Apple talks with Mercedes detailed in new Apple Car report
As you may be familiar with by now, Apple has officially canceled its project to build an electric car. The project never saw the light of day and wasn’t even confirmed by Apple, but the company had been working on its own car since 2014. Following reports that Apple had approached Tesla for a partnership, we now know that the company has also talked to Mercedes-Benz about building an Apple Car together.
Apple tried to build an Apple Car with Mercedes-Benz
As reported by Bloomberg on Wednesday, Apple tried to negotiate a partnership with Mercedes-Benz to build an Apple Car. The report says that talks “progressed further” for months and both companies had been actively working on an electric car project together. However, while Mercedes would build the Apple Car, it also wanted to sell its own cars using Apple’s self-driving platform.
Apple eventually withdrew from the partnership as the company’s executives were confident that Apple could build a car on their own after all the early work with Mercedes. The company also reportedly discussed with Ford the possibility of the car manufacturer selling an Apple Car under its Lincoln brand, but the talks “didn’t progress past an early meeting.”
In the past, Apple had some discussions with Elon Musk about buying Tesla to build its car. However, Apple CEO Tim Cook reportedly pulled the plug on the deal during early negotiations. At some point, Apple executives met with Musk again to discuss other ways of collaborating, such as buying batteries from Tesla.
Interestingly, Bloomberg says that Apple came close to a deal to buy luxury automaker McLaren. At the time, Jony Ive was still working for the company and would get a new design studio in London to work on the project. The deal didn’t go ahead either.
The idea of an Apple Car came from Steve Jobs
Although the Titan project (the codename for the Apple Car) emerged in 2014, the idea came from Apple co-founder Steve Jobs years ago. “In the wake of the 2008 financial crisis, with American car companies on the brink of failure, the Apple chief executive even floated the idea of acquiring General Motors Co. for pennies on the dollar,” the report says.
Tony Fadell, considered the father of the iPod, confirmed that he and Jobs talked about “what would be this generation’s new Volkswagen Beetle.” However, as the company focused on making the iPhone a hit, Jobs decided it wasn’t time to start a car project.
An ambitious project
Under Cook’s direction, the Titan project was quite ambitious. One of the prototypes looked like a white minivan with “rounded sides, an all-glass roof, sliding doors and whitewall tires.” The vehicle would have a giant screen, a powerful audio system, and reclining seats that made the cabin look like a club.
The Apple Car was first designed to have a Level 5 autonomous driving system, meaning that it would drive itself entirely using its onboard computer with no steering wheel or pedals. The only manual controls would be a “video-game-style controller or iPhone app” which would serve as a backup.
Doug Field, head of the project, warned executives about the challenges of building an autonomous car and suggested scaling back the goals to Level 3, which requires a human driver to take control in some situations. However, Apple executives still wanted a Level 5 car.
Frustrations over the car’s project
The project hadn’t made much progress by 2016 and the board of directors was already questioning the viability of the Apple Car. Dan Riccio then convinced Bob Mansfield, known for his role in Apple’s hardware team, to join the car team. Mansfield focused on working on the autonomous driving system rather than the car itself.
Some executives believed that Apple could license its technologies to other car manufacturers. Mansfield and Cook agreed to build a self-driving shuttle in partnership with Volkswagen to be used by Apple employees on its campus. However, the project was seen as a distraction and was also shut down.
The report says that many Apple executives have been frustrated by Cook’s indecision over the direction of the Titan project. In the meantime, as the project was going nowhere, engineers hired to work on the car were leaving Apple to work for other companies. From 2016 to 2018, Apple had already laid off 120 people from the car project.
Sources told Bloomberg that Apple has estimated the production cost of its car at around $120,000, far above the target of $85,000.
The end of the Apple Car
Apple has made a lot of changes to the leadership of the Titan project since then, but none of them have resulted in anything promising. At one point, Apple put a fleet of Lexus SUVs customized with its own self-driving technology on the streets for testing purposes. The plan was to expand these tests to more cities by 2024. The company wanted to sell self-driving as a subscription service.
