“Apple Inc., which has been working secretly on a car, is pushing its team to begin production of an electric vehicle as early as 2020, people with knowledge of the matter said,” Tim Higgins reports for Bloomberg. “The timeframe — automakers typically spend five to seven years developing a car — underscores the project’s aggressive goals and could set the stage for a battle for customers with Tesla Motors Inc. and General Motors Co., both of which are targeting a 2017 release of an electric vehicle that can go more than 200 miles on a single charge and cost less than $40,000.”
“‘That’s the inflection point — the proving ground — that brings on the electric age,’ Steve LeVine, author of ‘The Powerhouse,’ a book about the automotive battery industry, said on Bloomberg TV Thursday. ‘Now you have Apple coming in and this is critical mass. Was GM really going to be able to match Tesla? Apple can,'” Higgins reports. “Apple may decide to scrap its car effort or delay it if executives are unhappy with progress, as they’ve done before with other secret projects, the people said. The car team, which already has about 200 people, began ramping up hiring within the past couple of months as the company sought out experts in technologies for batteries and robotics, said one of the people.”
Read more in the full article here.
[Thanks to MacDailyNews Readers “Fred Mertz” and “David E.” for the heads up.]
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Just don’t make a minivan.
Condoms prevent minivans…
No… Minivans negate the need for condoms
I’ll take a mini-SUV like the Subaru Forester (of which I own a 2015 model to the chagrin of my Tesla car owning friends).
me too
Really, just make it a modern Carver. Like that concept I saw once called Flyer or something like that three wheel car. Might as well be as dreamy as we can since this is all vapor BS from the media.
If Apple is pushing to produce something, anything then it is definitely not Apple like. Whoever is doing the pushing, needs to find another job.
Apple vehicles? What about the Apple TV is just a hobby? What happen to the Apple iTV?
Ask the content companies.
It’s clear to me that this automobile will be a vehicle as adept on the road as in the air. That’s why Apple has spent so much time developing iCloud — it’s there to support the Air Car
With any luck they’ll whip the issues of anti-grav and we’ll have that flying car at last.
Tesla is thinking about more than just electric cars:
http://www.theverge.com/2015/2/13/8033691/why-teslas-battery-for-your-home-should-terrify-utilities
Come on I thought this story was beaten to death.. 🙂
Many companies have tried to compete with Apple thinking it was a music player builder, or a phone builder, or (soon) a watch builder. The ‘disruption’ Apple has brought to those markets is legendary because their competition just does not grasp that Apple is none of those. They are a design company melding beautiful design with high technology into their own ecosystem. The dorky looking Sony glasses are a prime example of what they are NOT. Were Apple to design a car, they probably would not build it. Other companies such as Foxcon, or others yet to be named would likely build it. The smart move would not to be to try to compete, but to try to be their prime contractor. To go back now and build a competing design driven company ecosystem would be a huge task, one I see NO ONE even attempting or even seeming to grasp.
If Apple builds a roadster, I’ll buy one.
So Apple (supposedly) has 200 employees working on and Car? That’s not very many for something as complex as a car, with all the regulations that have to be met. I seriously, seriously doubt Apple is working on designing a car for release in 2020 with only 200 employees on the project. They probably have more people working on designing their A chips than that.
If they fix, the car rolling on tires over payment thing, they may have a chance.
Get to work on antigravity capabilities ASAP.