Apple in talks with BMW to use BMW i3 as basis for its own electric car

7/26/2015 Afnan Ali Awan , Apple , Apple Car , BMW 0 Comments

German business magazine Manager reports, that Apple last year approached BMW about its own electric car project. According to the report Tim Cook and other senior Apple executives during "autumn 2014" took a visit of the i3 assembly plant in Leipzig, Germany to talk about the possibility of using the i3 as the basis for its own electric car.

The i3 is a pretty good electric car that reaches about 80 miles on a single charge and has an optional petrol-based range extender which can add a few gallons worth of range to the vehicle for longer trips.  But it is by no means a game changer like Tesla’s Model S which goes from 0-60 in as little as 2.8 seconds, has a range of up to 300 miles and seats up to 7 people. Tesla also has a global network of Superchargers that can recharge their cars in as little as 20 minutes for free.

It is clear that Apple would have to do some extra work to turn i3 into a game changing machine. Bloomberg claims Apple hopes to have its electric car ready for mass production by 2020.

The report says that Apple has been in talks with BMW since autumn 2014 but still hasn’t yet come to an agreement.