Apple, Volkswagen reach autonomous van deal
Apple once had grand aspirations to build its own electric self-driving car and lead the next generation of transportation. Over time, the ambitions ran into the reality.
So it curtailed its vision, first by focusing on software for self-driving cars and then by working solely on an autonomous shuttle for its employees. Now, it has settled for an auto partner that was not its first choice.
For several years, Apple sought partnerships with luxury carmakers BMW and MercedesBenz to develop an allelectric self-driving vehicle, according to five people familiar with the negotiations who asked not to be identified because they were not authorized to discuss the matter publicly. But onagain, off-again talks with those companies ended after each rebuffed Apple’s requirements to hand over control of the data and design, some of the people said.
Instead, Apple has signed a deal with Volkswagen to turn some of the carmaker’s new T6 Transporter vans into Apple’s self-driving shuttles for employees — a project that is behind schedule and consuming nearly all of the Apple car team’s attention, said three people familiar with the project.
Apple’s deal with Volkswagen and the failure of its talks with other automakers reflect the continuing travails and diminished scope of the Cupertino company’s 4-year-old car program.
The project has suffered from repeated changes in direction that have hurt morale and led to hundreds of departures from its peak of more than 1,000 members two years ago, five former Apple employees said. They added that the project lacked a clear plan beyond the vans, including any near-term commercial goals. each other, which some employees tested by sitting inside, similar to a design Mercedes advertised in 2015.
As recently as 2016, Apple planned to spend hundreds of millions of dollars to build research and development labs around its Cupertino campus, including a machine shop and labs for electric car batteries, according to interviews and documents about the plans viewed by the New York Times.
Late last year, Apple found a partner in Volkswagen. Buffeted by a scandal around cheating emissions tests — and lagging rivals in development of self-driving cars — Volkswagen jumped at the chance, former Apple employees said.
Now, at a lab near Turin, Italy, run by a Volkswagen subsidiary called Italdesign, the companies plan to remake Volkswagen’s T6 vans as electric self-driving shuttles, these people said.