A meeting between Apple and BMW wouldn’t have been given much thought a few months ago but the news that Apple is working on its own electric vehicle has turned this meeting into fuel for rampant speculation. However, the automaker has made it clear that this was just a routine meeting with a technology leader and has nothing to do with Apple’s automotive ambitions.
German magazine Auto Motor und Sport cited a “high-ranking BMW manager” as saying that Apple had been impressed by BMW’s carbon-fiber electric cars, and that the two parties were exploring the possibility of cooperating on a passenger vehicle. But a spokesman who spoke to to Reuters stated that BMW is in “regular talks with companies from the IT and telecommunications sector, including Apple, concerning topics like connected vehicles. “Developing or building a car is not a topic of these discussions,” he adds. An Apple representative refused to comment. In its report, Motor und Sport also claimed that a new car might be sold in Apple outlets but serviced at BMW dealerships. One issue in the talks, allegedly, was whether Apple would be allowed to develop an OS for BMW’s i3 electric, something that would require exposing BMW’s proprietary software.
