Apple Car - Is It True?

Every time California tech giant Apple puts out a new product, it makes headlines around the world. That was true of its early home computers the first to use a recognizably modern user interface. And it was even more true of the iPod, which single handedly revolutionized the music industry. But the world's biggest and best loved technology company isn't done yet. 

For several years now, Apple engineers have secretly been eyeing up transportation as the next industry ripe for their unique brand of scorched earth disruption. So today we're asking the question, when will we see the Apple Car? straight off the bat it's worth emphasizing but Apple is extremely tight lipped about its alleged foray into the transportation industry. Even the sharpest and best informed Apple watches have only scraps of information and educated conjecture to go on. 

So before we get stuck into the fun of speculation, let's go over the facts we can be reasonably certain of Tim Cook Apple CEO addressed the hush project directly during an interview in 2017. "We are focusing on autonomous systems" he said, clearly, one purpose of autonomous systems is self driving cars. We see it as the mother of all AI projects. Apple tend not to give away details about what they're working on. But in this instance, Tim Cook wasn't able to flatly deny the existence of Apple's designs on the automotive industry. In part this is because of the public nature of regulatory filings. And earlier in 2017, Apple was granted a permit from the California Department of Motor Vehicles to test self driving vehicles on public roads. 

Before you get your hopes up that will show you a sighting of a sleek Apple designed automobile. It would appear the company was merely testing self driving software embedded in a fleet of rather humdrum Lexus SUVs reportedly leased from hertz. These SUVs and their conspicuous roof camera arrays were spotted by eagle eyed Apple fans fooling around on the streets of Cupertino where Apple headquarters are based a dead giveaway. In any case, by that point, the cat was already somewhat out of the bag, at least for anybody paying attention to industry gossip. During 2017 a vast number of employees from electric car market leader Tesla were reportedly jumping ship for the Apple Car project internally codenamed Titan. 

Among the more significant defections former Tesla vice president Chris parrot, who also worked in high profile roles for Aston Martin and Land Rover as well as mechanical engineering manager David Nelson, former senior powertrain test engineer john Ireland and even former head of recruitment Lauren seminara an anonymous Apple employee wrote to Business Insider around this time to say that Apple's latest project is too exciting to pass up, and I think it will change the landscape and give Tesla a run for its money. Tesla's CEO and potential bitter rival Elon Musk acidly noted when asked about the secrecy surrounding project Titan, it's pretty hard to hide something if you hire over 1000 engineers to do it. 

Another significant clue to Apple's intentions can be found in publicly available patent filings. During recent years Apple a regular fixture in the patent office q has sought to register a number of inventions that appear to suggest a move into the automotive sector. As recently as April of this year for instance, Apple filed a patent for Window Tinting technology, the Patent specifically refers to vehicles in the filing, which is for technology that can apparently vary the level of tented it's reasonable to assume a windscreen or sunroof. Other patends that excited Apple fans have attributed to the hush hush project Titan relate to real time alignment and calibration of automotive sensors. Smart tech can recognize landmarks and even a new generation card or that can prevent the use of from swinging around into oncoming traffic or into the path of a passing cyclist. Of course, patents alone don't reveal the whole picture and intellectual properties and especially opaque area of law. But these and other patends certainly suggest that engineers within Apple are beavering away at the problem with great gusto. And it's certainly worth noting that late Apple founder Steve Jobs is said you have expressed an interest in potentially working on an Apple Car. 

Around 2008 when the first Tesla Model S was unveiled to the world jobs apparently pondered entering the electric car market, but ultimately decided to focus his energies on the recently launched iPhone. Since then, Apple has also invested in a number of transport companies around the world for instance, a cool billion dollars sunk into the Chinese ride hailing service Didi Chuxing. Analysts in the no claim Didi Chuxing store of driving data could be highly valuable to any Apple autonomous car project on the road data being one area where project Titan clearly lags a long way behind mighty Tesla. Didi Chuxing, incidentally merged with Ubers Chinese operation a couple of months later, adding substantial value to the Apple stake. In addition, a July 2017 report hinted that Apple was working with Chinese firm, contemporary amperex technology with the intent to research and develop a new generation of car batteries. 

In June 2019, Apple bought drive.ai, a startup that's lead pilot programs of autonomous vehicles in the state of Texas. Despite the fact that drive.ai have technically ceased operations. It's believed Apple swept up both its vehicles and hired its engineers ever the canny masters of intellectual property. Apple also registered a number of top level online domains back in 2015, including apple.com apple.com and Apple dot auto. Although some analysts reckon this was just a move to protect the integrity of their existing Car Play product. It's worth thinking about Car Play However, in the context of project Titan, because industry experts have been saying for some years now that the real riches to be made from the inevitable autonomous vehicle revolution weren't so much derived from the vehicles themselves. But from monetizing all that extra free time, academics and thought leaders have become increasingly enamored with the notion that we live in a so called attention economy. That is to say our attention whether we direct it towards social media platforms, or streaming services on news websites, is currently the most monetizable commodity on Earth. 

So whichever company can first get it to the point where a long car journey is just another long spell of screentime, well, they'll make an unprecedented fortune. And indeed, project Titan watches frequently referred to hints of augmented reality displays and brand new bells and whistles operating systems designed to captivate future motorists freed up attention spans high profile app and investor Carl Icahn went as far as to call a potential Apple vehicle the ultimate mobile device. But although not even the vaguest sketch has been released by the company it's quite easy to imagine any Apple vehicle knocking spots off his competition in the looks department. 

However, it seems as if from the outside anyway, project Titan has been dumped by internal management failure and infighting. Of those 1000 Tesla employees initially poached from Elon Musk hundreds have since been laid off or reassigned a series of changes of leadership at high levels. For instance, project manager Steve's a desk he departing onto a cloud in 2015 also suggests things are less than rosy in the Titan account. Three years ago, rival car startup zouks reportedly scooped up a number of frustrated project Titan alumni in particular engineers with extensive braking and suspension experience. with Apple Of course, you never really know.

 

Many observers are convinced perhaps a little disappointingly, that Apple no longer intends to build a car at all, and instead has focused its considerable energies on software that could run on other company's hardware. Of course, a major stumbling block for Apple and developing its own vehicle would be production at profitable scale. As the ever quotable Elon Musk puts it designing and making a car is easy, mass producing it in a production line is the most difficult part. Still, plenty of smart money is on Apple going all the way giant investment bank Morgan Stanley in a summer 2020 report expressed the view that a firm has brand consciousness Apple is unlikely to trust the hardware to anybody else. 

The End Game can't just be a more advanced version of Car Play. In partnership with other automakers said the report, Apple needs to control the design, the guts and the experiences and services on top of the platform. So to the trillion dollar question, when will we actually see an Apple Car? Already in California Apple has been trialing its so called paler system. Pale is an acronym for Palo Alto to infinite loop and is to all intents and purposes a self driving shuttle designed to vary employees around various Silicon Valley offices. The hardware for now is based on a Volkswagen t six transporter. But if the autonomous tech can be proved reliable, it could be just a few short years before we see an apple designed automobiles. 

One frequently reliable Apple analyst named Ming Chico has expressed his view that the Apple Car is almost certain to be the firm's next star product, a bit of a slap in the face to Apple glasses currently slated for release in the spring of 2021. But we underestimate apple at our peril. Who knows Ming Chico is prediction that the Apple Car will be released at some point between 2023 and 2025. may well prove correct. For now though, let's just say anybody queuing up outside the Apple Store hoping to drive away in a swift new set of wheels in the foreseeable future. We'll be sorely disappointed.