Apple Car Production Again Linked to Kia Motor's US Plant in Georgia

[sirozha]

What about the Apple Car being far better in quality terms than any Tesla? (apart from the Tesla's made in China)
There are no 'panel gaps' on an iPhone and people buying an Apple car will expect the same.

There will be a Kia and a Hyundai with no panel gaps, gorgeous exterior and interior, 300+ miles of battery range, 800 V of battery charging capability, 20-80% charge in sub 20 minutes, and 0-60 in sub-5 seconds. Will you pay 40-45% more for Apple Car? I won't. Neither will I be bying a Tesla after having rejected three deliveries of the Model Y in 2020 due to multiple defects.

 

[Mac Prodigy]

What car company does not have recalls?

Here are Toyotas with (potentially) cracked engines: https://www.caranddriver.com/news/a30997060/2020-toyota-recall-camry-avalon-rav4-engine-cracks/

Here are recalled recent model Prius cars with fire hazard risks: https://abc13.com/automotive/toyota-recalls-more-than-1-million-vehicles-for-fire-hazard/4151535/ (and the Prius is generally considered the most reliable car in the world -- I have one and it's had no issues in 7+ years [only needed oil changes and new tires so far]).

Toyota was also recently fined $180 million for false emissions reports including this gem:


So now we have a company (Toyota) charged by the DOJ for hiding issues that should have led to recalls. I also can cherry pick data all day.

I'm not talking about other car companies, I'm talking about Hyundai. Focus.

 

[sirozha]

I'm not talking about other car companies, I'm talking about Hyundai. Focus.

Does Apple not have recalls? If memory serves, right now they have a free replacement for peeling screens on MacBook Pros. They also had free butterfly keyboard replacement not so long ago (probably still do). There are features that worked fine with Intel-based Macs but do not work with M1-based Macs (like 3rd-party monitors not waking up properly or not working at all) months after M1-based Macs were released with no ETR available whatsoever. There are green lines showing up on iPhone screens, iPhones turning off while still having half of battery charge available, etc. I could probably compile a book of all the defects and screwups that Apple has had in its products over the years.

 

[jlc1978]

So after reading the fine print Hyundai is trying to distance itself from Apple. Eventually Kia will too or that deal will fall through too - leaving apl to go it alone - as they should

That would be a colossal mistake and not in keeping with Apple's production model. Car production is very capital intensive; building a company from scratch would require a large chunk of Apple's money and take a while to get up and running; not to mention ongoing operational costs. Then you have to hire people all across the spectrum to staff it. In addition, if the car is a flop, they are stuck with the factory which is not easily converted to something else.

Contract manufacturing allows them to avoid the investment and push a lot of risk on to the contract manufacturer.

I was thinking someone like VW, Audi or BMW would be a better fit for Apple. But KIA? ok...

Maybe, but none of them probably want to dilute their brand by becoming an OEM.

I don't know what you guys are expecting from Apple Car. What exactly do you think it should be?

1. Can it be faster than a comparable Tesla? I don't think so unless Apple has figured out how to bend the laws of physics.

Tesla is not the fastest on the market; especially after a few runs deplete the battery.

So, what's the problem with Hyundai/Kia being the OEM for Apple Car? One word: PRESTIGE. The Apple Car built by Hyundai/Kia could be twice as good as Tesla, but it will be seen as uncool in the eyes of Apple fanboys. And that is the biggest problem with this rumor.

Fanboys and girls are not the target market; even if it is focused on Apple owners at first most do not care where the product is built as long as it works.

The point is that Apple is NOT a Kia class product. Kia is down market, known for their unreliability, poor build quality, and low price. Apple is the opposite (except sometimes unreliable until the x.x.1 version).

Car and Driver begs to differ, having several KIAs on this year's 10 best including the Telluride.

 

[AndrewR23]

...

what was your post? it said you quoted me but I never commented on this article or even macrumors in a month lol

 

[bodonnell202]

The problem with Hyundai/Kia is the price is a few thousand away from a Toyota, which won't break down all the time.

