Apple has been approaching the Japanese Nissan in recent months over the merger of its secret autonomous car project, but according to people informed about it, talks are no longer active.
The contact was brief and the discussions did not progress to the senior management levels after the division over brands for the iPhone manufacturer’s electric vehicles, the people added.
Apple also recently halted talks with South Korean Hyundai Motor and its affiliate Kia, highlighting the challenges of finding a car partner for its car efforts, known as Project Titan.
The Silicon Valley company’s talks with Hyundai have sparked an intense puzzle over which other manufacturers could partner with Apple, with the market focusing on Japan’s eight carmakers.
Shares in Nissan rose 5.6 percent on Wednesday after CEO Makoto Uchida said he was open to working with technology groups when asked during an earnings presentation whether Apple had approached the company.
But one person familiar with the discussions said talks were faltering after the U.S. company asked Nissan to make cars from Apple, a question that would effectively downgrade the carmaker to a hardware supplier.
Many carmakers have expressed fears of becoming ‘the Foxconn of the automotive industry’, a reference to the Taiwanese manufacturing group that makes up iPhones.
Apple declined to comment.
Ashwani Gupta, chief operating officer of Nissan, said the Japanese group is not in talks with Apple, whose interest in the automotive industry runs until 2014.
‘We have our own customer satisfaction coming by car. We are not going to change the way we make cars, ”Gupta said in an interview with the Financial Times. “The way we design, the way we develop and the way we manufacture will be like a carmaker like Nissan.”
Gupta said the company is willing to explore partnerships with technology groups to adapt to the shift to paired vehicles and autonomous driving, suggesting collaboration with Google and other startups.
But he added: ‘We need to see who has the best skill in determining what the customer thinks. For this we can do the partnership, but it is to adapt their services to our product, not the other way around. ”
Analysts said Nissan, which has an alliance with French Renault and Mitsubishi Motors, could fit in well with Apple.
The Japanese company was a pioneer in electric vehicles with the launch of the Leaf in 2010. Nissan also has capacity in its US plants after the loss-making group switched from a focus on volume to profitability.
But Mio Kato, an analyst who writes on the Smartkarma platform, said Nissan does not have the scale of competitors like Toyota to make the kind of large investments needed for autonomous driving technology.
Some analysts believe Apple could disrupt the automotive industry, although it is unclear what kind of technology it can offer beyond the capabilities of its brand.
Apple has been testing unmanaged technologies in California for years. The company announced last week that its backup drivers had to intervene every 145 kilometers of testing. In contrast, Waymo, Alphabet’s self-driving car unit, and GM’s Cruise each manage to drive an average of almost 30,000 kilometers before a single “decoupling”.