“Car magazine Motor Trend caused a stir on Wednesday when it teased images of what it called the Apple Car. Some people thought the renderings — released on Motor Trend’s Twitter feed — were leaked images of the still-in-development Apple Car,” Daisuke Wakabayashi reports for The Wall Street Journal. “But, in reality, the images are part of a cover story out Thursday that the magazine put together, speculating what the highly anticipated vehicle might look like.”
“The magazine consulted automobile designers from ArtCenter College of Design in Pasadena, Calif. and asked them to conceptualize the Apple Car as though the company had come to them as a customer,” Wakabayashi reports. “Apple Inc. declined to comment.”
MacDailyNews Take: They were laughing too hard.
“Kim Reynolds, a testing director at Motor Trend and author of the story, said the exterior design is only one element that the designers considered,” Wakabayashi reports. “They also looked at how Apple might change the experience of riding in a car and considered features such as a windshield with augmented reality or a Siri-like chauffeur to guide people from one destination to another.”
Read more in the full article here.
MacDailyNews Take: Or too busy vomiting.
Fugly! Lol
I was reminded of car concepts from 1980s.
“The Apple Car, as imagined by Motor Trend” Hmm, so the folks at Motor Trend proved they have NO IMAGINATION!
Now people, let’s be nice. This is the work of an industrial design college student. And for a student it’s pretty good work. But is it representative of what Apple may finally put out? Most likely not.
I expect the Apple car’s lines to have more functional definition to them and not have such a melted chocolate look. I would also expect the LED lights. Front and back to be handled very differently and not covered by a semi-clear piece of plastic or glass. The lights might stand out physically and be able to physically rotate as an expression of their function. Conversely, the lights might be buried behind the shell in the was that the power lights on the MacBook are visible through laser etched micro-holes in the skin. The interior would be sparse, even by Tesla standards, with most of the controls on or near the steering wheel. The display would be big enough to show a navigation map but not anywhere near as large as on the Tesla models, which have ridiculously large monitors. It’s like driving with s 27″ iMac in your car. Apple will make sure the driver have every reason to focus on the road. All other visual feedback will be in the HUD on the windshield.
Sleeper.
Of course people will take it at face value.
Why just the other day my brother’s girlfriend came up to me and said, “Did you know that Steve Jobs was this horrible man who was a total narcissist?”
I asked here where she got her info. She said she watched the movie about him. And here’s the thing. She is actually an otherwise very smart person.
Reporting on Apple seems to favor the opinions of the uninformed.
Does she also think that Abraham Lincoln was a vampire slayer?
That wasn’t true?
Rose gold?
INCIPIO is going to make a killing selling Thin Clear NGP Soft Shell Car Cover bumper guards for this baby. 😉
Looks like the arse end of a duck.
=:~)
At first, I wondered what that would really look like but I don’t have your wealth of experience staring at any part of a duck. Can you explain what your fascination is about a duck’s bottom is?
Motor Trend’s vivid imagination and design must have yeilded the Zune…
Motor Pretend
Late April Fools.
That looks like every other “car of the future” concept done in the last 30+ years. Booooring.
It looks like a mouse with wheels.
I thought it was ‘inspired’ by the Mac Mouse.. 😛
Can’t tell if it’s coming or going. Hopefully going…straight into the wrecking bin. At least make it look semi-cool.
One interesting aspect of this design is the lack of side view mirrors. These mirrors are required ‘by law’ in the Unitized States, and yet we have the technology to replace them with something better.
I think it would be pretty amazing if Apple were the company that was able to get those laws changed and pave the way for self-driving cars without primitive appendages like side view mirrors.
I always thought simple iPhone-type cameras (maybe 3: one on either side, plus another facing rearward; or perhaps just 1 wide-angle lens mounted on the rear roof), with a live feed to a small screen on my dashboard would provide much better information, without my having to turn one’s head, which must now be done. The cameras would not have blind spots. The screen should be easily dimmable to eliminate distracting and dangerous headlight glare in certain travel conditions. There are times I now “disenable” my mirrors — I tilt them totally away — so they don’t blind me with glare; I know it is not smart, but the technology leave me no choice but to basically “turn it off”.
Eliminating side-view mirror appendages should reduce drag and improve fuel efficiency. (The efficiency gain seem relatively small, but it would nevertheless add up. My guess is that it might improve fuel efficiency by up to a few percent, depending on the car and one’s driving habits. The question reduces to the percent of a car’s front profile area that is represented by side-view mirror appendages.)
