A recent news claim that renowned carmaker Hyundai is in talks with Apple for their upcoming self-driving car project. Korean carmaker Hyundai Motor has amended the issued statement -twice since the initial announcement.
Apple has been repeatedly rumored to be setting its sights on self-driving cars. Those rumors seem to have come to a head in the past few weeks, with more concrete talks of Apple’s plans, especially in the battery department.
First, the Korean carmaker had confirmed that Apple Inc. has requested potential cooperation to develop and build a self-driving car.
Whereas, after a few hours Hyundai has revised the statement by removing the reference to Apple. This has sparked a matter of discussion questioning the validity of the news.
To be clear, the report doesn’t shed much light on Apple’s plans but Hyundai’s statements alone already carry a lot of weight in confirming that Apple does actually have such plans in the first place.
According to a spokesperson, Apple is in talks with a number of automakers around the world and that it does include Hyundai.
Automobile manufacturers might be scrambling to compete who gets the honor of being Apple’s chosen partner for this endeavor.
That said, it’s still not clear what that partnership would entail and how much control Apple will have over the product.
The ultimate goal was to work on a self-driving car but there was no confirmation on the fuel type of the car, which means is not known whether it would have been an electric car or a normal petrol/diesel car.
When will the car hit the markets?
Apple is reaching out to a bunch of automakers around the globe for their next car. The news is not at all new to us as we all have been hearing about the news that Apple will launch its own car between 2025 and 2027.
A few years isn’t a very long time to develop a car, considering that Apple has no experience in the matter, no manufacturing capacity, and no network of car dealers. That is why it’s looking to team up with an existing car maker.
Recently, Apple analyst Ming-Chi Kuo has come out and stated that mass production of the upcoming Apple car can be delayed until “2028 or later.” This delay is major because of three reasons.
1.The timing is still uncertain.
2. Vehicle’s specifications and its supplier are not decided yet.
3. Apple is still uncertain about the competitiveness in the Electric vehicle market.
Hyundai Motor formed a $4 billion joint venture with a General Motors spin-off, Aptiv, focused on developing self-driving cars.
This is just part of the $55 billion investment that will be made over the next five years on projects related to electric and autonomous vehicles. The company aims to sell 1 million electric cars by 2025.
