German automotive giants Daimler and BMW have reportedly walked away from talks with Apple over its much-rumoured car project.
Apple is widely known to be working on its own self-driving electric car project, variously dubbed the ‘iCar’ and the ‘Apple Car‘.
However, with its obvious lack of expertise in this very specialised field, the tech giant is said to be looking for a partner. That partner won’t be Daimler or BMW, it seems.
According to a new Handelsblatt report, talks with the two German companies collapsed over the same issues: who would lead the project, and which company would have ownership of the data that it would produce.
Apple, understandably, wants the car to be built into its own cloud software ecosystem. That’s pretty much the one part of the car that it will have any degree of expertise in. However, both Daimler and BMW have placed customer data protection as key part of their strategy, so handing over the keys (so to speak) to another company doesn’t sound too appealing to them.
Apparently, Apple’s talks with BMW collapsed last year, whilst the Daimler discussions only fell apart quite recently.
Related: 5 things you need to know about the Tesla Model 3
As this suggests, Apple is primarily looking for German expertise on its car project. The search for a partner is said to be running from a Berlin office, and a recent report suggests that the company is also running a secret development lab from the German capital.
Nevertheless, the front-runner at this point, now that Daimler and BMW have dropped out of the running, is said to be the Canadian-Austrian firm Magna.
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Who would be your ideal automotive partner for Apple? Let us know in the comments below.
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Editorial independence means being able to give an unbiased verdict about a product or company, with the avoidance of conflicts of interest. To ensure this is possible, every member of the editorial staff follows a clear code of conduct.
Professional conduct
We also expect our journalists to follow clear ethical standards in their work. Our staff members must strive for honesty and accuracy in everything they do. We follow the IPSO Editors’ code of practice to underpin these standards.
