hyundai are backing hydrogen still, rather than tinkering with it. Ford, Vauxhall, BMW, Fiat, Honda, Nissan, Tesla, Kia and Renault are all going PHEV or BEV.

I hope Toyota have backed the right horse this time.

[FROSTYBALLS]

Honda have their FCV hydrogen powered concept which was unveiled last month - supposedly they're working on a production version for launch in Japan in March 2016.

[Grumpy Cabbie]

Let's hope this time they're serious;

Let's pop back to 2007. A time when the gen2 Prius was halfway through it's life span.

http://www.topgear.com/uk/car-news/Honda-fcx-la

"From next summer, Honda will lease a bunch of FCXs to drivers in SoCal for about £290 a
month, but there's no word on when the car might roll out to the rest of the
world."

from 2007 again;

http://www.caranddriver.com/news/2008-chevrolet-equinox-fuel-cell-car-news

"In 2007, the company plans to put a fleet of 100 fuel-cell
sports-utilities on the road, some of which will be given to families
for everyday use."

There are many more similar articles show casing their latest hydrogen offerings and how they're "just round the corner".

People mock the £5,000 replacement Battery of the Leaf or the £15,000 Tesla pack, but £50,000 for a new fuel cell stack would smart a little. I'd also question the life of the 10,000 psi fuel tank and cost and maintence costs.

Hydrogen, whilst having merit, isn't here for passenger cars. Trucks, Trains, vans maybe, but 30 million passenger cars? Nah.

And that's before I get onto the radiator grills on the Mirai :)