Following a report today that Apple was hiring experts from the automotive industry for a new research lab, The Wall Street Journal adds to the story claiming Apple has several hundred employees working on an Apple-branded electric car:
Apple has several hundred employees working secretly toward creating an Apple-branded electric vehicle, according to people familiar with the matter. They said the project, code-named “Titan,” has an initial design of a vehicle that resembles a minivan, one of these people said.
The report adds that CEO Tim Cook approved the project close to a year ago with product design Vice President Steve Zadesky leading the group, lining up with rumors that Apple is working on something that will “give Tesla a run for its money.”
Apple as a car company.
I found four restaurants fairly close to you. Unfortunately I can’t take you to any of them.
And next year’s model will be sexier, and twice as thin as last year’s model. And it will come in gold.
And it will find more restaurants that it wont take you to.
Driving in your reality distorsion field… oh my!
That makes for quite a dystopian world.
Sounds like a brand hairdressers would drive.
No wonder iOS 9 is going to be a performance and stability version. Needs to be…for a car.
The car will likely run QNX.
An Apple “device” running a Blackberry owned OS.
Likely? No.
Why not? They’ve already been doing it for a year with CarPlay. Your other options in this industry revolve around Android.
Edited 2015-02-14 23:34 UTC
What will this do to all the computer / car analogies we all love so much?! This will ruin everything!
I shudder to think of Apple “fanboys” roaming the car domain.
don’t forget all the Apple haters poo-pooing it all over every tech site.
i.e.
Next years model will be thinner and lighter.
If you are building an Electric car then lightness is an positive thing in that it takes less power to move it.
But that won’t stop them from having a field day.
now.
The Simple Minds song ‘Promised you a miracle’ would be very apt if indeed Apple were to build a car. somehow I doubt it.
The weight gains that can be achieved on anything but the batteries are marginal in an electric car.
Considering Apple’s the company that got the one hour lasting cell phones market booming (hyperbole!), they might have a chance in getting these things out of the door, with an abysmal range of course…
Is anyone else getting flashbacks to the “revolutionary” Sinclair C5?
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0EQetm_qWDg
If you have a crash you are probably “doing it wrong”.
The idea isn’t so absurd. Perhaps the trend is moving on to different/other car manufacturers as we know now especially as technology moves on.
The only thing that would scare me is if the car is controlled by iTunes.
Every crash will make an apple pie.
If Apple made cars, would they have windows?
Apple invented the idea of the electric car.Why, once, when Steve Jobs was a child, he drew a picture of a car… with lightning bolts coming off it! Surely that means he, and now Apple, owns the idea into perpetuity and definitely got there before Elon Musk!
Apple originality – we say it, you believe it.
* I see the Apple fanboys are out in force, downvoting comments…
Edited 2015-02-14 20:12 UTC
That means soon after Apple will release its first car, Google will release their own, cheaper, better, with higher autonomy and most important, their designs will be free to use for any automotive company as long as the in-vehicle infotainment will show Google ads.
and of course, you’ll need to replace your android car every 8 months because it won’t run the latest upgrade.
That’s funny. Never mind that Google has been experimenting with their self-driving cars for years now. It is Apple who is late to this business, not them.
Great. The only car in the world where you’ll need to buy a new one when their itires wear out. And there will be no valves to pump them up so they wear out faster!
And the Eula will state: You, your family, the provider and anyone else associated with providing after market tires will be sued to death for copyright breach(They invented the iwheel, after all) if you fit after market ones!
Did I mention the charging plug will be iIntellectually propertied so you can only charge them at Apple[tm] sanctioned icharging stations, where the price of their iElectrickity will be 5 times that of any other provider. Their iElectrickity is different after all, coz they invented that too. The icharging stations however; will be glacial white with isupermega high resolution iLCD displays so you can clearly see the amount of your contribution to the Apple[tm] itax empire every time you charge up with ispecially developed and iInvented Apple[tm] iElectrickity.
Off you go and ivote me down you ifan boyz
Or AppleCar will just have higher quality ratings, better reviews, run more efficiently, require less repair, make for safer drivers, have lower insurance rates, and ultimately have higher resale value, giving them higher customer satisfaction ratings overall than toyota, ford, or BMW.
And people like you will say it is nothing more than marketing and spelling.
Your stupid apple jokes speak nothing to the quality and value they put into their products, something that “just marketing” makes worse, not better.
…but only when compared against competing products that cost less – while being clearly a worse value when subjected to actual honest comparisons.
Spelling…? …whaaaaat?
You were screaming “LEAVE APPLE ALONE” at the screen when you wrote that sentence, weren’t?
Yep. It will be identical to the power that you can get from anyone else, but it will have a non-standard connector to ensure incompatibility with established standards.
Oh, and don’t forget: the car’s navigation system will also refuse to take you to any businesses that don’t give Apple a cut of every sale. Apple fanboys will defend the practice with the excuse that it provides a superior “consumer experience,” and Apple will actively lobby to make it illegal for car owners to circumvent those protections… probably with absurd spin about how locked-down navigation systems are essential to prevent rogue self-driving cars from mowing down playgrounds full of our precious, innocent children.
… you have to use iTunes with it. 🙁
Early reports is the two wheel model will cost USD $200,000,000 and that the more effective four wheel model will cost $590,234,788.
Inside, there are convenient thunderbolt ports for your myriad of thunderbolt devices. 2 in front and one in back.
A MacCar AM/FM thunderbolt radio is $40
Optionally you can upgrade to one with CD/Blu-ray/USB and Bluetooth for $400.
When the vehicle stops, the whole car automatically shuts down, but it will come back on fairly quickly when the brake is disengaged. On early prototypes it seemed that sometimes the steering wheel was no longer recognized when awakened (this may be fixed in the next model).
The speedometer has the highest resolution of any speedometer and has a resolution of .0000001 mph or .0000001 kmph (the latter only available in certain parts of Europe). This probably the biggest selling point of the new car. Nobody has matched this.
The outside is a solid aluminum body. And getting in and starting the car are all done with a single button.
There is a security key/passport option for $400
The car battery is a proprietary design that can be recharged using the standard MagSafe cord. If your battery dies merely use the MagSafe jumper cable to connect your car to the MagSafe port of another car, wait, and presto, you’re back in business!
The MagSafe cord is merely $400.
Just heard that the MagSafe battery jumper cord is now available in a 10ft. model rather than the standard 3ft. one. Price is on par with the original, approximately 3x the cost due to length.