Let the Apple Car rumors roll on. Apple is planning to work with Hyundai on such a vehicle, according to Korea Economic Daily (as noted by MacRumors).
The article says the tech giant plans to work with the car maker to produce electric vehicles and develop batteries due to the “enormous costs” of the technology and the necessary production facilities.
Hyundai is a South Korean multinational automotive manufacturer headquartered in Seoul. Hyundai Motor Company was founded in 1967 and, along with its 32.8% owned subsidiary, Kia Motors, and its 100% owned luxury subsidiary, Genesis Motor, and electric vehicle subsidiary, Ioniq.
The Sellers Research Group (that’s me) think the report makes sense (although I thought Apple would work with Volkswagen). Building its own automobile from “scratch” (having its own assembly plants, for example) would be too taxing even for a tech giant like Apple.
A January 7 report from Bloomberg says Apple will take at least half a decade to launch an autonomous, electric vehicle because development work is still at an early stage. Quoting unnamed “people with knowledge of the efforts,” the article says the tech giant has a small team of hardware engineers developing drive systems, vehicle interior and external car body designs with the goal of eventually shipping a vehicle.
Bloomberg says this is “a more ambitious goal than in previous years when the project mostly focused on creating an underlying self-driving system.” The article adds that Apple has also added more ex-Tesla Inc. executives to the project.
The accompanying image is courtesy of The Detroit Bureau.
