Hyundai — Kia confirms that talks with Apple have stalled
- The news was confirmed by Hyundai and Kia earlier today.
- Hyundai’s bold statement revealing the ‘Apple Car’ project to the public is believed to be the main cause.
- Apart from Hyundai, Apple is also in talks with at least six different Japanese automakers for their project, reports say.
As early as last week, it was reported that Apple was in deep discussions with Hyundai regarding the ‘Apple Car’ project. It was even alleged that Apple was planning to invest a total of $3.6 billion in Kia in order to cement a manufacturing partnership between them to build the project at Kia’s assembly plant in Georgia. The ‘Apple Car’ was also predicted to be built on Hyundai’s E-GMP electric vehicle platform, according to Ming-Chi Kuo (reliability: 80.95%).
However, Hyundai last month confirmed that Apple was in discussions with a variety of global automakers regarding its ‘Project Titan’, including Hyundai. Hours later, the company switched its statement saying that it had "received requests for potential cooperation from various companies regarding development of autonomous EVs."
Bloomberg on Friday reported that the discussions between Apple and Hyundai had "paused recently," due to the fact that Hyundai's formal statement had revealed their discussions regarding ‘Project Titan’ with Apple. The Cupertino giant is a company known for its secrecy on each and every project, so this news came as no surprise. Unfortunately, this apparently led to some sort of disagreement between the companies, which later on resulted in the ending of discussions. Following this report, Hyundai shares are down 8.4%, while Kia shares are down 15.3%.
According to Bloomberg:
Hyundai Motor Co. and its affiliate Kia Motors Corp. said that they aren’t in discussions with Apple Inc. on cooperating to develop a self-driving electric vehicle, following reports and speculation that they were working with the tech giant.
Prior to this, Nikkei Asia reported that Apple is in discussions with no less than six different Japanese automakers over potential supply and manufacturing partnerships for their ‘Apple Car’ project. This clearly shows that Apple is still in the very early stages of their ‘project’. Thus, this in some way clarifies that the debut of ‘Apple Car’ is many years away, with predictions ranging from anywhere between 2024 all the way to 2029.
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Published to Apple Scoop on 9th February, 2021.
