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A potential partnership between Apple and Nissan sank due to disagreements about the brand, the Financial Times reported on Sunday. Apple wanted Nissan to build cars under the Apple brand, while Nissan preferred to keep its own brand on vehicles.
In recent months, Apple has been looking for a partner to build an electric car under the Apple brand. Last week, Bloomberg reported that negotiations with Kia (and its parent company, Hyundai) ended without agreement. The Financial Times says Apple has also “revealed” BMW as a potential partner.
Apple reportedly held preliminary talks with Nissan, although the negotiations did not reach the highest levels at either company:
The talks faltered after the American company asked Nissan to make Apple-branded cars, a demand that would effectively demote the automaker to a hardware supplier. Many automakers have expressed fear of becoming “the Foxconn of the automotive industry”, a reference to the Taiwanese manufacturing group that assembles iPhones.
Ashwani Gupta, Nissan’s CEO, told FT that “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. “
Nissan was a pioneer in electric vehicles, launching the Nissan Leaf more than a decade ago.
It is not yet clear what would be different in an Apple car. Apple has deep knowledge of batteries and user interface design, so making a human-powered electric car seems like an obvious direction.
Since 2014, Apple has been working on autonomous car technology. But a California regulatory process suggested that Apple did far less testing of its technology than industry leaders – at least in California.
Apple’s test vehicles traveled only 18,800 miles on California roads between late 2019 and late 2020. Google’s Waymo, on the other hand, recorded 629,000 miles in California during this period – and probably even more in Arizona and in other places. Cruise, a jointly owned startup between GM and Honda, recorded more than 770,000 miles testing their vehicles on California’s roads.
If Apple can’t find an automaker willing to sign a partnership agreement, one option would be to simply buy an automaker. Apple’s most recent financial results showed that the company has $ 77 billion in cash and short-term investments. This is more than the market capitalization of a number of major auto manufacturers, including Nissan ($ 25 billion), Ford ($ 44 billion) and Stellantis ($ 50 billion), the parent company of Chrysler.