Apple Working With BYD To Develop Apple Car Batteries

A new report has shed light on Apple’s partnership with BYD to develop batteries for the Apple Car project, which ultimately fell through before the project was canceled.

Bloomberg reports that in 2017, Apple and BYD reached an agreement to create batteries using lithium iron phosphate cells (LFP), which would have increased the car’s autonomy and provided a safer alternative to typical electric vehicle batteries.

BYD has reportedly approached Apple with an early version of its ‘Blade’ battery when the latter was looking for battery options. According to the report, Apple stood impressed by the tech and proceeded to partner up with BYD. It is important to know that the Blade battery is one of the USPs of BYD vehicles.

That said, the partnership with Apple would have BYD develop a battery that was designed and manufactured exclusively for Apple. Engineers specializing in advanced battery packs and heat management were to work on the project with BYD set to provide manufacturing know-how and further advancements for LFP batteries.

However, the report tells us that Apple backed out looking for systems from other companies despite having worked with BYD for years.

The Apple Car, or Project Titan as it was called internally, was never publicly acknowledged by Apple, but reports tell us that the project had costed over $10 billion before it was dumped altogether. According to Mark Gurman though, some team members of the Apple Car are now involved in a personal home robotics project.