Highly unlikely, producing a phone is very different to producing a car. Car manufacturing line is extremely automated. It is highly likely that Apple will built its plant in US.

Sorry for being a noob, but if car manufacturing can be automated like this, why can't phones be automated in the same way?

Humans are cheaper than robots for things the size of a phone. You would need a lot of humans to pick up and move a unibody car frame so the economics and ergonomics don't work out the same.

They can be, and have been. Motorola and Nokia had very automated production facilities.[1] Even Foxconn in Shentzen is converting to automated assembly.

Iphones were not originally designed for easy automated assembly; early ones had internal discrete wires which had to be soldered. Newer ones use custom flexible printed wiring, which is more suited to automated assembly.

[1] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=p-fLzrTVQjg

I'd venture to guess that the level of automation in phone and car manufacturing is comparable.

Phones are physically smaller, more dense, and tightly toleranced.

There is still a lot of manual work in final car assembly.

Doesn't that go against current trends which show a small percentage of cars are manufactured in the U.S.? Assembled is another story.

They must be talking to Japanese or German companies. I suspect German.

There were news about BMW and Apple meeting in Germany. There are also manufacturing companies without an actual brand like Magna Steyr building Minis for BMW.

Haven't seen any indication. Likely still too early.

No, in the news there are indications of Apple talking with providers of BMW, Mercedes and Volkswagen