Although NIO CEO William Li recently admitted the company is only in the research phase, he has confirmed the Chinese automaker is exploring the production of its own phones. By combining technology with humanity, NIO hopes to provide one holistic system for consumers’ daily lives – much like Apple, who NIO’s CEO sees as a potential rival in the future.

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Apple announced a massive new energy storage project in California, and we learned that Tesla will supply its Megapack battery systems for the project.

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Taiwanese electronics manufacturer Foxconn recently revealed it is considering its Wisconsin facility to produce its first electric vehicle. The international electronics juggernaut is strategizing for contract manufacturing of electric vehicles in North America. The company’s president recently told the media that Foxconn is debating between its Wisconsin facility or one of its plants in Mexico to produce EVs for clients.

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Why would companies that manufacture phones, like Sony or Apple, want to get into the electric vehicle business? A better question to ask is, “why wouldn’t they?” While electric vehicles have only just begun to corner a small portion of the automobile market, the upside of prospective growth is tremendous. As vehicles become more reliant on batteries, wiring, and programming in lieu of combustion engines, companies like Sony and Apple feel they have enough knowledge and expertise to take a crack at an electric vehicle of their own.

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Apple has gifted the world with a library of devices that have since become household names, many of which we use daily. There’s the iPhone, iPad, MacBook Pro, and AirPods; but when you think Apple, Car is not the first word to come to mind. That might soon change as recent news has breathed new life into over ten years of rumors surrounding Apple’s attempt at an electric car. Here’s everything we know so far, along with the winding road of a backstory that brought us to this point.

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Elon Musk has confirmed rumors that he tried to sell Tesla to Apple not so long ago, but Apple CEO Tim Cook wouldn’t even take the meeting.

Cook probably regrets it since Musk said that he was willing to let Tesla go for 1/10th of its current value.

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Apple’s WWDC keynote included some good electric vehicle news today, when Apple announced that they would add EV charge routing into their next update to Apple Maps for iOS 14.

This allows drivers to navigate to a destination and automatically be told where to charge and for how long, simplifying the process of taking a road trip with an electric car.

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Apple reportedly offered to buy Tesla at around $240 per share back in 2013.

The bid from six years ago is now being reported as Tesla’s share price has dipped under the price Apple was allegedly willing to pay. expand full story

There has long been a debate about Apple’s secretive automotive project being only about a self-driving system for vehicles rather than a full electric autonomous vehicle. It now looks clear that the latter is the case as Apple hires Tesla’s head of electric powertrains. expand full story

There have been rumors of Tesla and Apple partnering up for years, but now they are intensifying in light of Elon Musk pushing to take Tesla private.

Ross Gerber activist Tesla investor is even now calling for Apple to take a stake in Tesla as part of the ongoing discussions for a take-private deal.

But does it make sense? expand full story

Apple has dramatically increased the number of self driving vehicles it is testing, Bloomberg reports. The company first received approval from state officials last spring to test three self driving cars on the road, but new inquiries to the California DMW show Apple has since expanded its test fleet to 27 vehicles total.

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Rumors that Apple plans to develop and market a self-driving vehicle may have gone cold, but CEO Tim Cook has publicly acknowledged that the company is working on a ‘large project’ around autonomous systems.

The latest detail in the story comes via Jalopnik which reports that Apple may have leased Chrysler’s old proving grounds which could be used for testing autonomous cars.

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Apple signed a deal this week to power to its Sparks, Nevada data center with possibly the cheapest contracted starting price for solar power in the US. The deal was signed with NV Energy, owned by Warren Buffet’s Berkshire Hathaway.

The deal’s start price is 3.099¢/kWh with a 2% a year escalator making it very inexpensive energy.  The size of the solar project is 50MW.

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Earlier this year, Tim Cook called self-driving car technology “incredibly exciting” and said that Apple is focusing heavily on autonomous systems. During Apple’s earnings call today, however, Cook offered some more color on Apple’s investments in autonomy…

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Last year, Apple was rumored to be working on an autonomous all-electric car codenamed ‘Project Titan’. The company later confirmed development work on an autonomous driving platform and CEO Tim Cook even referred to it as “a core technology” for the company, but it showed signs of giving up on developing an actual car.

