Kia Motors shares surged as much as 14.5% after a local media report that Apple will invest 4 trillion won ($3.6 billion) as part of a collaboration with the South Korean carmaker on making electric vehicles.
Shinhye Kang and Kyunghee Park for Bloomberg News:
The iPhone maker plans to set up production with Kia and build Apple cars at the automaker’s facility in Georgia, U.S., Dong-A Ilbo reported, without citing anyone. The companies may sign a deal on Feb. 17 and aim to introduce Apple cars in 2024, according to the newspaper, which said they have an initial target to produce 100,000 autos a year.
The technology giant’s car-development work is still at an early stage, and the company will take at least half a decade to launch an autonomous EV, people with knowledge of the efforts have told Bloomberg News.
Last month, Hyundai Motor Co., an affiliate of Kia, backed away from a statement that said it was in talks with Apple, revising it to say only it had been contacted by potential partners for the development of autonomous EVs. The news pushed stock in Hyundai up almost 20% on the day. Kia shares are now at their highest since 1997.
MacDailyNews Take: Things are moving right along on the Project Titan front. Just yesterday, it was reported that Apple has hired long-standing head of chassis development at Porsche, Dr. Manfred Harrer, for the construction of their own vehicle.
Back in 2007, Apple partnered with another Korean company, Samsung, to manufacture many of the parts on the original iPhone . . . that worked out pretty well for Samsung (as Nokia and Blackberry can attest)
It worked well for Samsung until they tried to cheat on Apple. Apple retaliated by investing in a little known company (TSMC) and transforming them into a company which not only could replace Samsung as the main chip supplier for Apple, but also into a world leading chip fab.
Kia will know that there is a massive opportunity if they choose to be an honest partner with Apple and they will also know that if they step out of line in a similar way to Samsung, Apple will react ruthlessly.
Apple has the muscle to totally transform industries and to either take companies with them, or leave them in the dust.personally I would be entirely happy with a car built by Kia to Apple’s standards. People who buy a Porsche don’t seem to be too concerned that Skoda cars are made by the same group.
Impossible, but Apple is willing to put up with cheap….
The choice of Kia is a major disappointment. How many people want to spend $100,000 on a car made by Kia?
How can anyone buy a $1000 phone made by Hon Hai Precision Industry Co., Ltd.?
Apple will provide the engineering and technology, Kia will provide the production capacity (factory and labour).
Kia will provide the production capacity (factory and labour) AND THE LOW RELIABILITY AND LOW QUALITY.
Kia have a very good reliability record, the cars are well made and designed (employed a senior Audi stylist). No I wouldn’t spend $100k on a Kia, but Apple won’t be a Kia.
The Apple Kookwagen will be $40-60k, a direct competitor to Tesla. It’s not even worth Apple’s time and effort to sell a niche, luxury car, but maybe way down the line we’ll get a Pro Kook with slimmer bezels and Face ID.
Of course, history shows good companies slip and compromise…so, you are saying, by partnering with Kia, Apple has moved into a compromise phase?
Where’s the substance for this conclusion?
What car manufacturer would you have preferred?
You know, so we can belittle your choice with ignorant statements!
Oh, and did anyone see the article today in Esquire rating the Genesis G80 as “Best Luxury Car?” Matches Lexus and Infinity feature for feature at equal quality and a lower price. The G70 has been rated “Best Sports Sedan.” Genesis won last year’s J.D. Power award for reliability. Genesis, like Kia, is a Hyundai subsidiary.
Motorola teamed with Apple to make the original Motorola ROKR “iTunes” smartphone. Later, Apple destroyed Motorola’s cell phone when it introduced the iPhone in 2007.
Apple teamed with Intel to introduce its new line of Intel Macs in 2005. Recently, Apple has turned on Intel and is now one of its key competitors with its new line of M1 chips. In this move Apple also turned on its long time supplier of modems, Qualcomm as its chip division is now finalizing its own 5g modems to replace Qualcomm.
These were all smart moves for Apple as they allowed it to own the core technologies of its products. KIA should remember the lesson from these companies about what happens to companies that partner with Apple.
