Apple has approached Nissan of Japan in recent months about a deal for its secret self-driving car project, but negotiations are no longer active, according to people familiar with the matter.
Contact was brief and discussions did not advance to senior management levels after the divisions over the iPhone maker’s brand of electric vehicles, people added.
Apple also recently halted negotiations with South Korea’s Hyundai Motor and its affiliate Kia, highlighting the challenges of finding an automotive partner for its automotive efforts, known as Project Titan.
The Silicon Valley company’s negotiations with Hyundai triggered an intense guessing game about which other manufacturers could partner with Apple, with the market focusing on eight Japanese automakers.
Nissan’s shares soared 5.6 percent on Wednesday after Chief Executive Makoto Uchida signaled his openness to work with technology groups when asked during a earnings presentation whether the company had been approached by Apple.
But a person with knowledge of the discussions said the talks faltered after the American company asked Nissan to make cars under the Apple brand, a demand that would effectively demote the automaker to a hardware supplier.
Many automakers have expressed fear of becoming “Foxconn of the auto industry”, a reference to the Taiwanese manufacturing group that assembles iPhones.
Apple declined to comment.
Ashwani Gupta, Nissan’s chief operating officer, said the Japanese group “is not” in talks with Apple, whose interest in entering the auto industry dates back to 2014.
“We have the satisfaction of our own customer, who comes by car. There is no way we are going to change the way we make cars, ”Gupta said in an interview with the Financial Times. “The way we design, develop and manufacture will be like a car manufacturer, like Nissan.”
Gupta said the company is open to exploring partnerships with technology groups to adapt to the move to connected vehicles and autonomous driving, pointing to collaborations with Google and other start-ups.
But he added: “We have to check who has the best competence to capture what the customer is thinking. For this, we can partner, but that is adapting your services to our product, not vice versa. ”
Analysts said Nissan, which has an alliance with France’s Renault and Mitsubishi Motors, may be a good fit for Apple.
The Japanese company was a pioneer in electric vehicles with the launch of the Leaf in 2010. Nissan also has capacity at its plants in the USA after the loss-making group shifted its focus from volume to profitability.
But Mio Kato, an analyst who writes on the Smartkarma platform, said that Nissan did not have the scale of rivals like Toyota to make the kind of big investments needed for autonomous driving technology.
Some analysts believe that Apple can disrupt the automotive industry, although it is unclear what type of technology it could provide beyond the power of its brand.
Apple has been testing driverless technologies in California for years. The company disclosed last week that its reserve drivers had to intervene once every 145 test miles. In contrast, Waymo, Alphabet’s self-driving car and GM’s Cruise each each managed to travel an average of nearly 30,000 miles each before a single “shutdown”.