SAN FRANCISCO — Apple is reportedly efforts to create its first electric car. According to The Wall Street Journal, the company has committed employees and resources to get the car ready for an unveiling in 2019.
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| APPLE CAR -ALREADYBLOG.COM |
Apple is speeding up its plans to manufacture and ship an electric car in four years, According to The Wall Street Journal.
The report says Apple is moving forward after investigating options for
more than a year, as well as recently meeting with government officials
in California. The report also says that Apple's first vehicles may not
be autonomous.
Citing "people familiar with the matter," the
report says Apple has plans to triple the 600-employee team behind the
car project, which has been code-named Titan. Other evidence the long-rumored move could be real include leaked reports, first published in London's The Guardian, that
Apple has been in conversations with a decommissioned military facility
east of San Francisco that could host an automotive testing site.
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| APPLE CAR SOON IN 2019 |
But
by far the biggest proof point is the considerable hiring of engineers
with automotive backgrounds that the company has done in recent months.
Some have come from Elon Musk's successful electric car company, Tesla,
which some analysts have suggested could be a natural acquisition
target for cash-rich Apple, and a quick way to buy itself into the often
vexing auto manufacturing business.
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| APPLE CEO TIM COOK |
Company officials remain mum about the hardware move. Apple CEO Tim Cook recently told talk show host Stephen Colbert,
who asked about the project, "We look at a humber of things along the
way, and we decide to really put our energies in a few of them."
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If true, Apple's automotive venture would be a bold and ambitious
move. It would also be in keeping with the company's often-repeated
approach of refining already existing products, frequently redefining
those very categories as it did with portable music players (iPods),
smartphones (iPhones) and tablets (iPads).
Regardless of Apple's
impressive track record, it would face stiff competition giving the
growing number of entrants in the space. Besides autonomous vehicle
pioneer Google, which has been testing its fleet of self-driving cars
since 2009, ride-hailing giant Uber has also made noises about replacing
its drivers with robots and has been hiring experts from Carnegie Mellon University at a fast clip.
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| APPLE CAR - TECHNOLOGY ADVANCED |
A range of traditional automakers, from Audi to Volvo,
have stepped up their Silicon Valley-based research and development
labs in order to speed up work not on self-driving cars but rather on
tech that gives drivers improved driver-assist tech, specifically for
situations when traffic is slow.
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| APPLE CAR- PROJECT |
Of course, aiming for 2019 doesn't mean that Apple Car will be ready by then. According to the Journal,
the car's "ship date" could mean when engineers have signed off on all
the features. And some familiar with the project have already expressed
doubt about how feasible the date is. However, with interest building up
swiftly. At least with consumers, four years is still a good long while
to wait.
@heeraabu @Apple car in 2019
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