It is generally accepted that in February of this year, Apple abandoned further efforts to develop its own electric car, although it had undertaken them over the previous ten years and spent about $10 billion on them. According to Bloomberg, cooperation between Apple and BYD helped the latter create more advanced traction batteries for electric vehicles.
Image source: BYD
Let us remind you that the Chinese BYD is the world’s second largest manufacturer of traction batteries for electric vehicles and the second largest manufacturer of electric vehicles themselves. A year ago, she even managed to displace the American company Tesla from its position of leader, but this year the latter bounced back and returned to first place. According to Bloomberg, Apple and BYD’s collaboration to create better traction batteries began in 2017, and it focused on optimizing battery design and cell packaging technology. At least Apple shared some ideas with BYD in this area, including optimizing the traction battery cooling system.
There were no particularly revolutionary ideas expressed regarding the chemical composition of batteries, and therefore BYD built its strategy around LFP cells combining lithium with iron phosphate. The alliance of companies set itself the task of increasing the range of an electric vehicle without recharging. BYD representatives commented sparingly on the Bloomberg publication, saying that all ideas and technologies implemented in the Blade battery family belong to it, and third-party companies did not exert their influence. At the same time, initially, according to Bloomberg, Apple expected to use technologies jointly developed with BYD in the production of traction batteries for a branded electric vehicle. Subsequently, the companies diverged, and Apple at the later stages focused on other suppliers of traction batteries, but in the end completely abandoned the idea of producing electric vehicles.
According to Bloomberg, Apple was able to use certain developments achieved within the framework of the project to create an electric car when creating the Vision Pro augmented reality headset and a neural coprocessor for its other devices, since the initiative initially implied the use of autopilot technologies. It is possible that the accumulated experience will help Apple create household robots in the future.