Hyundai Motor Co. shares gained almost 20%, the biggest daily gain ever sighted in the leading South Korean carmaker stocker since 1988, on reports that the world’s most valuable company, Apple Inc., was in partnership talks with the automaker giant on developing self-driving electric vehicles.
Internal discussion on such partnership according to private sources was complete at Hyundai, awaiting the approval of the chairman, it said. Hyundai and Apple both declined to comment on such a report.
A recent Bloomberg report disclosed Apple has begun early development work on an electric vehicle, but the project was still years away from resulting in any product.
- “We believe Apple is in the early stages of talks and looking at a handful of strategic partnerships and collaborations globally with existing automakers on the [electric vehicle] front, with Hyundai on the radar,” Wedbush Analyst, Dan Ives, wrote in a research note published shortly after reports about the Hyundai discussions first broke.
What this means
Recall Nairametrics some weeks back disclosed Apple may soon announce a manufacturing partner for the project and there might be plans to reduce efforts to self-driving software with a traditional carmaker.
- Apple’s self-driving car project is called “Project Titan” and has experienced a couple of gains and losses since it launched in 2014. Apple sacked 190 staff working on the project in 2019, even though it designed its own car from scratch.
- Insiders revealed that Apple now has plans to build a customer-friendly passenger car to compete directly with Tesla.
