Mikey Campbell
In an interview on Monday, Tesla founder Elon Musk said it is obvious that Apple is working on an electric car to rival products from established automakers, though he doesn't foresee a Cupertino-designed vehicle threating growing Tesla sales.
While he declined to offer specifics, Musk seemed confident in telling the BBC that Apple is indeed working on an electric car that would compete with Tesla's lineup.
"Well it's pretty hard to hide something if you hire over a thousand engineers to do it," Musk said, adding that while Apple is serious about getting into the automotive market, the industry is a difficult one to disrupt.
Apple has been on a hiring spree over the past year, picking up numerous engineers, software programmers and other players from the automotive world. As Apple hires away engineers from Tesla, so does the electric car firm poach from Apple's ranks.
In October, Musk commented on the back-and-forth poaching issue, calling Apple a graveyard for engineers who "didn't make it" at Tesla. However, sources informed AppleInsider that certain high-level departures hindered Tesla's product development plans.
Apple's aggressive hiring practices come at the expense of smaller companies, like battery specialist A123 Systems and electric motorcycle maker Mission Motors, the latter of which ceased operations shortly after its top talent moved to Apple.
Aside from employment records, not much is known about the so-called "Apple Car." AppleInsider last year revealed a the project, dubbed internally as "Project Titan," was being run out of a secret facility in Sunnyvale, Calif., though research and development operations could soon be relocated to larger dedicated space in San Jose.
Most recently, it was discovered last week that Apple now owns "apple.car," "apple.auto" and "apple.cars" domain names, suggesting a consumer facing product is in the offing.
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52 Comments
Interesting.. this is the largest-stakes new division that Apple has created.
The initial sets of EMVs had such restrictions that I could not take them seriously.
Then Tesla started making them; I love those vehicles! Excellent range on a charge, looks great, excellent performance, forward-thinking design... But still, for long road trips, these remain impractical, at least for me. The Tesla recharging stations will eventually reduce some of the travel restrictions, but as of today, there are not enough on route that I drive to make these cars practical.
Apple will certainly address "milage" on a charge, charge-speed, etc. Tesla has been quite innovative, but I anticipate Apple will be more so. I'm very interested to see what Apple will come up with to make their car more attractive than Tesla. Since Apple tends to cash in on economy of scale, I'm hopeful that their car is far more affordable, but outperforms Tesla. Apple is a luxury brand, but targets mass marketing rather than niche sales.
There are so many variables... this will be interesting to watch unfold.
On a side note, I wonder if the division will be called Apple Cars, Apple Motors, or what? I very much doubt the individual car will be called the Apple Car. Or maybe it will be; the sedan is the Apple Car, the SUV/Crossover is called the Apple Car Plus.
Why is that they say it is difficult to disrupt the automotive industry? I mean, no one imagined that Apple would become the biggest phone maker, right? Never underestimate what Apple can do. And now with Apple Watch taking a huge chunk of watch market, don't be surprised if we see Apple cars like we are now seeing with Apple watches.
Unlike their pocketable devices, it's going to be much harder to hide a full-size vehicle from the public, which tells me Apple will want to get in front of it when it's time. I hope it's this year we'll some sort of reveal, but the way Cook was so careful and calculated before coming out with a new product after taking over as CEO permanently, I can also see Cook using his patience and skills as a strategic to wait until the most opportune time to announce, even if he is excited to get something out to the world in the short term.
Apple really just needs to name this thing the Apple Car. Apple the manufacturer, Car the model.
Any search for “Car” will pull it up first. No, the name can’t be protected, but who else would be stupid enough to name their product Car, too?