Last year, before giving up on the project for good, the designers and engineers decided to experiment with a Level 2 autonomous car – the same as the Tesla Autopilot. But that would make the Apple Car look like any other electric car already available on the market without much of a difference.
Kevin Lynch is said to have convinced Apple’s leadership that building a fully autonomous car would take at least another decade. Earlier this year, Cook was already considering shutting down the project as key engineers and executives were already joining other companies.
On February 26, around 2,000 Apple employees received an email about a meeting the following day. Lynch and Williams then confirmed that the Titan project was being shut down without further explanation. Some of the engineers have been relocated to Apple’s AI and software division.
The failed car project cost Apple around $1 billion a year. Be sure to read the full article with even more details about the Apple Car project.
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HAWESVILLE, KY – May 10
Plant workers drive along an aluminum potline at Century Aluminum Company’s Hawesville plant in Hawesville, Ky. on Wednesday, May 10, 2017. (Photo by Luke Sharrett /For The Washington Post via Getty Images)
Aluminum
The Washington Post | The Washington Post | Getty Images
Sweeping tariffs on imported aluminum imposed by U.S. President Donald Trump are succeeding in reshaping global trade flows and inflating costs for American consumers, but are falling short of their primary goal: to revive domestic aluminum production.
Instead, rising costs, particularly skyrocketing electricity prices in the U.S. relative to global competitors, are leading to smelter closures rather than restarts.
The impact of aluminum tariffs at 25% is starkly visible in the physical aluminum market. While benchmark aluminum prices on the London Metal Exchange provide a global reference, the actual cost of acquiring the metal involves regional delivery premiums.
This premium now largely reflects the tariff cost itself.
In stark contrast, European premiums were noted by JPMorgan analysts as being over 30% lower year-to-date, creating a significant divergence driven directly by U.S. trade policy.
This cost will ultimately be borne by downstream users, according to Trond Olaf Christophersen, the chief financial officer of Norway-based Hydro, one of the world’s largest aluminum producers. The company was formerly known as Norsk Hydro.
“It’s very likely that this will end up as higher prices for U.S. consumers,” Christophersen told CNBC, noting the tariff cost is a “pass-through.” Shares of Hydro have collapsed by around 17% since tariffs were imposed.
The downstream impact of the tariffs is already being felt by Thule Group, a Hydro customer that makes cargo boxes fitted atop cars. The company said it’ll raise prices by about 10% even though it manufactures the majority of the goods sold in the U.S locally, as prices of raw materials, such as steel and aluminum, have shot up.
But while tariffs are effectively leading to prices rise in the U.S., they haven’t spurred a revival in domestic smelting, the energy-intensive process of producing primary aluminum.
The primary barrier remains the lack of access to competitively priced, long-term power, according to the industry.
“Energy costs are a significant factor in the overall production cost of a smelter,” said Ami Shivkar, principal analyst of aluminum markets at analytics firm Wood Mackenzie. “High energy costs plague the US aluminium industry, forcing cutbacks and closures.”
“Canadian, Norwegian, and Middle Eastern aluminium smelters typically secure long-term energy contracts or operate captive power generation facilities. US smelter capacity, however, largely relies on short-term power contracts, placing it at a disadvantage,” Shivkar added, noting that energy costs for U.S. aluminum smelters were about $550 per tonne compared to $290 per tonne for Canadian smelters.
Recent events involving major U.S. producers underscore this power vulnerability.
In March 2023, Alcoa Corp announced the permanent closure of its 279,000 metric ton Intalco smelter, which had been idle since 2020. Alcoa said that the facility “cannot be competitive for the long-term,” partly because it “lacks access to competitively priced power.”
