Reports in the Wall Street Journal this week have claimed that Apple is pushing towards its first attempt at an electric car. The plans seem to be accelerating after the company spent the past year researching the feasibility of its own branded vehicle in a secret project codenamed ‘Project Titan’. The WSJ claim that the already 600 strong team is set to triple in size as Apple aim to get their first attempt on the road by 2019.
Part of the expansion to Titan has included the recruitment of several autonomous motoring experts, but it is still likely that the first example of an Apple car will need to be driven by a human. It appears as though the technology giants are aiming to compete with other electric car manufacturers such as Elon Musks’ Tesla.
So what can Apple bring to table? After all, the Tesla’s they will be competing with are regarded as true feats of engineering. However, Apple has the unique opportunity to apply its knowledge and expertise in batteries, sensors and hardware-software integration - areas that have been honed to perfection with its iPhones and iPads over the years.
As usual for Apple, they have been tight-lipped about anything surrounding Project Titan - the company have the ability to prevent information leaks with almost military precision. However, Apple’s own Tim Cook did give a cryptic message when asked by Stephen Colbert about their interest in autonomous cars, saying; “We look at a number of things along the way, and we decide to really put our energies in a few of them”.
Questions have been raised about the timeline of such an ambitious project, 2019 is a very quick turnaround for such advanced technology. However, in information obtained by the WSJ, Apple have expressed interesting in using the secure driverless car testing facility GoMentum Station in San Francisco. This would imply that Apple are a lot further on in this project than they are letting on at this initial stage.
It will be interesting to see how this story progresses, Apple obviously see an opportunity in the venture even though the electric car market has been weak worldwide in recent times. Having said that, with fuel emissions regulations tightening globally year on year and demand for electric cars set to rise, this could be a very astute move for Apple by the time 2019 rolls around.
