What manuafactuer is going to partner with Apple? All these car companies are doing their own thing and have been for longer than Apple has. Google is not in the hardware business so no surprise they're not building their own vehicles. But Apple's magic is when hardware, software and services all come together. I can't see them being successful with their software and services bolted on to someone else's hardware. The other thing is Apple is all about the experience. Do they really want a customers experience to be via someone else's product? How did that work out with the ROKR or more recently the LG 5K stand alone monitor? Furthermore what auto company is going to want to give up its dashboard and in car experience to Apple? CarPlay is just projected
What manufacturer is going to want to partner with Apple? The manufacturers that want to lease and/or sell (most likely lease) A LOT of vehicles to Apple.
Apple isn't going to be partnering manufacturers to provide them with self-driving cars to put in their vehicles to sell consumers.
Apple is going to be retrofitting car manufactured by whichever manufacturers they choose to source them from, most likely via a fleet leasing program, retrofit them with the self-driving car technology they are development and then deploy them as a fleet of self-driving vehicles you can summon like you do a Uber or Lyft now.
This is exactly what Google is doing with Waymo and doesn't necessitate developing their own car from scratch like Tesla. It's why Google abandoned developing their own car earlier this year in favor of retrofitting existing minivans with their Waymo self-driving technology.
They don't want to sell you a self-driving car. They want you to summon a self-driving car to take you where you need to go. Then the self-driving car will go pick up someone else and take them to where they need to go.
Then a company like Hertz who will manage the fleet so that the cars return to a location to be cleaned, inspected, services, etc. Why someone like Hertz? Because they already have a network of rental car locations that do this exact same thing with rental cars.
Why would a manufacturer sell Apple cars so they can do this? Money. Why would a company like Hertz partner with Apple to manage their fleet? Money.
This is a much smarter play that would attract much quicker adoption than trying to sell consumers self-driving car that Apple would have to develop from scratch, service, maintain, etc. Look at the popularity of Uber and Lyft (also a Waymo partner). Which is why both Google's Waymo is going this route and it appears Apple is going in this direction too.