Relevant for gas powered vehicles only (and even then Hyundai and Kia have come a long way in the last decade where their reputation of being unreliable is no longer deserved), almost guaranteed that Apple is partnering with Hyundai/Kia because they already have a good electric vehicle platform that with some Apple input can be great.

 

[Mac Prodigy]

Does Apple not have recalls? If memory serves, right now they have a free replacement for peeling screens on MacBook Pros. They also had free butterfly keyboard replacement not so long ago (probably still do). There are features that worked fine with Intel-based Macs but do not work with M1-based Macs (like 3rd-party monitors not waking up properly or not working at all) months after M1-based Macs were released with no ETR available whatsoever. There are green lines showing up on iPhone screens, iPhones turning off while still having half of battery charge available, etc. I could probably compile a book of all the defects and screwups that Apple has had in its products over the years.

Not talking about Apple.

 

[jlc1978]

Not talking about Apple.

This is an Apple baord. Everything is about Apple...

 

[Mrjetsondc]

You're about 6 years behind the times (and even then are exaggerating unless you're talking about 15 - 20 year old cars). I'm not knocking Toyota (I own a Toyota and a Kia) but Kia and Hyundai have made huge improvements in reliability and quality over the past 10 years and certainly give Toyota a run for the money.

Buddy, Kia is a notoriously cheap car that serves a low class customer base. This pairing would be like Louis Vuitton joining with Kohl’s to sell its handbags. Apple will never join with Kia. Hyundai is possible. Toyota for sure. Never Kia.

 

[craigmak]

Tim Cook went to college at Auburn which is about 30 miles away from the plant. True or not it makes sense with his connection to the area. I would think the Hyundai plant just across the border in Alabama would work too.

 

[mattopotamus]

I am very interested in this development, but it is sure to be a six figure car, which is a very hard sell. I am honestly shocked Apple wants to dive into the car industry. They should just focus on selling the software to other manufactures.

 

[jlc1978]

I agree 100%. You can put a Rolls Royce emblem on a Kia, and it will still be a Kia. Silk hat on a pig is all. No sense trying to reason with poor people though, they will never understand.

Even Rolls Royce uses some BMW parts. I'm guessing the only reason Apple didn't go with Magma/Steyer is capacity issues.

 

[MartiNZ]

This is very cool. Kia is in a great place in the market, with some great tech in their cars - the new Sorento with full-on side cameras and self-parking, great stuff, and this is timed nicely for their new "Shift" project that means to see them move into more hybrid and electric stuff. Got a new Seltos just after it entered the market a year ago, and if they came out with some plug-in hybrid options, it would be very tempting. For mine, that is the future for the moment, until we can figure out what to do with dying batteries. Good times ... potentially.

 

[iGüey]

They will probably name the auto lineup something like "Car", "Car Pro", and "Car Mini".

Please, let me correct you if you don’t mind.

It would be:
iCar
iCar Pro
iCar Pro Max
iCar mini
🤣

 

[gtg465x]

Yeah, they've really stepped up their game recently 🤣

Hyundai and Kia recall 423,000 cars for increased engine fire risk

Big recall aims to cure potential for oil leaks and fire in Sorento, Soul, Sonata, and more.

www.thecarconnection.com

Hyundai quality issues hammer quarterly profit report

South Korea's Hyundai Motor Co said on Monday it swung to a net loss for July-September, missing market estimates by a wide margin, as costs related to engine quality issues and recalls smashed what would otherwise have been strong earnings. Hyundai, the world's fifth-biggest automaker when...

www.autoblog.com

Hyundai recalls 471K more SUVs, tells owners to park outside

Hyundai is adding about 471,000 SUVs in the U.S. to a September recall for an electrical short in a computer that could cause fires

abcnews.go.com

"Hyundai recalls 471K more SUVs, tells owners to park outside". They are telling owners to park their vehicles outside But please, tell us more. This shows you how much Hyundai paid JD Power to get on their list.

