Sources with knowledge of the matter have told The Wall Street Journal that Apple is moving ahead with efforts to build an Apple-branded electric vehicle, which it intends to deliver to the market by 2019.
After a year of feasibility studies, the group within Apple in charge of the electric vehicle project has been given permission to triple its staff, which currently employs 600 people, the Journal reported.
Either carmakers should be shaking in their boots, or Apple is flying too close to the sun.
i will take another solar’s system sun to burn this puppy
Not even if it were the last car on earth of any category.
Edited 2015-09-21 21:42 UTC
Instead of expanding their market to other areas already covered by good companies expert in their respective fields, I would prefer Apple to be concentrated in fixing/improving the quality of their software (Pages, Photos, Numbers, OS X, Finder, etc.) and making not so disposable hardware.
With apples famous vendor lock-in does that mean when you get in the car you can never get out? (troll)
Exactly, all the car pieces will be soldered down; so, any malfunctioning will need a car replacement.
Your radio will just work with iTunes and you will need to charge it using iCarThunderBolt interface.
Edited 2015-09-21 22:26 UTC
It’ll sound like shit though, being played from Beats speakers and all.
It already exists. It is named “Tesla”.
Worse Tesla makes it own batteries the single most key part of an electric car.
If Apple enters this industry it will find itself competing against companies as big as them (the automakers) who already have contracts with the major battery makers of the world.
This does not mean Apple must lose out, just that this will be no walk in a park.
Tesla doesn’t make anything. They are simply assemblers that survive on government subsidies. The batteries themselves are made in China by Panasonic.
Edited 2015-09-22 05:03 UTC
Except that Tesla motors is actually owned by someone who is awesome, and doesn’t have a cult following that would buy an iShit if they decided to make one.
Bahahaha. This is too funny. The cult of personality around Elon Musk is at least as strong as that around Steve Jobs.
Ha !
I guess the ‘reality distortion field’ is not an Apple exclusive.
Elon Musk is a less innovative and more sociopathic version of Steve Jobs.
I wasn’t aware Mr Jobs was innovative.
Excellent at marketing and packaging other people’s ideas, true, but I struggle to think of any innovation by SJ.
Well, I don’t hear people going around saying that Elon Munsk invented everything that was ever awesome, and that if you don’t own a Tesla is because you’re poor, or that every other car is an inferior product. All of which I have heard from Apple fans about their products. From them, you’d hear aApple invented the GUI and that Apple’s proprietary APIs are awesome and everyone else has shitty ones.
Starting model comes with a measly 16 kWh battery. $100K will get you an upgrade to a 64 kWh model. Proprietary charging port required, and you’ll obviously still need that clunky iTunes desktop app to update the software. But hey, you’ll get a rose gold colour.
One can’t make a car without a car plant. So, what company will Apple have build their car(s)? This seems to me to be more than Apple really wants to bite off, unless they partner with an existing auto firm. They might simply make an Apple edition of a standard product, like Shelby did with the Ford Mustang. Anyone up for a iTesla?
Samsung, obviously.
All the rumours so far have mentioned BMW which would make sense given Apples target market
Douchebags?
Um, your confused, the auto market for Douschbags has already been locked up the Ford corp. with their F series trucks! Try again…
I observed that many cars have an apple logo at the back. I guess it will become official soon.
The entire 130 years of automotive history says that Apple will fail. No car maker has ever been consistently profitable. More than 99.99% of car companies ever started have gone broke.
Steve B. is that you?
I see the standard/stick anti Apple comments are being trotted out again… Sigh
They will be repeated until we all get sick of them (if we aren’t already).
The truth is, we simply don’t know what (if anything) Apple will build, how it will be constructed and … and … and … and…
But that won’t stop the comments from coming.
As a Mechanical Engineer (Aircraft Avionic Systems) by profession, I do know this:-
1) Apple will buy in lots of components from existing Automotive Industry suppliers. These will have many of the required certifications needed. It would be folly for Apple to try to build a suspension system themselves.
2) They will have to partake in an extensive road testing programme. We will see heavily disguised prototypes coverted in black & white cammo paint (standard industry practice). This means that the basic configurations will already be known well before they get officcially announced.
3) Apple’s legendary secrecy around product configuration will be pretty much a thing of the past for their first model. There will be lots of money changing hands in order to get exclusive details of what is going into an AppleCar. That in itself will be entertaining.
The next few years will be interested as we see the vehicle(s) slowly reveal themselves to us. I’m sure the naysayers will keep their comment fingers well oiled pouring scorn on Apple but to be honest I would be wary of doing that. It might just be that Apple could bring about the same sort of revolution in the Car Industry that Henry Ford did 100 years ago. On the otherhand, they might fall flat on their face and produce a 21st Century Schitzoid Man car aka “Edsel”.
It would be nice to have some proper discussion on the topic rather than the same of rants being trotted out. That is up to the commenters though.
Henry Ford’s first two car companies went broke. The Ford Motor Company was his third attempt.
Virtually all of Henry Ford’s ‘innovations, such as the production line, were copied from the Europeans (especially FIAT). Ford succeeded because America was the only country where a very large number of people could afford cars.
There’s a precedent of a computer maker delving into electric cars already:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sinclair_C5
Let’s see how this one goes
Ha-Ha, you can hardly can call the C5 an electric car. A few bits cobbled together from old washing machines, bikes and G-Kart wheels more like.
I guess the G-Whizz would be your idea of a great vehicle to drive then?
I realized recently, I’ve been so excited about the “electric car” era, I just never realized it would come at the same time as “cars connected to the Internet” era.
Maybe someone will make a simple “stupid” electric bike. Or free software car.
I can see the Jony Ive narrated video already:
We created a new cotton thread called C3000 cotton. And we used custom Singer machines with a patented Apple Stitch to create a seamless transition between the Italian leather trim and the Alpaca wool covering…
– Easy switch tyres available in vibrant colours
– Integrated Apple TV in the back seats
– Lock/Unlock start car with Apple Watch or iPhone NFC
– Special Apple Car Health app
– Integrated beats audio system with special “whole floor is the subwoofer”.
– Built in FaceTime camera to take gorgeous family road trip photos. New group motion selfie feature. Rear-view mirror doubles as a flash.
– Dashboard with 360Touch interface.
They’ll brand it something so boringly generic like Apple Car and it will run carOS, and you won’t be able to access content through 3rd party services until carOS 2. Of course it will have a Siri Wheel.
– Apple Car Sport
– Apple Car Edition
– Apple Car Collection
I’m kind of surprised they haven’t gone back and rebranded the Mac and iDevices as Apple Computer, Apple Phone, and Apple Tablet.