It looks like Apple is developing a car, as hard as that might be to believe.

Tim Bradshaw and Andy Sharman at The Financial Times are reporting the following:

Apple is recruiting experts in automotive technology and vehicle design to work at a new top-secret research lab, according to several people familiar with the company, pointing to ambitions that go beyond the dashboard.

Dozens of Apple employees, led by experienced managers from its iPhone unit, are researching automotive products at a confidential Silicon Valley location outside the company’s Cupertino campus, the people said.

Sir Jonathan Ive’s team of Apple designers has held regular meetings with automotive executives and creators in recent months, in some cases trying to hire them. Recent recruits to Apple’s team include the head of Mercedes-Benz’s Silicon Valley R&D unit.

This is just the latest report to bolster the idea Apple is developing its own car. Here's a quick recap of the story to date:

In early February, an unmarked minivan was spotted driving around with a weird camera on it. It was traced back to Apple. People thought it could be a test of self driving car technology, or it could be a camera to capture street images for Apple Maps.
A short while after that, an Apple employee emailed us unexpectedly to say, "Apple's latest project is too exciting to pass up. I think it will change the landscape and give Tesla a run for its money." We weren't sure if this person was talking about something that would just be for in-car entertainment, or a full-on car.
Next, Bryan Chaffin at The Mac Observer reported that his sources said Apple was working on a car. He said, "What I learned is that Apple has been looking for—and acquiring—the kind of people from Tesla with expertise that is most suited to cars. So much so that I went from being a doubter to a believer almost instantly."
And now, the FT quotes someone who has worked closely with Apple in the past on car systems saying the following: "Three months ago I would have said it was CarPlay ... Today I think it’s a car."

It would be surprising if Apple made a car since Apple makes its money selling personal computers like the iPhone, the iPad, and the Mac. It will be selling the Apple Watch, it's most personal computer ever, as the company calls it.

A car is not a computer. And unlike those other gadgets, a car has a longer upgrade cycle, and crappier margins.

However, Steve Jobs had expressed interest in building a car. He told a New York Times reporter he would have loved to take on Detroit with an Apple car. Former Apple board member Mickey Drexler said Jobs wanted to make a car.

Apple's current executives have a deep interest in cars.

Eddy Cue, Apple's SVP of internet services, is on the board of Ferrari. Phil Schiller, Apple's SVP of marketing, is really into cars. His Twitter bio reads, "Apple, Sports, Cars, Science, Scuba, Drums, Photography. It's racing season!" The tweet he has pinned to the top of his profile isn't an Apple product, but a photo of a Porsche.

Last year, Vogue profiled Ive. In that profile, it quoted Ive's good friend Marc Newson talking about cars:

"Shit we hate," says Newson, includes American cars. "It's as if a giant stuck his straw in the exhaust pipe and inflated them when you look at the beautiful proportions in other cars that have been lost."

Newson now works part time at Apple, and he has designed cars in the past.

Apple CEO Tim Cook is not known as a car guy, but he did hint that Apple is working on things nobody was aware of. In September, he said, "There are products that we're working on that no one knows about. That haven't been rumored about yet."

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Apple Speeds Up Electric-Car Work

Consumer-Electronics Maker Aims to Finalize First Vehicle in 2019

Sept. 21, 2015 1:38 p.m. ET

Apple Inc. is accelerating efforts to build an electric car, designating it internally as a “committed project” and setting a target ship date for 2019, according to people familiar with the matter.

The go-ahead came after the company spent more than a year investigating the feasibility of an Apple-branded car, including meetings with two groups of government officials in California.

Apple speeds up electric-car effort, sees 2019 shipments: WSJ, citing sources

Apple has put more weight behind its electric car efforts and has set a target shipment date of 2019, The Wall Street Journal reported Monday, citing sources.

The tech giant has called the car initiative, named "Titan" within the company, a "committed project" and has met with California officials in determining the feasibility of an Apple car, according to the report. The outlet reports the employees spearheading the 600-person project have been given permission to triple the number of people working on it.

It marks the latest in a string of reports suggesting Apple could look to compete in the automotive industry. The Journal said the 2019 target date is far from concrete, as the company would still need to refine features and clear regulatory and production barriers.

Apple would look to apply its battery, software and hardware production experience from its range of devices to churning out cars. Under the reported timeline, the company would come into the electric car market much later than many of its established would-be competitors.

The segment has also come under pressure in the last year amid a sustained low oil price environment. West Texas Intermediate crude prices have fallen nearly 50 percent in the last year.

Apple did not immediately respond to a request to comment.

Apple shares were trading about 1 percent higher Monday afternoon. Shares of electric automaker Tesla Motors, which were trading higher earlier Monday, turned negative after the report.

In fact, the division, codenamed "Project Titan," has reportedly been given a deadline in late 2017 under its new leadership before the company decides whether the project is working or worth pursuing further, though the company could decide to revisit building its own car if it gets mothballed.

