$4.7b Kia investment for 2024 Apple electric car: reports
Pesky rumours about Apple and its hotly-anticipated electric car continue to fly.
The latest internet buzz suggests the notoriously secret Silicone Valley-based tech giant is poised to ink a deal with Korean car making giant Kia to produce an EV as soon as 2024.
Korean news outlet DongA reported Apple would sign a deal with Kia on 17 February with plans to utilise Kia’s US manufacturing facility in Georgia and finally bring to life the Project Titan EV that Apple boss Tim Cook spoke of in 2017.
While no one is quoted in the article, there’s enough detail to suggest someone is leaking some potentially juicy information.
It suggests Apple will invest 4 trillion Korean won (about $4.7 billion) to produce 100,000 Apple cars in 2024 before eventually ramping production up to 400,000 cars annually.
Unsurprisingly there’s no word from Apple or Kia, the latter owned by Hyundai.
Not that it’s stopped the share market getting excited over the potential tie-up, with Kia shares surging 14.5 percent overnight.
It also builds on Apple car rumours that swirled only a few weeks ago.
Off the back of those last reports Hyundai briefly released a statement to news outlet Bloomberg confirming it had engaged in talks with Apple, only to retract any mention of Apple in a quickly corrected statement.
While there are clearly many more details to come out, the potential EV partnership makes some sense.
Even with its phones Apple uses outside companies for manufacturing.
Considering the many billions required to develop and manufacture a car, there’s logic in outsourcing that expensive and technically difficult part of the project to an established car maker.
Plenty of start-up EV companies – Fisker and Rivian, to name a couple – are following a similar path.
It also means Apple can piggyback off the electric car development Kia and its parent Hyundai have already invested billions in.
Between them they have developed a new E-GMP dedicated EV architecture that will be used under at least seven new Kia EVs and a similar number of Hyundais, including the upcoming Hyundai Ioniq 5 that goes on sale in Australia in mid-2021.
Apple would logically utilise the E-GMP platform but change everything else the customer sees and touches, including the body, interior and finishes. It would use its own design and inject plenty of Apple tech – including some level of driving autonomy – as well as the legendary Apple user interactivity.
If the rumours are true we’ll no doubt learn more within weeks.