But now Apple is reportedly working on electric car batteries with China’s biggest battery maker. expand full story

While reports of Apple’s work on electric and self-driving cars have been surfacing for years, CEO Tim Cook has been careful about not confirming or denying any detail.

But he now makes rare comments on Apple’s effort in developing self-driving cars, which he referred to as “a core technology” for the company.  expand full story

After billionaire venture capitalist Marc Andreessen made the case that Tesla is to automakers what Apple was to Nokia circa 2007, now Facebook millionaire turned venture capitalist Chamath Palihapitiya is making a very convincing case about Tesla looking like Apple during the pre-iPhone era. expand full story

Tesla has often been compared to Apple for its disruptive nature, but Marc Andreessen, a billionaire venture capitalist and co-founder of Netscape, is taking the comparison a step further.

Andreessen believes that Tesla could have a similar impact on the auto industry as Apple had on the mobile market in the late 2000s. expand full story

(Also on 9to5mac)

Chris Lattner isn’t the only high profile Apple executive who departed for Tesla over the past month, rather than sticking around to work on Titan. Electrek has learned that Matt Casebolt, a high-profile Senior Director of Design for Apple’s Mac lineup left the company last month for a role at Tesla as Sr. Director Engineering, Closures & Mechanisms. A job meant for a man named Casebolt… expand full story

Today, Chris Lattner announced that he quit Apple after over a decade at the company where he developed the Swift programming language and worked on the Xcode and App store architecture.

Later in the day, Tesla confirmed that Lattner will be joining the automaker as Vice President of Autopilot Software. expand full story

Apple’s car plans have long been kept under wrap by the company itself, but a new regulatory filing shows it publicly address the industry for the time. In a letter to the U.S. National Highway Traffic Safety Administration (NHTSA) uncovered by VentureBeat, Apple urged the government not to restrict testing of self-driving vehicles.

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Jamie Carlson, a veteran firmware engineer and early member of the Tesla Autopilot team, made the headlines last year when he left Tesla to join Apple on ‘Special Projects’ at a time when we were just learning of the scale of the Cupertino company’s ambitions in the auto industry.

Electrek has now learned that Carlson left Apple earlier this month after just over a year at the company. He is staying in the electric vehicle industry by joining NextEV as Senior Director of Advanced Technologies. expand full story

Faraday Future is working on its own maps engine technology for self-driving vehicles and this month hired a top expert from Apple to assist, Electrek has learned.

After reports in June that Apple had hired Sinisa Durekovic, a veteran software engineer that led development of satellite navigation systems used by BMW and others, now we learn that Durekovic this month joined electric vehicle startup Faraday Future.

Durekovic notably joins the team at Faraday Future working on a mapping engine for self-driving vehicles, according to sources. His move to Faraday Future comes after just one year at Apple.

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Earlier this year, McLaren confirmed its development of new hybrid powertrains to be introduced in its vehicle lineup and that it was even considering building an all-electric version of the P1 or P1 GTR. Now McLaren will have a great opportunity to showcase its battery technology as it was announced that the British-based automaker won a contract to supply the battery pack for upcoming seasons of the Formula E championship. expand full story

Lit Motors has been having difficulties finding the funds to bring its self-balancing electric motorcycle, the C-1, to market. CEO Daniel Kim said earlier this year that the company would need about $20 million to bring the vehicle to market and to satisfy the over 1,000 people who reserved what the company calls an ‘auto-balancing electric vehicle’ (AEV).

Now reports are coming out today claiming that the company recently became an acquisition target for important companies, including Apple, BMW, Audi, and a South Korean automaker. expand full story

Update: McLaren has issued a statement in response, rejecting the report and denying any discussions with Apple about a potential investment.

The Financial Times is reporting that Apple is in talks to acquire McLaren, a supercar manufacturer to aids its own automobile efforts for the long-rumored Apple Car. The report says Apple is considering a full takeover acquisition of McLaren with talks spanning several months.

