new delhi bmw ag dodged a takeover attempt by mercedesbenz parent daimler ag six decades ago and ever since the two luxurycar icons have been bitter rivals until recentlyreflecting the historic challenges gripping the auto industry bmw and daimler are reaching across the aisle to team up in whats become an emerging trend in the sector the latest rapprochement between the german manufacturers involves talks to join forces on key components including vehicle platforms electriccar batteries and autonomousdriving technology according to people familiar with the matterthat could mean models like the bmw 2series coupe and mercedes aclass sedan could one day share similar underpinnings a prospect that would have been anathema to both sides just a few years ago thats changing as crushing development expenses for nextgeneration vehicles a looming slowdown in conventional models and agile new competitors prod unprecedented cooperationthe pressure on carmakers is enormous right now and this year weve seen signs of crisis said juergen pieper a frankfurtbased analyst with bankhaus metzler broader collaborations are on the rise to help fight costs and spending in parallelsales slumpstrains have been evident the stoxx europe 600 automobiles parts index has declined 26 percent this year and both bmw and daimler lowered 2018 profit targets blaming trade tensions as well as rising expenses to develop vehicles that consumers may not even want daimler is adding a suite of 10 electric vehicles over the next four years while bmw said it will offer 12 batteryonly models by 2025the speculative spending comes as global auto sales slumped this year for the first time since 2010 according to jonathon poskitt director of market researcher lmc automotive amid trade tensions tightening interest rates and political conflicts the outlook for 2019 is not without its risks he said in a reportwith headwinds intensifying competitive silos are giving way in the effort to spread out costs for developing electric cars and counter cashrich technology giants like alphabet inc as they push into ridehailing and other alternatives to vehicle ownershipvolkswagen ag is in negotiations with ford motor co to cooperate on vans and potentially autonomous vehicles and has linked up with microsoft corp on an automotive cloud to connect its vehicles to new digital services bmw is jointly making the z4 and supra sports cars with toyota motor corp and working with intel corp and others on driverlesscar technology daimler has a series of engine sharing and production projects with renault sa and nissan motor colopsided fiatits a strategy longpromoted by the late fiat chrysler automobiles nv chief executive officer sergio marchionne who had derided the industry for wasting money by developing multiple versions of the same technologyironically fiat chrysler lacks significant partnerships with other carmakers the usitalian group reaped almost all of its thirdquarter profit from the ram and jeep brands in the us and the lopsided business prompted one investor to write to fiats board urging it to consider selling its european business and eventually spin off the maserati and alfa romeo divisionsjaguar