Apple may have been a lot closer to getting into the electric vehicle market sooner than originally anticipated. Rumors have already been confirmed that Hyundai and Apple had engaged in discussions about a partnership regarding an electric vehicle, but it now appears that Hyundai wasn’t the only vehicle manufacturer that Apple had been in talks with.
Apple is, of course, the technology giant behind such modern marvels as the iPod, iPhone, MacBook and more. For years, it’s been suggested that Apple could eventually be making a move into the electric car sector, though they’ve always been nothing more than rumors. Recently, the conversations have started up once more, with the suggestions being that Apple is more serious about making an iCar than ever been.
First reported by The Verge, Apple allegedly met with the electric vehicle startup company Canoo early in 2020. Neither company confirmed the report, but The Verge cites three sources familiar with the discussion for the information. Apparently, Apple was potentially interested in either investing in Canoo – which coincidentally went public this year after being founded back in 2017 – or buying the company outright.
Apple Intrigued By Canoo’s Technology
The idea that Apple was interested in Canoo is quite intriguing and says a lot about the young startup company. Or, rather, it says a lot about the tech the company was working on. According to the report, Apple saw potential in Canoo’s scalable electric vehicle platform, which offers improved flexibility when it comes to the design of a car’s cabin, thanks to its ability to incorporate a larger portion of the car’s electronics. Apple also apparently keyed in on the value of Canoo’s steer-by-wire technology, another flexibility-focused feature that hasn’t made its way through the mainstream electric vehicle industry just yet.
The move would seem to be straight out of Apple’s vast, expansive playbook. While the company has created plenty of original products over the years, it has also been able to identify successful products with good technology behind them, buy out the company and bring those products/technologies in under the Apple umbrella. It did so with the Beats by Dre brand of speakers, headphones and earbuds, and has continued to innovate that line of products, rather than squash them in favor of its own Apple-branded audio devices. The Beats takeover has worked well enough so far that Apple could be thinking about trying a similar move once more. This time, though, it would be on a far bigger scale and in an industry that’s currently completely foreign to Apple.