In McLaren, Apple may be interested in expertise and talent relating to car materials and “on-board computer systems”. The FT says an acquisition would be valued around a $1.5 billion dollars; McLaren currently records yearly losses.

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With some high profile exceptions, it is generally accepted that Apple ships some of the most reliable high-tech products out there – at least if you believe the customer satisfaction reports. Things are far murkier for Tesla in that department, especially at its relatively early age.

Last year, Consumer Reports pulled their recommendation of the Tesla Model S citing “worse-than-average” reliability issues.

It became one of Tesla’s top priority over the last year and the automaker has made some significant improvements as evidenced by the declining replacement rates for major components, thanks in part to a growing reliability and test team.

Now Electrek has learned that Tesla has found a new leader for the team by hiring Apple’s Director of Reliability Engineering.

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As we previously reported, Faraday Future is serious about developing its own self-driving and advanced driver assist systems (ADAS) as evidenced by the company hiring Bosch’s engineering director and leading automated driving expert, Jan Becker, to lead its own autonomous driving effort, as well as several other experts in the field.

Those experts are in demand since almost most major tech companies are building teams to develop their own autonomous driving technology.

Now Electrek has learned that Faraday Future hired away from Apple one of those experts in demand, self-driving and computer vision expert Bart Nabbe. expand full story

Tesla recently made a key hire in digital retail and user experience. Electrek has learned that the automaker hired Chester Chipperfield, former Burberry Vice President of Digital and Interactive Design, earlier this month. Chipperfield, who more recently worked at Apple, confirmed the move on his LinkedIn profile.

He is taking over the role of ‘Global Creative Director’ at Tesla after leaving ‘Special Projects’, which is where Apple’s Titan car project (and other ventures) lives, at the Cupertino company earlier this month. expand full story

Rich Heley was one of Tesla’s biggest hire and quickly rose in the executive ranks of the automaker. We broke the news of his hire back in 2013 when he was still leading Alloy Engineering at Apple. Now we learn that only 3 years later, the engineer, who until recently was Vice President of Product Technology at Tesla, is now leaving for Facebook. expand full story

Yesterday, 9to5Mac.com reported that Apple Inc has founded a new, fully owned, subsidiary known as Apple Energy and that this entity had applied to the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission (FERC regulates power companies) to be able to sell electricity and other power grid services to anyone that is not a public utility. Does this mean that you can now buy clean electricity made on the roof of the Apple Spaceship? Unless you are a large corporate electricity user within 10-30 miles, probably not. However if we step back and take a broader view, something interesting is happening – the likes of Apple, Google, Ikea and others including even Walmart are showing us a small piece of the future of much smarter electricity grid owned by many instead of the few.

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After our attempt at explaining the 500% markup on Apple’s new solar array yesterday, further information has now confirmed that Apple’s new stores – starting in the brand new San Francisco location – will be utilizing a new walkable solar glass floor technology for electricity generation. According to a document on Onyx Solar’s website, Apple “has decided to commit itself to OnyxSolar’s designer photvoltaic technology for its new stores. The first of these is located in the heart of San Francisco, the company’s home town.”

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Apple’s newest piece of retail art was revealed to shoppers in Union Square of San Francisco this month. As is Apple’s modus operandi these days they’re making sure to use clean energy to power the building. From the Apple press release, “The store is powered by 100 percent renewable energy, including power produced by photovoltaic panels integrated into the building’s roof.” BuildZoom – sees a 50kW Solar Electric system for an astounding $800,000! What exactly did Apple build?

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If Apple is going to produce an electric vehicle like Tesla, then naturally Apple will want to provide customers with a way to recharge away from home without relying on infrastructure from third parties. Reuters now reports that Apple is showing interest in such charging stations as it’s talking to existing companies and hiring engineers with experience in building them.

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Reuters this evening reports that Apple is investing $1 billion in Chinese ride-hailing service Didi Chuxing. In a statement, CEO Tim Cook explained that the investment will give Apple a chance to learn more about certain segments of the Chinese market, while it will also deliver a strong return.

