BMW and Daimler have teamed up to develop an electric car of the future. The rival automakers have joined forces with scientists at the Technical University Munich (TUM) to find an optimal solution that would overrun the existing electric vehicles.

Photo: the project ‘Visio.M’ prototype

The research project called ‘Visio.M’ is aimed to create an electric car that would be light-weight, affordable and safe. German Federal Ministry for Education and Research (BMBF) gave $14 million for the project that will first of all try to find out everything about the price and safety of small electric vehicles to bring them to the mass market, says BMW blog.

According to BMW, the current small electric vehicles offer only a minimum level of vehicle safety and therefore are not good for mass market. Existing electric cars are to heavy and are based on gasoline-powered models so they require large and expensive batteries.

The upcoming electric concept car will weigh only 800 pounds without the battery and is powered by a 20-horsepower electric motor. TUM has developed an electric vehicle prototype called MUTE that will be used as the test carrier to explore innovations and new technologies for vehicle safety, propulsion, energy storage. Researchers will specially focus on the safety issues as they are intended to create an electric car that would be both very light and powerful.

BMW is also collaborating with Toyota to develop next-generation environment-friendly technologies.