“Many are speculating that Apple is working on an electric car and is hiring vehicle design and technology experts. Code named Project Titan, this project is apparently led by former Ford engineer Steve Zadesky, who is presently the VP of product design at Apple,” Sarwant Singh writes for Forbes. “Rumors from the Mac world also suggest that several Apple executives went to Austria to speak with contract manufacturers like Magna, which support brands like BMW, to help Apple on this project.”
“There are two schools of thought here—one is to believe that this is another of those Apple pet projects that might not see the light of day, especially considering it would be silly on Apple’s part to enter a very tough and highly regulated automotive market where the volumes are much less than the smartphone or tablet world,” Singh writes. “The second one, which also lends some credibility, is that Tesla has proven that one can disrupt this traditional automotive market with a really cool product and a completely new customer experience, both of which Apple has immense experience doing with its iPhones, iTunes and, most importantly, its Apple store.”
Singh writes, “Let’s look at some the finer elements associated with this…”
Read more in the full article here.
Related articles:
An Apple Car is exactly what investors want – February 17, 2015
Apple’s electric car dreams may bring auto industry nightmares – February 17, 2015
Jean-Louis Gassée: The fantastic Apple Car is a fantasy – February 16, 2015
Apple is already positioned to be a car company in many ways – February 16, 2015
Why Tim Cook would want to build an Apple Car – February 14, 2015
Apple working on self-driving electric car, source says – February 14, 2015
Apple’s project ‘Titan’ gears up to challenge Tesla in electric cars – February 13, 2015
Apple’s next big thing: The Apple Car? – February 13, 2015
Apple hiring auto engineers and designers – February 13, 2015
Partner with a car manufacturer? Maybe.
Build a car from scratch? NO WAY.
I attempted, commenting about an earlier article today, to theorize that Apple could be testing out accessory gear for cars that enabled self-driving. But that was a FAIL.
The closest I can come is Apple testing self-driving gear that is integrated into FUTURE cars, by other manufacturers including potentially Tesla, that have an added driving computer, probably also by Apple. It would be up to the car manufacturers to create the actual cars that allow themselves to be driven by a computer. Then they buy the computer from Apple as well as the environment awareness gear (as seen on top of the magic van), or something a bit more compact please, and there we go.
I suspect this is highly experimental and we’re not going to see such things for realz for some time. I also suspect it will be sold to high end / luxury car manufacturers at the start for customers willing to pay for such bleeding edge technology.
I also suspect this rumor mongering and theorizing is going to go on and on and get very boring, if you’re not bored already by my blether. 😉
Using a relatively surreptitious – to the extent this one can be – van makes some sense from a testing perspective. The van still functions as a auto but for the sake of testing accessories, equipment, navigation, etc, it can be used to haul people and monitoring/testing equipment that can be used in the fine-tuning, design stages. I’m just thinking you can get more people and equipment in and on this van than on a Prius. A big ol’ Suburban with blacked-out windows might just be a bit over-the-top, though.
I love this sudden spastic burst of Apple speculation that came out of the ether. Give Apple lots of click time and continue pushing up the stock. Might even be fun to see what the Apple Watch will look like!
Well, Apple has not only shown images, but people put them on their arms at the opening show in Cupertino.
“Might even be fun to see what the Apple Watch will look like!” I meant after they’re ultimately available for sale and use by customers.
Yesterday I started out looking at the idea of merging a variation of Moore’s Law and a piss law that could be applied to jouranalysts and analysts. I used some of the headlines on MDN to illustrate the point.
Feb 12: (1 headline), Feb 13: (3 headlines) Feb 14: (3 headlines) and now today four headlines and articles about the car. This certainly is providing credibility to the idea for now we see jouranalyst after jouranalyst pissing themselves with articles. Of course to be truly piss worthy the articles need to contain minimal fact and mostly speculation and other useless material. Let’s take a look at this one:
“Many are speculating that Apple is working on an electric car”: Many what? many people or many jouranalyst? At any rate doesn’t matter right from the word go you can get an idea that the article is piss worthy.
“Code named Project Titan”: Now when you click the link you know urine piss country because the link doesn’t take you to project “Titan” involved with Apple computer but the totally out of context Titan company along with some Forbes headlines.
The rest of the first paragraph gets fantastical pretty quickly. Apple executives visiting car companies. Though there could be several other reasons for this it’s insinuated that it’s for project Titan. The sighted Apple minivans, purpose unsure are being directed to project Titan. I guess it takes a jouranalyst to figure out that pissing in the wind THIS time might be different. Finishing up are the bits of speculation about Tesla employees joining Apple. No mention of who, how many of course, that would require fact finding and no comparing of the number of Apple employees joining Tesla because that would involve some level of though process.
Oh gosh, what a pissing contest this is going to be, there are now two schools, count them two schools of thought. Not only are they two schools of thought but they have finer points, ooooh finer points, now that’s beyond pure piss quality, This author is going to be having a dump. I’ll have to work that in later but for now jouranalists are definitely peeing themselves right now.
Sure enough the end of the article brings on the big dump plop “Although it doesn’t seem to make sense for Apple to get into the business of making and selling cars.” as speculative and as suspect as the first sentence of the article. It takes a real feeble mind to make a sweeping statement and of course there is the hope that the readers will gather round like flies to savor the smell, texture, and other worthy features of the article.
I suspect, that there wasn’t a lot of research done putting that sentence forth. I think a “prove it” from an Apple Executive or even someone firing two neurons together would take that idea down real quick. Better yet an Apple Executive showing this jouranalist that is does make sense for Apple to get into the business of making and selling the “vehicle experience”. This of course would illustrate the difference between real work and pissing around, or depending on which metaphors you want to mix, what happens when the shit hits the fan.
I’ll answer this one. Analysts are way off the path. Apple’s next category to enter in is ………. Dashboard Air fresheners. It only makes scents.
“Many believe an Apple Dashboard Freshener (ADF) can strengthen the RDF by neutralizing FUD, subjecting passengers to 90 minutes of brainwave modifications in an all Apple ecosystem.”
All this in a refreshing Granny Smith mist!
Testing the grounds to develope a new car would be pocket change for apple ! Even if the car never makes it to market, what apple learns in the process will make it worth the investment !
Apple paid 3billion for beats !
It takes a billion to develope a new car model.. And another billion to take it to market !
Teslla pulled it off… Apple cant ?