Aurich Lawson / Getty Images
The Financial Times reported on Sunday that a potential partnership between Apple and Nissan has been formed due to differences of opinion over brands. Apple wanted Nissan to build Apple cars, while Nissan preferred to keep its own brand on the vehicles.
In recent months, Apple has reportedly been looking for a partner to build an electric car from Apple. Last week, Bloomberg reported that negotiations with Kia (and its parent company Hyundai) ended without an agreement. The Financial Times says that Apple also “sounded” BMW as a potential partner.
Apple has reportedly held preliminary talks with Nissan, although the talks did not reach the highest level of any of the companies:
Talks broke down after the US company asked Nissan to make Apple cars, 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.
Ashwani Gupta, chief operating officer of Nissan, told the FT that ‘we need to see who has the best ability to determine 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. ”
Nissan was a pioneer in electric vehicles and introduced the Nissan Leaf more than a decade ago.
It remains unclear what the hallmark of an Apple Car would be. Apple has a deep expertise in batteries and user interface design, and the manufacture of a human-powered electric motor seems to be a clear direction.
Since 2014, Apple has been working on self-driving car technology. But according to a California regulatory document, Apple has tested its technology far less than industry leaders – at least in California.
Apple’s test vehicles covered only 18,800 miles on California roads between late 2019 and late 2020. Google’s Waymo, on the other hand, recorded 629,000 kilometers in California during this period – and probably even more in Arizona and elsewhere. Cruise, a company jointly owned by GM and Honda, has recorded more than 770,000 miles to test its vehicles on California roads.
If Apple can not find a car company willing to sign a partnership agreement, one option may be to simply buy a car manufacturer. Apple’s most recent financial results show the company with $ 77 billion in cash and short-term investments. This is more than the market capitalization of a number of major automakers, including Nissan ($ 25 billion), Ford ($ 44 billion) and Stellantis ($ 50 billion), Chrysler’s parent company.