Apple Car could have had Blade batteries developed with China's BYD

The Apple Car project has been canceled since at least February 2024, but details about the decade-long $10 billion expense keep dripping out. While Apple considered many battery manufacturers, one potential partnership has been revealed.

According to a report from Bloomberg, Chinese automotive company BYD worked with Apple on a custom battery destined for Apple Car. However, even after years of working with BYD, Apple decided to abandon the partnership in search of other options.

The story of Project Titan is a long one filled with delays, leadership changes, and dramatic shifts in priorities between autonomous driving and other features. Apple became interested in BYD when its engineers showed off the Blade to Apple executives.

Apple's Alexander Hitzinger, a former Volkswagen and Porsche executive, oversaw product design from 2016 to 2019. Battery engineer Mujeeb Ijaz, who worked at Apple from 2014 to 2020, was also involved in the project alongside 50 battery engineers.

The Blade battery system proved to be a success for BYD, making it the biggest EV business in China. BYD even briefly surpassed Tesla as the top seller of EVs globally.

Apple may have given up on the Apple Car, but it learned a lot about robotics, artificial intelligence, batteries, and other systems through the billions spent on research. A smart home speaker with a display and robotic arm may be the first product introduced after Project Titan dissolved and left behind an Apple Robotics division.