Apple’s been stealing top talent from automakers over the past few months to help it work on the company’s electric car project, but according to a new rumor, Apple wanted to steal the entire body of another luxury automaker’s car to get its project on the road.
Apple was interested in using BMW’s i3 carbon fiber body as the basis for its own electric vehicle, reports Manager Magazin. CEO Tim Cook supposedly met with senior managers from the i3 production team in Leipzig during a fall visit to BMW to discuss the possibility, however, negotiations to use the BMW i3 body have broken off.
While the BMW i3 hasn’t been as revolutionary as Tesla’s electric cars, the German-made car’s carbon-fiber-reinforced plastic body shell has made it the most energy efficient vehicle sold in the U.S. BMW is already selling a higher percentage of plug-in vehicles in the U.S. than any other car maker though, so it’s not hard to see the appeal it’s had for Apple.
It’s unclear whether negotiations between Apple and BMW are still ongoing. The German magazine reports that negotiations were broken off last fall, but the two sides agreed to keep talking and to check in with each other’s views from time to time.
Apple’s electric car project supposedly got the greenlight from Tim Cook last year and the company already has hundreds of employees working on the project.
Via: GreenCarReports
Buster Hein is a freelance writer who lives in Phoenix, Arizona. Twitter: @bst3r.
8 responses to “Apple wanted to use BMW i3 as basis for electric car project”
Well, I suppose after taking a good long look at the i3, Jony and Tim decided that Apple should go their own way.
Right. i3 is an overpriced $45k POS EV. The only one Apple should talk to for EV attempt is Tesla whose battery technology is at least 5 years ahead anyone.
Tesla’s batteries are nothing special. They are made of off-the-shelf Panasonic cells that are also used to power laptops. If anything GM is the leader in EV battery technology. They contracted with LG Chem to design a custom cell for the Volt and upcoming plug-in models.
True but Apple is more into Tesla based on the coolness of toys. BMW i3 is hideous from the YouTube videos. I sure didn’t like the speedometer with a 1 inch display and 3 inch bezel to put all the instrument icons on it.
I certainly agree with you on the i3 being hideous. Tesla does seem to be a better fit for Apple.
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Do you know what “stealing” means..?
I’m waiting for a quad-core i7, the i3 is a budget cpu… ;-)