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I will speculate. The initial rumors of Apple wanted to build a car themselves were not true. It is typical of Apple in their path finding to have expertise and knowledge of how it is built, and how to automate the whole thing along with industry experts. Once they figure this out they start partnering. This is vastly different to most other brands where the whole process is outsourced.

Then the next part is simply Apple thinking their core value has to be experience and AV. Since AV is still years if not decades away. They are only thing left will be in car experience. But is experience really enough to sell cars?

Part of the advantage Apple has with AV is that it requires lots of custom silicons. It is literally a giant iPhone with lots more sensors running on battery around the cities. And Apple has the expertise and scale over pretty much all other players.

But I still dont believe AV will be a thing any time soon. It could be done now if we could get rid of human drivers on the road in some cities. But adding human into the equation is just putting an infinitely variable into it.