Ondrej Holzman It's no secret that dozens of different products are being worked on in Apple's labs. Prototypes are created, new technologies, innovative procedures are tested, but only a real handful of projects finally get the green light to eventually reach the hands of customers. But according to the latest information, Tim Cook has now given the green light to a new, fundamental project: the Apple Car.
Daisuke Wakabayashi from The Wall Street Journal writes, that building an electric car is now an issue at Apple that will begin to receive much more resources and a larger team, with the goal of producing an Apple Car by 2019.
However, the year 2019 is not a certain date at all, taking into account all the circumstances, it is rather just an indicative date, and during the development of such an extensive project as the car undoubtedly is, there may be delays. After all, we see this every day with other car companies that have many years of experience in the production of cars.
Green is said to be Tim Cook and co. gave their own car after spending more than a year researching whether it would even be possible to get an Apple Car on the road. In California, for example, they met with government representatives, with whom they discussed the development of an autonomous vehicle, how informed The Guardian, but according to sources WSJ is a "driverless car" in the Cupertino giant's plan only in the future.
If we get a vehicle from Apple, it should initially be "only" electric, not autonomous. Project managers codenamed Titan they are said to have already been given permission to triple the current 600-strong team to move development forward.
There are still more unanswered questions than answers about how Apple plans to enter the automotive market. It is not clear whether Apple wants to develop its car from scratch, connect with another car company or, for example, supply its technology to someone else.
Considering the minimal experience of the Californian giant with the automotive world, it would appear to be a more realistic cooperation with one of the established brands, however, Apple in recent months he has begun in a significant way hire experienced and key experts who, on the other hand, have extensive experience with cars and various aspects of development.
The year 2019 mentioned by Wakabayashi's sources is definitely very ambitious, and it still is a year earlier than previously speculated, that the Apple Car could come. But if we can assume something, it is the fact that Apple will probably miss this deadline. There is also the question of what is actually meant by the currently mentioned year 2019. This is not necessarily the date when the first user will be able to buy an Apple car.
This time it is not enough for Apple to just design and manufacture a product. Automobiles are significantly regulated and inspected, so a new vehicle would need to undergo a series of tests and receive approval from government agencies. This would probably also deprive Apple of the maximum secrecy of the project, but this must be expected.
The fact that it is interested in testing its own cars is also evidenced by a report from August, when it turned out that Apple he asked the former GoMentum military base near San Francisco, where other car companies are already testing their cars. Even though Tim Cook just last week on the television show with Stephen Colbert he said about the car that "we deal with a lot of things, but we decide to put our energy into really only a few of them", perhaps he himself already knew that the Apple Car was the project to which he would devote his energy.
I wonder how apple will approach selling their new cars in the future.
Will he build a new apple autosalon story to fulfill the idea of "user experience"?
If we take into account the fact that even such a "banal thing" as the apple watch is not sold everywhere, not even on the official apple web shop, precisely because of this "user experience", it will be quite interesting to see where such a car will be available everywhere . It's clear to me that it won't happen here and the price will probably be astronomical :-)