[서울신문] “Apple wants a subcontractor, not a partner”

“Apple wants a subcontractor, not a partner in the production of Apple Cars.”

According to CNN broadcasting on the 8th (local time), there are many speculations surrounding Apple Car’s partners, but the key was whether Apple would share the technology. “If you’re Apple, you’ll definitely want to control everything about its products,” said Damien Flowers, an automotive analyst in Commerzbank, Germany. “Apple wants contracts with subcontractors, not partners.” “Apple is not going to share anything. In the end, it won’t help the company in charge of the production,” he added. “The only thing you can get from Apple is the increased number of vehicles.”

Accordingly, it is pointed out that Apple probably does not care about technology sharing, in which case automakers are in a similar situation to Taiwanese maker Foxconn, which assembles iPhones for Apple. In short, Apple was looking for a subcontractor manufacturer, not an Apple car partner.

After all, Apple’s cooperation in this way is reluctant to large automakers. This is because large automakers such as German Volkswagen prefer to develop their own electric vehicles. “Large car makers don’t want Apple to open their doors,” said Jürgen Pief, an analyst at Metzler Bank in Germany. “The big car makers have the most to lose when working with Apple.”

As the situation is so, Hyundai-Kia Motors Group rejected the possibility of negotiating an Apple car by saying that it is not negotiating with Apple on the development of self-driving cars with Apple. Said. CNN said that a deal that lacks technology sharing and close collaboration on future products could lead to a situation where automakers make Apple cars but don’t get huge rewards.

However, although the negotiations between Apple and the Hyundai-Kia Motors group appear to have ended, some are cautious about the prospect of resuming negotiations. Accordingly, Bloomberg News did not conclude that negotiations between Apple and the Hyundai-Kia Motors Group were broken. The fact that the number of automakers that can mass-produce by consigning Apple cars worldwide is increasing the possibility of resumption of negotiations. Currently, GM, Volkswagen, and Hyundai and Kia Motors are known to have dedicated platforms for producing electric vehicles. In particular, Hyundai-Kia Motors Group recently unveiled E-GMP, a platform exclusively for electric vehicles. Hyundai-Kia Motors Group is actually a company that has the world’s fifth-largest finished car production base and second-largest eco-friendly car sales. It is known that there is a possibility that Apple will select several production car companies.

Senior Reporter Kyu-Hwan Kim [email protected]