Apple Car Talks With Daimler and BMW Fell Apart Over Leadership Issues, iCloud
Apple has been unable to establish a deal with Daimler and BMW over a possible manufacturing deal for the Apple Car, reports German news site Handelsblatt. Apple is said to be seeking a partner that could potentially help it produce the Apple Car, as Apple has no experience with vehicle production.
Talks with Daimler and BMW reportedly ended because there were questions over who would lead the project and which company would have ownership over data. Apple is said to be holding out for deep iCloud integration.
A Magna Steyr conceptual vehicle from 2012
Apple wants the car to be closely built into its own cloud software, while the German carmakers have made customer data protection a key element of their future strategy.
The talks with BMW collapsed last year, while those with Daimler collapsed more recently, the sources said.
Rumors last year suggested Apple was considering using the BMW i3 as the basis for its electric car project, but as was mentioned today and in past rumors, Apple's talks with BMW fell apart after just a few months. Additional rumors have speculated Apple and BMW could resume talks at a later date, and Apple is also said to be in talks with Magna Steyr. Apple executives have visited Austria to speak with Magna Steyr and there's not yet any indication that those talks have come to an end. Today's report suggests Magna Steyr is the frontrunner to work with Apple on manufacturing the so-called Apple Car.
Apple's car project is focused on creating an electric car, which may or may not include self-driving capabilities. Such a vehicle will likely interface with the iPhone and other Apple services, but beyond the fact that a car is in development, little is known about the project.
Hundreds of employees are working on the car, at secret locations rumored to be located in Sunnyvale, California and Berlin, Germany. Apple is said to be aiming to complete work on the car in 2019 or 2020.
Popular Stories
While the iPhone 17 Pro and iPhone 17 Pro Max are not expected to launch until September, there are already plenty of rumors about the devices.
Below, we recap key changes rumored for the iPhone 17 Pro models as of March 2025:
Aluminum frame: iPhone 17 Pro models are rumored to have an aluminum frame, whereas the iPhone 15 Pro and iPhone 16 Pro models have a titanium frame, and the iPhone ...
Apple regularly refreshes the MacBook Pro models, and a new version that uses M5 series chips is in the works. Apple just finished refreshing most of the Mac lineup with M4 chips, and now it's time for the M5. Rumors suggest that we could see the first M5 MacBook Pro models this fall.
Design
There have been no rumors of a design update for the M5 MacBook Pro models that are coming this...
Apple is going all out with promotions for the popular Severance Apple TV+ show today, and as of right now, you'll find a new "Lumon Terminal Pro" listed on Apple's Mac site.
The Lumon Terminal Pro is designed to look similar to the machines that Severance employees like Mark S. and Helly R. use for macrodata refinement. The Terminal features a blue keyboard, a small display with wide...
In the mid-to-late 2000s, Facebook was all about staying connected with friends and family. However, as the social media platform added new features and grew over time, that core experience began to get drowned out.
That changes starting now, according to Meta, which today introduced a new feature that will "bring back the joy" of classic Facebook.
Specifically, Meta has redesigned the...
Apple is expected to release iOS 18.4 to the general public as soon as next week, following more than a month of beta testing.
Apple's website says some iOS 18.4 features will be released in "early April," so the update should be out as early as Tuesday, April 1.
Apple this week seeded the iOS 18.4 Release Candidate, which is typically the final beta version, barring the discovery of any...
Update 7:25 pm: Based on comments from our forums, it appears the original Weibo post may have been mistranslated and "8K" actually refers to the high price of the device rather than 8K video recording capabilities. The iPhone 16 Pro currently starts at 7,999 yuan in China.
Our original article follows below.
Apple's forthcoming iPhone 17 Pro models are capable of shooting 8K video, up...
With the second release candidate of iOS 18.4 that Apple seeded out today, the company finally provided us with release notes that give a full rundown on what to expect.
There's an Apple Vision Pro app, new Apple Intelligence features for notifications and additional language support, plus an Apple News Food feature for Apple News+ subscribers, and several updates that should improve the...
The upcoming iOS 18.4 update for the iPhone adds an Ambient Music feature to Control Center. Below, we take a closer look at how it works.
iOS 18.4 is currently in beta, so the Ambient Music feature is not widely available yet. The update will likely be released to the general public next week.
To use the feature on iOS 18.4, open Control Center and tap on the plus sign in the top-left...
Last week, we covered a report claiming that Apple's book-style foldable iPhone (or "iPhone Fold," as we are provisionally calling it here) will use liquid metal hinges to improve durability and help minimize screen creasing. Today, a Chinese leaker provided more details on the properties of this hinge material that help to clarify why Apple chose it for its first foldable device.
According...
