William Gallagher
Apple's "Project Titan" lives on, as the company is reportedly building large drive rooms in California for continued testing, and developing advanced battery technology.
Financial analyst Craig Irwin of Roth Capital Partners claims that as well as previously trying to buy Tesla, Apple is today very much continuing with its Project Titan car plans.
"Apple is building multiple very large drive rooms in California," Irwin told CNBC. "What does that mean? They're doing something interesting and exciting on the battery side. Project Titan is absolutely not dead."
Irwin was speaking to CNBC about the current financial situation of Tesla, which he says Apple previously bid to buy.
Irwin did not define "drive room," as it pertains to automobiles. However, he meant that Apple is making substantial physical effort into batteries and drive systems for the car. It's possible that he's referring to the kind of facility that AppleInsider discovered in 2015, an undisclosed seven-building campus in Sunnyvale, Cupertino.
At this time, Project Titan was believed to be the genesis of an Apple car. It was thought that Apple was aiming to make a complete vehicle itself and certain published patents appeared to back this up.
However, in 2016, Apple reportedly laid off dozens of Project Titan employees, as it seemed to move toward developing systems for other motor companies instead. Rather than any car hardware, it was apparently going to produce software instead.
At this time, Project Titan was being run by Steve Zadesky but he, too, was let go and instead retired Apple engineering head Bob Mansfield returned to the company to take over.
In 2017, rumors of Apple doing more than just software for self-driving cars surfaced with a report of the company working with Chinese firm Contemporary Amperex Technology on developing batteries. Then the following year, an Apple patent for high-voltage battery power converters in sports cars, surfaced.
Yet Apple was again to lay off more employees in 2019, this time around 200, in what was called a restructuring effort.
However, in March 2019, it was revealed that Apple has hired former Tesla employees including its vice president in charge of powertrains, engineer Michael Schwekutsch.
Extract from a 2019 Apple patent covering extra wide-opening car doorsMost recently, further patents have appeared which cover car doors that open extremely wide, variable light controls, and even a smart seatbelt system.
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24 Comments
Those Apple layoffs they keep talking about in the automotive division, I can not help but to think about what Elon was says about the people Apple was hiring away from Tesla at the time. Elon said Apple was getting the people Tesla did not want and were not the best people. I am starting to believe Elon, Apple was grabbing people so fast they did not realize what they got and over time figured out these people were not the best of the best. Layoff are not always about downsizing or restructuring, those are convenient reasons to get rid of people which are not measuring up.
Tesla has it's ups and downs, but the one thing it has, that no one else does, is a global fast charging network. Single billing, faster then almost anything out there, and easy to find. No other car company has this. It's the ace in the hole for Tesla if you want to leave the 200 mile circle around your house.
Haven’t the double sliding doors, both front and back at the same time, already appeared on many a concept car? They typically are all pillerless so that the fancy interior could be seen. Maybe they have some interesting hinge and slider mechanisms that is patentable, but if so, that should be the interesting part of the patent, not the idea itself.
But, all those fancy concept car designs are blown away when they have to meet safety standards. As soon as rollover protections, safety system requirements (air bags, side impact, et al), environmental requirements (noise, rain) are met, they either have to add the pillar bag in or the doors become 500 lb monstrosities.
My i3 doesn’t have a central pillar, for an out of control designer’s dream I’m sure, and the doors are thick. The vehicle is also <3000 lb, which helps in it being pillarless, but I would trade it for a pillar and a real rear door than the current suicide doors.
I do like the double sliding door idea though.
Other than the fact that I've always been sure they're building a vehicle of some sort, I confess to having no idea exactly what's going on...which is probably Apple's goal at this point (bus, sports car, Mars rover, autonomous people pod). Be nice if they finished it before the ocean starts lapping at their doors, or I have to move into a facility where the daily highlight is getting my Depends changed again.