Apple held talks with Nissan about autonomous cars - report

Apple and Nissan held talks about working together on Apple's top-secret self-driving car project but discussions have ended, the Financial Times reported.

Discussions in the past few months were brief and did not get to senior management levels before disagreements over branding brought them to an end, the FT reported. Apple wanted Nissan to make Apple-branded cars, a move that would have made Nissan a hardware supplier, the paper said.

Apple has been exploring its carmaking options for years and has previously sounded out BMW and Korea's Hyundai. Its search underlines the difficulty Apple has encountered in entering the competitive and capital-draining passenger car market.

Nissan Chief Executive said on 10 February that he was open to working with technology groups when asked if he had been approached by Apple. Carmakers are wary about becoming the "Foxconn of the auto industry" in a tie-up with Apple, referring to the iPhone assembler, the FT said.

Nissan's chief operating officer, Ashwani Gupta, said his company was not in talks with Apple and that there was "no way" Nissan would change the way it develops and makes cars to suit a technology company.

"We have to check who has got the best competency to catch what the customer is thinking," he said. "For this we can do the partnership but that is to adapt their services to our product, not vice versa."