Report: Apple Chose to Develop Apple Car Alone to Avoid Further Delays, Currently Selecting Suppliers
Apple is developing its electric vehicle independently without the assistance of another automaker and is currently selecting final parts suppliers, according to sources said to be familiar with Apple's plans speaking to Korea's Maeil Economic Daily.
In line with a previous report from Reuters, the report explains that the company has had its own automobile hardware research and development unit since 2014, but due to development challenges, it contacted BMW, Hyundai, Nissan, and Toyota to explore joint development and contract production agreements.
During this period, its own department for vehicle hardware research and development is believed to have virtually stopped operating around 2016. Separately, software research on self-driving continued.
The talks with automakers apparently fell apart due to repeated delays and the wider industry transformation toward electric vehicles slowing down the progress of any joint development and production agreement. There was also reluctance from some large automakers about becoming a manufacturing subcontractor for Apple. Apple is believed to have decided that it could not delay the launch of its car any further.
With these talks stalling, Apple has entirely turned once again to its own development and restored the full operation of its vehicle research unit. Although Doug Field, Apple's vice president of special projects, recently left the project to join Ford, the company is still believed to have hundreds of engineers working on the vehicle.
Apple has now gone through the process of sending a Request for Information (RFI), Request for Proposal (RFP), and Request for Quotation (RFQ) to global automobile part manufacturers, which is understood to be a signal that the final parts suppliers for Apple's car are now being selected for outsourced production.
Mirroring the analyst Ming-Chi Kuo, the report places the launch of the vehicle around 2025 to 2027.
Popular Stories
There are concerning reports on Reddit that Apple's latest iOS 17.5 update has introduced a bug that causes old photos that were deleted – in some cases years ago – to reappear in users' photo libraries. After updating their iPhone, one user said they were shocked to find old NSFW photos that they deleted in 2021 suddenly showing up in photos marked as recently uploaded to iCloud. Other...
The iMessage service that Apple users to send messages to one another appears to be down for some users, and messages are failing to go out or are taking an extra long time to send. There are numerous reports about the issue on social networks and a spike of outage reports on Down Detector, but Apple's System Status page is not yet reporting an outage. Update: Apple's status page says...
Apple today previewed new accessibility features coming with iOS 18 later this year, and this includes some new options for CarPlay. Apple highlighted three new features coming to CarPlay: Voice Control: This feature will allow users to navigate CarPlay and control apps with just their voice. Color Filters: This feature will make the CarPlay interface visually easier to use for...
Today is the official launch day of the new iPad Pro models, and these updated tablets mark the biggest feature and design refresh that we've seen for the iPad Pro in several years. We picked up one of the new 13-inch models to check out everything new. Subscribe to the MacRumors YouTube channel for more videos. When it comes to design, Apple is still offering 11-inch and 13-inch size options ...
This year's upcoming iPhone 16 Pro Max is expected to get a boost in overall size from 6.7-inches to 6.9-inches, and a new image gives us a good idea of how the current iPhone 15 Pro Max compares to what could be Apple's largest ever iPhone. The image above, posted on X by ZONEofTECH, shows a dummy model representing the iPhone 16 Pro Max alongside an actual iPhone 15 Pro Max. Dummy...
In April, Apple updated its guidelines to allow retro game emulators on the App Store, and several popular emulators have already been released. The emulators released so far allow iPhone users to play games released for older consoles from Nintendo, Sony, SEGA, Atari, and others. A list of some popular emulators available on the App Store so far follows. Released Delta Delta is...
Top Rated Comments
EVs have many fewer moving parts compared to an ICE vehicle but the mechanical and electrical engineering still required in an EV is massive.
Tesla considers their cars to be robots. I think people need to stop thinking of cars like the crude vehicles we’ve known for the past century to understand what apple is doing. Phones dramatically changed because of apple. Cars will, too.
Now look at things.
Never underestimate a determined competitor.