Neuropsychguy's comment that you replied to said you're 6 years behind the times, implying that Kias from the past 5 years have much better reliability, but the article you linked to is about a recall of 2012-2015 Kia models, so I don't see how it refutes neuropsychguy's point.

 

[gtg465x]

Buddy, Kia is a notoriously cheap car that serves a low class customer base. This pairing would be like Louis Vuitton joining with Kohl’s to sell its handbags. Apple will never join with Kia. Hyundai is possible. Toyota for sure. Never Kia.

Kia and Hyundai are the same company, and you said yourself that Hyundai is possible, so I guess Kia is too.

 

[MacGekko]

Gas cars are being banned from future new vehicle sales in some areas. If they are being banned from operating in entire areas, we are talking about areas in the size of several city blocks at most, and only in control freak run areas.

Internal combustion vehicles will be around in the majority for a long time. The laws that you are thinking of have no effect on ownership existing ICE a vehicles or resale of them.

I don’t disagree that EV is the future. But the reality of the intended EV mandates have to be viewed realistically.

I'm surprised by many of the posts in this thread and while I don't disagree with your premise, it seems like we are on the cusp of a hinge point, the point at which EV's are priced the same or maybe even lower than gas vehicles.

How is Apple not acting exactly like Apple in their EV car pursuit?

They see a market that has 2.6 percent of global sales and 1 percent of car stock worldwide, at least that was from the start of 2020, with smartphone's getting to the point of maxing out vis a vis the percentage of people around the world that own a smartphone, Apple sees an industry that they could dominate or get a nice percentage chunk of sales, innovate and advance the technology, we could go on and on.

We all know the unbelievable way in which Apple perfected the smartphone, what if they do it again with the EV, the early news reports stated that Apple had battery technology that would be superior to the ones out there now, how true, we don't know, if indeed their batteries are better, by how much, who knows, but what if their batteries double the range of a Tesla, what if they recharge at half the time of a Tesla, what if they are lighter and cheaper to make, would you bet against them?

The car company they end up with is less important to me than the battery technology, couple that with the self driving software and LIDAR tech, if they improve on those fronts there is a chance that they could be the leader in this industry.

I'm interested in EV cars for a number of reasons but the one thing I am looking forward to is to be done with the maintenance and money spent on an aging gas car.

Oh and one more thing, the Biden administration should be very favorable to the EV market, will President Biden actually build out 500,000 charging stations across America, I don't know but I could see him championing Schumer's 2019 plan to offer rebates for trading in your gas car to buy an electric car, more tax credits in general, tax subsidies for electric car manufacturing plants in America.

Could Apple fall flat on their faces in this pursuit, of course, it could be a hinge point in their stock price in three to five years based on this endeavor.

Either way I am hoping they are successful and I hope they shake the industry up with technology that stuns the EV world.

 

[MacGekko]

Hyundai probably makes the best balance of quality and innovation among the mainstream car brands.

Toyota makes non-innovative reliable vehicles. GM makes garbage. VM makes cool but unreliable cars.

But the Chevy Bolt seems to get much praise, I don't know if winning Motor Trend's Car of the year means anything, but in my anecdotal research, owners of the car give it high marks.

 

[Mac Prodigy]

Neuropsychguy's comment that you replied to said you're 6 years behind the times, implying that Kias from the past 5 years have much better reliability, but the article you linked to is about a recall of 2012-2015 Kia models, so I don't see how it refutes neuropsychguy's point.

Try re-reading the articles, before you reply with such vigor as if you know what you are talking about. Or read them for the first time, which is most likely the case.

Here are a couple of short sentences that you might be able to comprehend:

"The latest recall covers certain model-year 2016 through 2018, and additional 2020 through 2021, Hyundai Tucson SUVs."

""We sincerely apologize to our shareholders and investors for having repeated quality cost issues over three quarters since 2018," an executive told an earnings briefing."

From here on out, I will no longer spoon feed you. You will have to do the work on your own.

 

[gtg465x]

Try re-reading the articles, before you reply with such vigor as if you know what you are talking about. Or read them for the first time, which is most likely the case.

