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In a piece on car company Magna International, Bloomberg has shared a tidbit about Apple's car development plans, suggesting there are approximately a dozen engineers from Magna working with Apple's car team in Sunnyvale.

Magna employees are said to be helping develop Apple's electric vehicle, reigniting rumors that Apple is working with a third-party to manufacture its vehicle rather than taking on vehicle development costs itself.

applecar.jpg
A completely new vehicle can cost several billion dollars, so leaning on the expertise of an industry veteran is a way of minimizing those costs. Apple has been quick to understand that: about a dozen Magna engineers have been working with the iPhone-maker's team in Sunnyvale to develop a vehicle, according to a person familiar with the arrangement.
This isn't the first time we've heard rumors of some kind of partnership between Apple and Magna. In April, a German news site suggested Apple had a secret car lab in Germany and was planning to have subsidiary Magna Steyr manufacture its cars, and Apple executives also visited Magna Steyr in Austria in February of 2015. Apple also reportedly held talks with Daimler and BMW, but no deal was able to be established due to questions over who would lead the project and who would have ownership over data.

Magna executives and Apple both declined to comment on rumors of a partnership, but in a separate interview on plans to build a new car plant, Magna CEO Donald Walker spoke on partnerships like the one the company has established with BMW. Magna will be producing BMW's 5-Series and is said to be "positioning itself for the prospect that technology companies will eventually join its roster of customers."
"You could easily have enough business outsourced from the existing carmakers to fill up other contract assembly plants, or you could have new entrants that come in and say 'I really want to have something but do I really want to manufacture vehicles?,"' Magna Chief Executive Officer Donald Walker said in an interview at the company's headquarters in Aurora, Ontario.
While Apple has hundreds of employees working on its car project, the company's plans seem to be in flux. Following Bob Mansfield's takeover of the car initiative earlier this year, Apple is said to have laid off dozens of employees as part of a "reboot" that will see focus shifting towards the development of an autonomous vehicle system. Based on these recent rumors, it is no longer clear if a physical Apple-branded car will actually materialize or if the project will result in something more software oriented.

Article Link: Apple's Sunnyvale Car Team Includes a Dozen Magna Engineers
 
How about an update on how many engineers worked on the upcoming MBP? We need more info on the next laptop beast!
 
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Extra Extra ... Apple includes 3.5mm audio jack on their car since it was removed from the iPhone and they had a warehouse of connectors, news at 6 o'clock.
 
I'm worried there won't be much innovation in Apple's car to justify the cost of entering the automotive industry. If they just rely on brand recognition it won't be enough. It'll have to be better than its competitors in a way the first iPhone was ahead of the competition, but I'm not sure they'll quite pull that off.
 
Maybe when they stated that personal computers are like trucks they were being literal...
 
I am still trying to get a new iphone and hoping that we will hear something on the mac line before the end of the year. Can we please delay the car rumors for a bit? :D
 
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So in the year 2021 we may get an Apple car, but we can't have a 17" MacBook Pro... Something is wrong here.
 
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Turns out Apple was trying to manufacture a real-life hype-train all along.

I'm fascinated by the non-physical car concept that MR is pushing lately. Will it be a virtual car, one that exists only in the minds of its owners? Will it perhaps be powered not by electricity, but by Jobs RDF? We need to know more.
 
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"Apple is working with a third-party to manufacture its vehicle rather than taking on vehicle development costs itself. "
Pretty sure Apple is taking on all vehicle development costs. Outsourcing manufacturing does however make sense.

Kind of like with all other Apple products.
 
I wish they spent 25% of that money on Macs instead of a low-profit, high-risk
car business they have no reason to get into...
Is it 4 years since last Mac Pro update?

Apple is indeed guilty of not investing enough in the Mac (it's been less than 3 years since the new Mac Pro shipped...way too long), but there's no reason they can't do a car AND be more aggressive with pushing the Mac forward.

I think Apple has a great opportunity to get into the car business since new tech is pushing two massive changes in that world (electric motors and self-driving systems), and creating a lot of opportunities for re-invention, which is what Apple is good at.

And I'm not sure how the car business is "low-profit". Some segments are, but some are not. There are many pockets of the computer business that are low-profit but Apple has found a very profitable niche in computers and I think it will be the same with cars.
 
Is MacRumors going to continue using this terrible mock-up every time you post something about the Apple Car? Does anyone who reads MacRumors think that the UI for an Apple Car will look anything close to this terrible mock-up?
 
I just hope they do a clean sheet design like Tesla. When GM, Mercedes, et al. design an electric car, it's engineered like an ICE vehicle and then they slap in some batteries and an electric motor.
 
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