South Korean automaker Hyundai has confirmed it is in talks with Apple about designing a new self-driving electric car. A few weeks ago, reports began circulating that Apple was still working on its much-rumored 'iCar' project. Apple would probably want to produce a passenger car with a new kind of groundbreaking battery technology as early as 2024. Hyundai confirmed that the two companies had talked about an electric car and battery technology and as a result, the share price shot up 25%.

An Apple-branded car could be a major challenge for Tesla Inc., the market leader in electric vehicles (EV). It remains unclear who would assemble such a car, but analysts say they expect the company to depend on a manufacturing partner to build vehicles. Hyundai and Apple are already working together on CarPlay, Apple's software to connect iPhones to vehicles from different car manufacturers.

Apple declined to comment. In 2014, Apple assigned more than 1000 employees to the mysterious Project Titan - an effort to design an electric car, designed and manufactured by Apple. In 2017, Apple published a document that seemed to confirm that it is developing an autonomous 'iCar'. Many are skeptical of these claims, not least of all Tesla CEO Elon Musk, who also claimed that Apple had been given the opportunity, and bypassed it, to buy Tesla in 2017.

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