The Apple Car was a $10 billion, decade-long project that never materialized, and a new detailed report by Bloomberg's Mark Gurman documents some of the things Apple did to make that car a reality.

The history of Apple and Tesla is well known at this point. For years there were rumors that Apple was interested in acquiring Tesla, with talks breaking down in the early stages. Both Tesla and Apple have denied it, but one persistent rumor is that talks broke down because Elon Musk wanted to be Apple's CEO.

However, Garman claims that Apple executives met with Tesla after the talks ended poorly and discussed other kinds of collaboration. One such option was for Apple to purchase batteries from Tesla, and Elon Musk reportedly tried to reopen acquisition talks when Tesla was struggling to produce the Model 3.

Most interesting to me is a possible partnership with Mercedes. Apparently, the two companies have reached an arrangement whereby Mercedes will manufacture Apple cars. However, Mercedes also had plans to sell its own cars with Apple's self-driving platform and software interface. Given that both companies are luxury brands and the biggest players in their markets, it may have been a perfect match.

Unfortunately, however, Apple executives are said to have pulled out. Apparently they were so confident in their early work that they believed Apple could manufacture the car on its own. We heard this years later in the aftermath of reports that Apple backed out of negotiations with Kia Motors and its parent company, Hyundai Motor Company. Clearly, it could not have gone it alone.

Garman claims that Apple also met with Ford to jointly develop the Apple Lincoln, but no progress was made beyond the initial talks. Other discussions were held over the years with BMW and EV startup Canoo, but reportedly went nowhere.

If the Mercedes tie-up didn't seem crazy enough, Garman writes that the closest Apple came to a solid deal was when it almost bought McLaren. McLaren is famous for its F1 and racing prowess, but it sells thousands of hand-built cars each year. The cheapest models cost hundreds of thousands of dollars, while others run into the millions.

Again, this is pretty much perfect for a company like Apple.

Garman also claims that had the deal gone through, former Apple designer Jony Ive would have had a new design studio in London to work on the Apple car. And if the deal had not fallen through, perhaps he would have stayed at Apple instead of leaving to help set up a new design firm.

According to Garman, the big pivot in the Apple Car project came around 2016. At that point, Apple changed direction to focus more on the self-driving software in the car rather than the car. This is because it is actually incredibly difficult to create a car that can replace a 100% human driver.

Engineers hired for Apple projects became disillusioned and actively looked for other work. This is never a good sign.

Earlier this year, we heard news that Apple was lowering its expectations and initially working on a level 2 autonomous car. This means that while the car can control steering and acceleration autonomously, the driver must be alert and ready to take over driving at a moment's notice.

Given that Level 2 autonomous driving is common in modern cars, including those at relatively low price points, this is not the kind of conclusion that required a decade of development. In short, Apple's grandiose ambitions, overconfidence, and relentless striving for perfectionism in its new products seem to have meant that the Apple Car was never going to happen.

This means that the closest we will come to actually seeing the Apple Car is a new version of CarPlay that will be rolled out to certain cars later this year.