Similarly, in June 2022, Century Aluminum, the largest U.S. primary aluminum producer, was forced to temporarily idle its massive Hawesville, Kentucky smelter – North America’s largest producer of military-grade aluminum – citing a “direct result of skyrocketing energy costs.”
Century stated the power cost required to run the facility had “more than tripled the historical average in a very short period,” necessitating a curtailment expected to last nine to twelve months until prices normalized.
The industry has also not had a respite as demand for electricity from non-industrial sources has risen in recent years.
Hydro’s Christophersen pointed to the artificial intelligence boom and the proliferation of data centers as new competitors for power. He suggested that new energy production capacity in the U.S., from nuclear, wind or solar, is being rapidly consumed by the tech sector.
“The tech sector, they have a much higher ability to pay than the aluminium industry,” he said, noting the high double-digit margins of the tech sector compared to the often low single-digit margins at aluminum producers. Hydro reported an 8.3% profit margin in the first quarter of 2025, an increase from the 3.5% it reported for the previous quarter, according to Factset data.
“Our view, and for us to build a smelter [in the U.S.], we would need cheap power. We don’t see the possibility in the current market to get that,” the CFO added. “The lack of competitive power is the reason why we don’t think that would be interesting for us.”
While failing to ignite domestic primary production, the tariffs are undeniably causing what Christophersen termed a “reshuffling of trade flows.”
When U.S. market access becomes more costly or restricted, metal flows to other destinations.
Christophersen described a brief period when exceptionally high U.S. tariffs on Canadian aluminum — 25% additional tariffs on top of the aluminum-specific tariffs — made exporting to Europe temporarily more attractive for Canadian producers. Consequently, more European metals would have made their way into the U.S. market to make up for the demand gap vacated by Canadian aluminum.
The price impact has even extended to domestic scrap metal prices, which have adjusted upwards in line with the tariff-inflated Midwest premium.
Hydro, also the world’s largest aluminum extruder, utilizes both domestic scrap and imported Canadian primary metal in its U.S. operations. The company makes products such as window frames and facades in the country through extrusion, which is the process of pushing aluminum through a die to create a specific shape.
“We are buying U.S. scrap [aluminium]. A local raw material. But still, the scrap prices now include, indirectly, the tariff cost,” Christophersen explained. “We pay the tariff cost in reality, because the scrap price adjusts to the Midwest premium.”
“We are paying the tariff cost, but we quickly pass it on, so it’s exactly the same [for us],” he added.
RBC Capital Markets analysts confirmed this pass-through mechanism for Hydro’s extrusions business, saying “typically higher LME prices and premiums will be passed onto the customer.”
This pass-through has occurred amid broader market headwinds, particularly downstream among Hydro’s customers.
RBC highlighted the “weak spot remains the extrusion divisions” in Hydro’s recent results and noted a guidance downgrade, reflecting sluggish demand in sectors like building and construction.
— CNBC’s Greg Kennedy contributed reporting.
Danish energy giant Ørsted has canceled plans for the Hornsea 4 offshore wind farm, dealing a major blow to the UK’s renewable energy ambitions.
Hornsea 4, at a massive 2.4 gigawatts (GW), would have become one of the largest offshore wind farms in the world, generating enough clean electricity to power over 1 million UK homes. But Ørsted announced that it’s abandoning the project “in its current form.”
“The adverse macroeconomic developments, continued supply chain challenges, and increased execution, market, and operational risks have eroded the value creation,” said Rasmus Errboe, group president and CEO of Ørsted.
Reuters reported that Ørsted’s cancellation of Hornsea 4 would result in a projected loss of up to 5.5 billion Danish crowns ($837.85 million) in breakaway fees and asset write-downs. The company’s market value has declined by 80% since its peak in 2021.
The cancellation highlights significant challenges currently facing offshore wind development in Europe, particularly in the UK. The combination of higher material costs, inflation, and global financial instability has made large-scale renewable projects increasingly difficult to finance and complete.