Of course, Apple used to be a good corporation that valued its customers. That was before Tim Cook and his evil decision to kill Parler because it offered a communication platform for ideas Tim Cook doesn’t like. Ideas like the Constitution, freedom of speech, the idea that elections should be fair and honest and decided by legal votes. Apple doesn’t like these ideas. Apple prefers the ideas of its biggest customer – the Chinese Communist Party. Tim is OK with showing respect for certain President’s. Like President Xi, the communist ruler of totalitarian China.
The Companies you referred to are guilty of not maintaining their technological capabilities. Intel in particular has gotten fat and lazy, and Qualcomm isn’t too far behind. Qualcomm has been a licensing nightmare and will be replaced by Apple. Foxcon and TSMC have been good partners and will continue to benefit.
Stop the losing…..
Of course Apple had to kill Parler. How could Tim possibly show his face at the Oscars, amongst the sea of rich, white, therefore racist, elitists Liberals who will not allow you to have an opposing view, at least if you expect to return next year. Do you think Tim can sit comfortably in his penguin tux during the presentation of some show or actor from Apple TV+ that might have a chance at winning one of those “My Precious” golden idols, that MDN and others can report to flaming reviews of the Mac Cult?!? Not an integral election vote chance in America! Or, if you prefer, not a snowball’s chance in Hell.
Or he was Gay and smart in the backward South, and knew had to get out…..
Wow! References to Mac Kooks and the Mac Cult within a single thread. Sounds like the comment section at the old PC World. Apple must be rattling its haters again.
Yes, HYPOCRITE Cook does NOT have the chops. Bean counter shill for corporate America, is Apple paying their “FAIR SHARE” of taxes? Let’s ask the Biden administration…
Yes Kent, excellent historical observations. Cook is a 1st Amendment EMBARSMENT! Fighting for gay pride rights while trampling the rights of conservatives expressing their views on Parler. Tim Cook is a PARTISAN HYPOCRISY HYPOCRITE GRANDE! Time to go Tim, you are a divider and not a uniter…
I would agree with you completely if I knew of anybody beaten and tied to a barbed wire fence to die of exposure for being conservative. 28 transgender individuals were murdered in 2020; how many victims were murdered for being Republican?
Free speech means that Nazis can say whatever they like. It does not mean that the local synagogue is required to help them spread their message. Parler can rent server space (or build its own) and do whatever it likes. Apple isn’t required to help them by distributing their app.
As Botty was famous for saying, “Meh”…
Kent: Though the truth of your message be bitter; it is a medicine Americans should ponder and come to appreciate the validity therein. Tim has to work with difficult foreign powers and their arcane and sometimes un-American rules or lose business in those places. The theory (like IBM and others used to urge when continuing to do business with apartheid South Africa) that working within the foreign restrictions will eventually aid in their adoption of ever more American style freedoms. I’m not too confident that can work with China’s PRC but we can keep trying and keep hoping, for the sake of their suffering millions of citizens.
Interesting as Americans take down statues and rename buildings.
chazz15;
Those are NOT Americans. They are idiot Communists.
No worries…it’s been proposed (NYT article) the administration in-state a “truth-czar,” so voices from on high can contextualize truth…including why the historical names, schools, buildings, streets and statues are taken down and, or renamed.
Here in America, we are interested in free speech…unless it doesn’t fit the narrative of a select few.
It’s been a good run.
Remember back to the time when some in the Middle East were happy to come out with their chants, tire fires, throwing rocks at the police and burning American flags after stomping on them?
I don’t really recall seeing that fomenting foreign hatred headlining the news over the past few years. It’s good to know there are some Americans willing to do the jobs some in the Middle East don’t do!
Maybe Tim Cook should stop trashing Americans while he does the bidding of the CCP.
I guess the Chinese Communist Party wants Apple to contract for an auto assembly plant in Georgia. Of course! That might explain the recent election results: all the allegedly Republican officials in Georgia are actually Chinese embedded agents with eye surgery.