Removing the side-view mirrors should also reduce accidents (a friend in the city was recently hit by a car’s side-view mirror). It should also reduce car insurance repair costs And using cameras would probably also cost less than installing side-view mirror appendages.
Sounds like a no-brainer. The car regs were probably written before relevant camera technology. Hopefully it just a question of clarifying the regs to include _any valid means_ by which the car driver can “see” vehicles on either side and behind.
The Federal Motor Vehicle Safety Standards (FMVSS) are a constantly evolving set of rules, albeit at a slow pace. Multiple auto manufacturers have indicated that they want to replace side mirrors with cameras. I’d say provisional approval of this modification of the FMVSS is less than two years away. And yes, as an executive with a licensed US auto manufacturer, I know what I am talking about.
Although the side view mirrors are easily replaced with modern technology, the world is filled with Luddites who think that electronic devices will fail at the worse possible time and that we all will be killed three times over.
My pet peeve is the sun visor. I would rather have a visor that slid out of the roof to cover the window with a graduated plexiglass screen with a motor that would maintain the coverage as the sun angle changed. It would also need to have a separate one for the side windows.
Motor Trend proving how in touch they are with the Information Age and the Digital Revolution… not.
I wish Apple buys Tesla and Elon takes the reign. Apple products would improve since Elon doesn’t accept half baked crap. Tesla would get “infinite” budget for their ambitious vision. My current Apple ecosystem would be 100% compatible with my next car.
I don’t think so. An Apple car will be very different from a Tesla car. I think an Apple car will be an iPhone accessory like an Apple Watch but pushing the personnal device concept to the space your are living in instead of what you wear on your body.
Sorry, but the Model X is the definition of half baked crap, at least from a manufacturing point of view
Dumpy looking front end. My advice to Apple (and they always check with me first, of course) – Do not involve Jon Ive in the exterior design. Get someone who understands the concept of a graceful curve and implied motion.
For a guy who appreciates great looking cars and owns some, Ferrari etc………..he is good at designing objects, etc. for the most part, although I cant stand the fact that the on switch for my mac mini is diametrically opposite from the on light.Why not together….on no that would be sensory overload or something. Silly
Just please stay away from software interfaces….and light gray type on white backgrounds? Seriously? He must have had a traumatic experience with something that was high contrast when he was a kid.
This is the best rendering that the people at the ArtCenter College of Design can come up with? A car styled to look like an iPhone?
I really hope this was done by first year students. If this is the work of ArtCenter teachers, they should never be allowed to collect $1 in tuition from another student.
There’s a reason MOTOR TREND reports on vehicles someone else designs … and I think we just found that reason!
And for cr*p like this, they want you to subscribe.
Perhaps it’s not just old technology that’s killing newspapers.
And this is why the Motor Trend designers are not working for a real car company designing real cars.
Not only is it ugly as sin, there’s no crumple zone. Far too dangerous.
I can’t tell if I’m looking at the front or the back.
The new Apple Car Pro is the thinnest, most beautiful vehicle on the planet. How did we accomplish this? We removed the stereo system.
The transmission has been redesigned from the ground up, bringing a revolutionary yet simple way to operate Apple Car. It has one single button in the dash.
Click it once to turn it on. Double click to go into drive. Triple click to go into reverse. Click and hold to go into neutral. Double tap the button for low gear. Click once then click and hold to activate Apple Pay at the drive thru. So simple and intuitive.
The base model will have a range of 16 miles, that’s a revolutionary 84,480 feet. For $100,000 more, the Apple Car Pro Edition has the same range but has golden rims.
Only Apple.
We have also removed the steering wheel to make the Apple Car Pro 40% thinner. To steer you simply say “Siri, turn left” or “Siri, turn right.”
1) Fender skirts are so retro. Apple would never design something that used them.
2) Apple would never design something with tires and wheels. Because, you know, those are user replaceable.
Unless, of course, Apple made the car with the wheels welded in place. Then if a tire goes flat, Apple just replaces your entire car. Uunless it picked up a nail, or you ran up against a curb and popped the tire off the rim. Then you’re out of luck. Apple Car Care doesn’t cover accidental or user caused damage.
I wonder… will they use Lighting connectors for charging and system updates?
And what if a bad update bricks your car?
It would be so much nicer if Apple just released a new Mac every year for magazines to evaluate.
This can’t be an Apple car… it has WINDOWS! /rimshot
Apparently, the geniuses at Motor Trend actually built the Apple fun bus and then took it for a test drive. Here is a clip of their zany adventure:
Well, i for one hope Apple is not taking any cues from motor trend .
Why would they even publish this hideous thing.