Ørsted’s decision is a significant setback to the UK’s energy transition goals. The UK currently has around 15 GW of offshore wind, and Hornsea 4’s size would have provided almost 7% of the additional capacity needed for the UK’s 50 GW by 2030 target, according to The Times. Losing this immense project off the Yorkshire coast could hamper the UK’s pace of reducing dependency on fossil fuels, especially amid volatile global energy markets.
The UK government reiterated its commitment to renewable energy, promising to work closely with industry leaders to overcome financial and logistical hurdles. Energy Secretary Ed Miliband told reporters in Norway that the UK is “still committed to working with Orsted to seek to make Hornsea 4 happen by 2030.”
Ørsted says it remains committed to its other UK-based projects, including the Hornsea 3 wind farm, which is expected to generate around 2.9 GW once completed at the end of 2027. Despite the challenges, the company emphasized its ongoing commitment to the British renewable market, pointing to the critical need for policy support and economic stability to ensure future developments.
Yet, the cancellation of Hornsea 4 demonstrates that even flagship renewable projects are vulnerable in the face of economic pressures and global uncertainties, which have been heightened under the Trump administration in the US.
Read more: The world’s single-largest wind farm gets the green light
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The Tesla Roadster appears to be quietly disappearing after years of delay. is it ever going to be made?
I may have jinxed it with Betteridge’s Law of Headlines, which suggests any headline ending in a question mark can be answered with “no.”
The prototype for the next-generation Tesla Roadster was first unveiled in 2017, and it was supposed to come into production in 2020, but it has been delayed every year since then.
It was supposed to get 620 miles (1,000 km) of range and accelerate from 0 to 60 mph in 1.9 seconds.
It has become a sort of running joke, and there are doubts that it will ever come to market despite Tesla’s promise of dozens of free new Roadsters to Tesla owners who participated in its referral program years ago.
Tesla uses the promise of free Roadsters to help generate billions of dollars worth of sales, which Tesla owners delivered, but the automaker never delivered on its part of the agreement.
Furthermore, many people placed deposits ranging from $50,000 to $250,000 to reserve the vehicle, which was supposed to hit the market 5 years ago.
The official timelines from Tesla are pretty useless at this point since they haven’t stuck to any of them, but the latest official one dates back to July 2024 when CEO Elon Musk said this:
“With respect to Roadster, we’ve completed most of the engineering. And I think there’s still some upgrades we want to make to it, but we expect to be in production with Roadster next year. It will be something special.”
He said that Tesla had completed “most of the engineering”, but he initially said the engineering would be done in 2021 and that was already 3 years after the prototype was unveiled and a year after it was supposed to be in production:
Musk commented on the Roadster again in October 2024, but he didn’t reiterate the 2025 timeline. Instead, he called the new Roadster “the cherry on the icing on the cake.”
Tesla’s leadership has been virtually silent about the new Roadster since. Two Tesla executives even had to be reminded about the Roadster by Jay Leno after they “forgot” about it when listing upcoming new Tesla vehicles with tri-motor powertrain.
There was one small update about the Roadster in Tesla’s financial results last month.
The automaker has a table of all its vehicle production, and the Roadster was updated from “in development” to “design development” in the table:
It’s not clear if that’s progress or Tesla is just rephrasing it. Either way, it is not “construction”, which makes it unlikely that the Roadster is going into production this year.
If ever…
Electrek’s Take
It looks like Tesla owes about 80 Tesla Roadsters for free to Tesla owners who referred purchases, and it owes significant discounts on hundreds of units.
It’s hard for me to believe that Tesla is not delivering the new Roadster because the vehicle program would start about $100 million in the red, but at this point, I have no idea. It very well might be the reason.
However, I think it’s more likely that Tesla is just terrible at bringing multiple vehicle programs to market simultaneously. Case in point: it launched a single new vehicle in the last five years.
At this point, I think it’s more likely that the Roadster will never happen. It will join other Tesla products like the Cybertruck Range Extender.
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