Cook will trash USA values and ignore human rights violations in China simply to keep his job generating obscene Apple profits. He is a hypocrite lapdog shill for Big Business corporate America and his SJW preaching’s are HOLLOW and laughable. How does he sleep well at night — he’s a liberal.
Nuff said…
This idiotic idea failed miserably, its been 50 years and China is more powerful and totalitarian than ever, made possible by a direct transfer of trillions of dollars from America to the Red Chinese. No US company has to work with China, it makes things harder and our corrupt, Chinese-serving politicians and their degenerate sons will make it horrifically worse, but “losing business” is a infinitesimal price to pay not to lose your soul like the fake president has.
There is an amazing amount of off topic discussion here…
When Apple behaves like a Nazi thug running a daily book burning operation and uses its power to squash whatever ideas it doesn’t like (and can’t defeat with arguments) it should be pilloried every time its name comes up. Apple is now a poison on the American political system. Along with its evil tag team partner monopolists Facebook and Twitter and the equally evil Amazon. All now deserve to be given the fate they gave to Parler.
Do you agree that Fox Business had the right to cancel Lou Dobbs?
What does Apple think it is? A Savior by solving all problems? It has two key good characteristics that Jesus had: Good will from the Proletariat and good product.
It has two bad key characteristics that Jesus had: Challenging big gub’mnt’s supremacy in the area of privacy and willingness to thwart official governance in the area of personal security.
Government crucified Jesus. Who will be the Judas within Apple?
Jesus got too influential outside of official governance. He did His own thing; Apple I suppose must prevent this by doing bad stuff: Paying off legislators, the Pentagon, and sharing what it knows and its methods with the National Security Military Spy Apparatus which has tentacles thruought US society.
c,
I don’t believe we have any buildings or statues dedicated to idiot Communists. The items in dispute were erected to honor dishonorable men. They broke solemn oaths in order to wage war against the United States in an attempt to preserve human slavery. I think we need to remember them (“Never Forget” is almost the Israeli national motto), but honoring them is something else entirely.
None of which has anything to do with Apple Cars, or freedom of speech, for that matter.
They are not dishonorable men. The perfect human hasn’t been born yet. You and everyone else reaches down and casts stones while living in glass houses. These men described an ideal, an ideal that was way way way ahead of it’s time, there was no freedom anywhere on Earth, slaves everywhere. BTW, there are slaves in the US and every country today. Don’t think sex traffickers are slave owners? You actually think so many of these young women are doing this of their own free will??? Think again. Instead of looking back 200 years, why aren’t these folks looking in every city to take down the sex traffickers? Cause they are actually cowards. Facing off against a statue or a school sign takes a lot of courage.
So, the men who took a solemn oath to support and defend the Constitution of the United States of America when they joined the US Military, then violated their oath by waging war against the United States (the exact constitutional definition of treason) to defend a system that had been enslaving human beings and subjecting them to physical and sexual violence for over 230 years should be honored with statues, schools, and street names? Not in a million years. They may have “described an ideal,” but they betrayed that ideal in the most direct way possible.
Of course there is modern slavery and human trafficking, but we don’t honor the crime kingpins by building statues to them on our courthouse squares. We throw them in prison. We do not tell men and women whose mothers or daughters were raped that they are being overly sensitive when the government builds monuments to the rapists, or to the men who tolerated the rapes.
No, but we have been trampling on the feelings of Black men and women for 155 years by building monuments to their foremothers’ rapists. The only way that is even conceivable is if a lot of Americans decided a long time ago that Black lives do not matter, and too many Americans haven’t wised up yet.
200 years ago. Focus on today. 200 years ago doesn’t matter today. Attack and put energy into dealing with how slavery has morphed in 2021 instead of plantations of 200 years ago.
If it doesn’t matter, why are there so many people insistent that the statues to “Our Confederate Heroes” remain? I don’t see a lot of energy being devoted to eliminating modern slavery by those who wish to honor men who were not merely slave holders, but traitors who waged war against the United States to preserve slavery.
http://junkmalls.com/2021/05/21/5-reasons-to-buy-galaxy-next-generation/
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