Here are a couple of short sentences that you might be able to comprehend:

"The latest recall covers certain model-year 2016 through 2018, and additional 2020 through 2021, Hyundai Tucson SUVs."

""We sincerely apologize to our shareholders and investors for having repeated quality cost issues over three quarters since 2018," an executive told an earnings briefing."

From here on out, I will no longer spoon feed you. You will have to do the work on your own.

Those quotes aren't from your first link, which is the only one I looked at. After I saw that the first one was completely irrelevant to the comment to which you were replying, I decided not to click on your other links.

But here, since you're a big fan of doing the work on your own, why don't you look up Consumer Reports reliability survey results from the past 5 years, and then you'll see that Kia and Hyundai have been fairly reliable. Are they the most reliable brands? No, but they're usually in the top 10, and up there with the likes of Honda, Subaru, and Nissan. Ultimately, all car manufacturers, even Toyota, have recalls, so citing recalls isn't necessarily proof that a brand is unreliable.

 

[gbc204]

Out of all the car brands Apple could of teamed up with, they chose Kia?? Granted Hyundai/Kia have really stepped their quality the last 5yrs. Guess they’re not trying to make any real performance vehicle then.

Everything bad I've heard about Kia/Hyundai/Genesis in the last 10 years has almost 100% been about dealers, not the cars themselves. I've bought two Hyundais and have indeed had some pretty bad experiences with the dealers, but the cars are nice and, unlike Apple stuff, pretty affordable and you get great value. As far as performance, the Kia Stinger gets great reviews too.
Although, if this goes to Kia instead of under the Hyundai/Genesis umbrella, I could see a scenario where Apple just buys the Kia part of the company, given how much they want to keep everything in-house. Positioning it under a Hyunda subsidiary brand might make it more attractive for Hyundai to sell it off and focus more on the upscale Genesis line.

 

[hot-gril]

Korean Car hate comments incoming....

In any seriousness. Kia/Hyundai/Genesis makes great cars now. If this is true, this would be great for both them and Apple. I like the idea of it potentially being built (at least somewhat) in the US!

Seriously though, go to your local Kia dealership and test out a Kia Stinger with the 3.3L V6. Your mind will be blown!

They make wannabe luxury cars "inspired" by the high-end European brands but with questionable quality. They make those FWD-default "SUV"s. They made a clone of the Mercedes sedans called the Genesis, exterior design copied so hard that people confuse them on sight, then ran ads saying "has the same kind of paint as a car 3X its price." Kia/Hyundai is a knockoff producer. I guess they gave up on trying to copy Honda and went for pseudo-luxury cars instead. Not a cool company (or rather, mostly-conjoined set of two companies) for Apple to be working with.

If you want an economy car, a Honda or Toyota is a smarter choice. No need to be pretend-pretentious. And the Kia Stinger isn't all that fast in modern terms, in fact it's comparable in acceleration to the 2006 Maserati QP I bought used (which I never considered very fast either), plus it only comes in automatic. Might as well get a Tesla, which would be faster. Speaking of Maserati, that's where Kia found the rear-end design for the Stinger, the post-2010 QPs.

 

[hot-gril]

Buddy, Kia is a notoriously cheap car that serves a low class customer base. This pairing would be like Louis Vuitton joining with Kohl’s to sell its handbags. Apple will never join with Kia. Hyundai is possible. Toyota for sure. Never Kia.

Apple isn't like Louis Vuitton. Their products aren't exclusively expensive. Somehow the average person in the US has a newer iPhone than me, and I'm not below average income. Every poverty-level family I know, each member has an iPhone 8 or later.

 

[gnasher729]

The point is that Apple is NOT a Kia class product. Kia is down market, known for their unreliability, poor build quality, and low price. Apple is the opposite (except sometimes unreliable until the x.x.1 version).

I don't know what Kia you looked at, but there is a reason why they give you 7 years / 100,000 miles warranty. And that's not because their cars fall apart quick, but quite the opposite.

 

[AutomaticApple]

...

Did you quote me?