More Apple Car Rumors Include Specs, $3.6 Billion Investment In Kia

The Apple Car is very much the hot topic right now with rumors circling that Apple is talking to auto makers to try and get the project off the ground.

One of those is Kia, with a new Bloomberg and DongA Iibo report claiming that a $3.6 billion investment from Apple will see Kia Motors become a manufacturing partner.

Part of the investment will reportedly see Kia build cars for Apple, likely at a U.S. facility in Georgia. There have been rumors of a partnership with Kia (and parent company Hyundai) before, but this potential investment is the most concrete information yet.

Beyond that, new potential specifications have appeared courtesy of Apple analyst Ming-Chi Kuo. According to him, Apple and Hyundai will work together, although it’s likely this will be Kia as we just mentioned. He went on to say that the project will make use of the company’s new electric car platform, known as E-GMP.

The specifications for that make for interesting reading, with 300 miles of range on a full charge and the ability to reach 80% capacity in just 18 minutes. a 60 mile range can be added in just five minutes, apparently.

The Apple Car would compete with Tesla in terms of speed as well, with the platform set to reach 60 mph in just 3.5 seconds. All of these figures are for the “high performance” model, so who knows what other models will offer.

As Kuo has previously said though, we shouldn’t expect to see Apple Cars on the road any time soon. According to the note picked up by 9to5Mac:

We predict that Apple will launch the Apple Car in 2025 at the earliest. The new iPhone takes about 18–24 months from initial specification definition to mass production based on experience. Given the longer development time, higher validation requirements, more complicated supply chain management, and very different sales/after-sales service channels for the automobiles, we believe that Apple, which lacks car building experience, is already on a tight schedule if it wants to launch the Apple Car in 2025.

Still, it looks almost a certainty that an Apple Care will appear sooner or later.

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