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Ford and Volkswagen Expand Alliance, More Joint Vehicles in the Pipeline

The auto industry has been quiet over the past few years in terms of mergers, alliances and breakups. Sure, we’ve had the FCA failed attempt to tie the knot with Renault and the subsequent switch of attention to rival PSA, and the Ford-Volkswagen alliance, but neither of them were fully realized until now.
Ford-Volkswagen action plan 1 photo
Photo: Volkswagen
As the month of May draws to a close, Volkswagen made another step in making the alliance with Ford a reality and announced it has approved “further contracts under the cooperation with Ford Motor Company announced last year.”

That cooperation was born as a result of the Germans completing work on their MEB platform. Planned as the main workhorse when it comes to VW’s line of electric cars, it will be sold to others as well, because as a car company you can never have enough money.

Ford was the first to show interest in the VW technology, and last year agreed to develop an electric vehicle for the European market based on it.

The deal signed in 2019 also called for a midsize pickup truck to be developed by the American carmaker and shared with the Germans. Now, we get news of even more joint projects.

Volkswagen said there are three joint projects in the works in the area of electrification and commercial vehicles, including the two mentioned above. The other two announced this week call for the development of a city delivery van by VW and a van in the one-ton loader segment by Ford.

“Additional projects may follow, as well as the investment in Argo AI, the autonomous vehicle platform company. Through the cooperation, both manufacturers plan to realize significant synergy effects from shared development costs as well as production synergies,” the Germans added.

We are not being told when the first joint projects will be ready for the road.
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About the author: Daniel Patrascu
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Daniel loves writing (or so he claims), and he uses this skill to offer readers a "behind the scenes" look at the automotive industry. He also enjoys talking about space exploration and robots, because in his view the only way forward for humanity is away from this planet, in metal bodies.
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