Not long ago, the news that Apple and South Korean car companies jointly built cars attracted great attention in the market.
At about 9:30 South Korean time this morning, Hyundai officially stated that it was discussing the cooperation with Apple for self-driving cars.
This morning, Hyundai Motor and Kia announced that they had not negotiated with Apple with the United States on the development of self-driving cars, and said that they were considering project cooperation with many overseas enterprises in the field of self-driving, but nothing has been finalized.
This is also the first time Hyundai has responded clearly since the news of “Apple, Hyundai and Kia cooperated to build cars” last month.
It is worth noting that Hyundai mentioned that it was only the part of “self-driving cars” that had not negotiated with Apple, and did not rule out the possibility that the two sides would resume discussing electric vehicle cooperation in the future.
In fact, South Korea’s capital market has been full of expectations since the news of Hyundai, Kia and Apple’s cooperation in car manufacturing. As of yesterday, Hyundai and Kia’s shares rose by more than 20% and 60% in a month.
This morning, as soon as Hyundai and Kia made their statements, the share prices of both companies fell sharply. As of 12:00 Beijing time, Hyundai’s intraday share price fell 4.61% and Kia fell by more than 12%.
The reason why the two sides have not established cooperation at present, the South Korean auto industry has a view that Hyundai may worry about becoming an Apple’s OEM in disguise.
Judging from the current cases of international OEM cooperation for electric vehicles, the profit margin obtained by OEM enterprises is only about 1%-2%, which not only cannot guarantee the yield, but also may lead to a decline in the brand value of Hyundai Motors.
More importantly, it is still unknown whether Apple has the ability to mass-produce Apple cars, thus creating a cost-reducing effect.
In the layout of a new generation of cars such as electric vehicles, Hyundai is also striving to maintain a certain degree of originality.
In December last year, Hyundai launched a dedicated production platform for pure electric vehicles.
According to the previous interpretation of South Korean media, Apple’s chassis may be based on this platform.
For Hyundai Motor, if it cooperates with Apple, the biggest driving force is to connect electric vehicles with smart cars, Internet of Vehicles and other concepts to help Hyundai develop the self-driving electric vehicle business.
Since electric and intelligent are the general trends of automobile development in the future, the South Korean automobile industry also believes that the possibility of Hyundai and Apple will cooperate and discuss in other fields in the future cannot be ruled out.
