Sources: Apple has a Berlin office seeking engineers and partners for a car project; talks with BMW and Daimler ended, Magna believed to be current favorite
Exclusive: BMW, Daimler Reject Cooperation with Apple over “iCar” — German carmakers Daimler and BMW have ended talks with Apple …
Context & Ripple Effects
Apple's car effort had been staffing up quietly since it poached the head of Mercedes-Benz R&D for a secret lab in early 2015. This Handelsblatt report shows the next phase: a dedicated Berlin office hunting engineers and partners, with talks against both BMW and Daimler now over.
The rejections matter because they set the template for everything that followed — Apple's later Volkswagen shuttle-van deal, its near-miss with Hyundai-Kia, and ultimately the project's collapse, dissected years later in Bloomberg's post-mortem. Incumbent carmakers consistently declined to build Apple's car for it.
First-order effects
- BMW and Daimler walk away with their platforms and customer relationships intact, while Apple loses its preferred route to premium German engineering and must fall back on contract manufacturers — with Magna reportedly the current favorite.
- Apple's Berlin office becomes the project's European recruiting and partnering hub, competing directly with the very automakers that just declined to cooperate.
Second-order effects
- Contract manufacturers like Magna gain leverage as the default path for tech companies locked out by brand-name automakers, a role that recurs later when Hyundai-Kia emerges as Apple's closest manufacturing partner.
- By refusing Apple, BMW and Daimler bet that they can defend the software-and-cabin layer themselves — raising the stakes on their own infotainment and autonomy programs against an entrant with Apple's balance sheet.
Third-order effects
- The pattern visible here — every marquee automaker saying no, forcing Apple toward lesser partners and ever-shifting goals — foreshadows the indecision between self-driving ambitions and plain EVs that ultimately killed the project.
- If incumbents keep rejecting platform-level cooperation, tech entrants are pushed toward either full vertical integration or abandonment, structurally limiting which companies can realistically enter carmaking.
The trend: Automakers' repeated refusal to build cars for tech giants keeps pushing those giants toward contract manufacturers — or out of the market entirely.