BMW to reduce their number of vehicle architectures to two

As a solution to reduce their costs and boost their development process, BMW has planned to lower the number of architectures they currently have.

Subsequently, BMW along with MINI will cut down the current five vehicle architecture to just two. Herbert Diess, board member for research and development, confirmed that the company will have one platform for front-wheel-drive vehicles and another platform for rear-wheel-drive cars. However, i8 and i3, the plug-in hybrid/ electric cars from BMW’s portfolio are excluded from this architecture reorganisation. 

On the same lines, Mercedes-Benz recently announced that they will also scale down to four architectures from a total of nine. Thomas Weber, head of worldwide research and development for the company, had affirmed that the automaker will have four architectures- MFA, MRA, MHA, MSA.

The German automakers, BMW and Mercedes-Benz, both believe that this decision will help them make more savings, improve the overall quality of products and accelerate their progress of work. As a consequence, we can expect the cars from BMW and MINI’s line-up to share many components with each other. Similar is the case with the different models from Mercedes-Benz cars. This finding might also reduce the time required to introduce any new car or a facelifted model in the car market.