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The automotive industry is a capital-intensive industry. Fiat Chrysler CEO Sergio Marchionne knows it and that’s why he is open to work with Google or Apple:

“Google can buy every automaker out of petty cash. And Apple — they made a net profit of $24 billion in one quarter. This is nonsense. What are we defending? What?”

In a not yet released 2-hour interview with Automobile Mag‘s Georg Kache, Marchionne discusses the recent rumors of a FCA partnership with Google for self-driving cars and how the automaker wants to position itself in an industry disrupted by the likes of Apple, Google, Tesla and Uber.  expand full story

It’s been long rumored that Apple has been in negotiations with BMW and Daimler for its electric car project, with Apple perhaps considering using parts from either of the carmakers. Now, German news outlet Handelsblatt reports that talks between Apple, Daimler, and BMW have ended, citing “industry sources.”

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Tesla CEO Elon Musk has an affectionate nickname for Apple: The ‘Tesla Graveyard‘. “They have hired people we’ve fired,” Musk said. “We always jokingly call Apple the ‘Tesla Graveyard.’ If you don’t make it at Tesla, you go work at Apple”. He made the comment after being asked about the so-called “poaching war” between the automaker and the consumer electronic giant following the start of Apple’s electric car program: ‘Project Titan‘.

We follow who’s coming and who’s going at Tesla pretty closely here at Electrek and it’s clear that the two companies share a lot of former colleagues. Tesla’s senior engineering staff and leadership are full of former Apple directors and VPs, while the Cupertino-based company hired quite a few former Tesla engineers, but rarely any senior leadership… until now.

Electrek, in collaboration with our sister-site 9to5Mac, has exclusively discovered and confirmed respectively that Apple hired former Tesla Vice President of Vehicle Engineering and former Aston Martin Chief Engineer, Chris Porritt, to work on “special projects”, and we know that “special projects” is where Apple’s Titan car project lives. expand full story

Tesla news not directly related to the Model 3 is hard to come by these days, but Electrek learned that Tesla recently hired Apple’s OS Security Manager for a similar role at the automaker. While safety in general has long been an important part of the automotive industry, IT security is just starting to become a factor as connected cars are increasingly becoming a hacking risk.

Consequently, Tesla is building an impressive IT security team led by Chris Evans, not Captain America but the former head of Google’s Project Zero, a team of hackers employed full-time by Google to find zero-day vulnerabilities. expand full story

Tesla last night posted 11 “howto” videos showing how to use the giant capacitive touch display in the middle of the center console as well as the smartphone app. Veteran Model S owners will find them mostly repetitive but there might be some nuggets of wisdom inside. However, new and prospective owners need to see all of them to understand how the car works.  See all embedded below: expand full story

According to a report from Silicon Valley Business Journal, Apple has recently leased a 96,000-square-foot industrial property in Sunnyvale, California. The property was originally home to a Pepsi bottling plant, but Apple now occupies the entire space. It has widely been reported in the past that Apple is testing its Project Titan electric car initiative in Sunnyvale, with the company reportedly operating a shell company called Sixty Eight Research out of the city.

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If there’s indeed a poaching chess game going on between Tesla and Apple, it would appear the automaker is winning in acquiring quality pieces. Just a few week after we exclusively reported that Tesla hired legendary chip architect Jim Keller as new “Vice-President of Autopilot Hardware Engineering”, we now learn that Keller is joined by former DEC Alpha, PA Semi and until earlier this year Apple Director Peter Bannon.

Before Keller left Apple for AMD in 2012, he and Bannon were leading Apple’s processor development since the Cupertino-based company bought their chip making firm PA Semi in 2008. The duo lead the development of Apple’s A4 and A5 processors, which powered most of the company’s mobile devices from 2010 to 2012. Keller then left to develop the Zen architecture at AMD, but Bannon stuck around and developed several other chips for Apple until leaving for Tesla to join Keller last week. expand full story