The car didn't have a clear direction for much of last year, the Bloomberg report said, with managers fighting battles over strategy disagreements — namely, whether to focus on hardware, one of Apple's strengths, or to focus on self-driving software. That led to cuts, including more than 120 software engineers and several hundred hardware engineers.Recently, Apple has more closely focused on building an autonomous driving system instead of a complete car, which gives the company the possibility of partnering with existing carmakers.

It's hard to tell whether the issues are because Apple does not have the right leadership or whether its workers were asked to do something that is nearly impossible. Apple reportedly had trouble with assembling a supply chain for automotive parts the way it does for its computers.

Samsung Charges Into Auto Tech With $8 Billion Deal for Harman

Nov. 14, 2016

Samsung Electronics Co. is making a drive for control of the car.

The South Korean smartphone maker said Monday that it would buy U.S. auto-parts supplier Harman International Industries Inc., based in Stamford, Conn., for $8 billion in an all-cash deal that instantly makes Samsung a major player in the world of automotive technology.

The deal -- Samsung’s biggest acquisition in its history -- reshapes the pecking order in the global automotive supply chain, reflecting a quickening pace of innovation and an increased role for companies with deep pockets and a keen understanding of mobile services.

Harman, an audio pioneer that dates back to 1953, has in recent years pushed aggressively into the automotive world under Chief Executive Dinesh Paliwal, and has secured billions in new business, including big contracts with General Motors Co. and Fiat Chrysler Automobiles NV. It has projected an order backlog of $24 billion, more than three times annual revenue, and about two-thirds of its current sales come from auto makers.

Harman has also diversified into software development and components for connected cars. Much of that has been done on the shoulders of major acquisitions such as a $780 million deal last year for Mountain View, Calif.-based software services company Symphony Teleca.

By becoming a direct supplier to the world’s biggest automakers, Samsung will gain insight into the changing behavior of consumers as the lines blur between the auto and mobile industries.

The acquisition pushes Samsung’s complicated relationship with Apple Inc. and Google parent Alphabet Inc. -- the South Korean company serves as both a partner and a rival -- into a new arena. Apple, Google and technology upstarts such as Tesla Motors Inc. and Uber Technologies Inc. are all trying to reshape the auto industry and have been working on self-driving cars.

Samsung will now have a place among names like Denso Corp., a major supplier to Toyota Motor Co., German mega-supplier Robert Bosch GmbH and Sweden’s Autoliv Inc., a safety-components supplier that has benefited from troubles caused by rival Takata Corp.’s air-bag recalls.

For Samsung, the acquisition of Harman is a rare megadeal for a sprawling company that has long preferred to develop its own technologies in-house.

Samsung doesn’t plan to make cars itself, according to people familiar with executives’ thinking, but the company sees automotive technology, and the broader shift toward connected, driverless vehicles, as a promising growth area to sell more of its semiconductors, display panels and mobile services.

As part of the deal, which is subject to approval by Harman shareholders, Harman will remain an independent subsidiary of the technology giant. Samsung will pay $112 a share in cash for Harman, which generated roughly $700 million in net profit on $7 billion of revenue last year. Harman’s shares traded up 25% Monday morning at $109.92.

Apple Secures Permit to Test Autonomous Vehicles in California

Permit allows Apple to test self-driving cars on public roads in the largest U.S. state

April 14, 2017

Apple Inc. on Friday secured a permit for​​autonomous-vehicle testing in California, the clearest sign to date of progress in the company’s secretive efforts to develop self-driving car technology.

The permit, awarded by California’s Department of Motor Vehicles, is Apple’s first for autonomous cars and allows it to test drive vehicles on public roads in the largest U.S. state by population, adding it to a list of rivals that includes Google parent Alphabet Inc. and Tesla Inc. The move indicates Apple is going beyond testing on private tracks and in simulators as it works to improve artificial-intelligence systems that must learn to interact in the unpredictable world of human drivers.

The Apple permit covers three 2015 Lexus sport-utility vehicles, which would be retrofitted with hardware and software to be used in autonomous mode. It also covers six human operators who must sit behind the wheel to monitor the driving and take over when needed, according to the DMV.

An Apple spokesman on Friday declined to comment on the permit and referred to a statement it issued in December, when the letter to regulators became public, that said the company is investing in machine learning and autonomous systems.

The letter—which said Apple was making those investments for many purposes “including transportation”—suggested Apple was focusing on software that would control a self-driving car. That aligned with other signs that Apple’s car effort had shifted from building a car to designing an autonomous-driving system. Last summer, for instance, Apple eliminated some positions on Project Titan focused on car development and added software-focused staff.

Putting test vehicles on public roads opens Apple to more scrutiny than it is accustomed to when developing products. California requires companies with autonomous-car testing permits to file public reports about their efforts, including crash information and the number of times their human operators have to take over from the computer.

Tim Cook Says Apple Focused on Autonomous Systems in Cars Push

June 13, 2017

After years toiling away in secret on a car project, Apple Inc. Chief Executive Officer Tim Cook has for the first time elaborated on the company’s plans in the automotive market.

“We’re focusing on autonomous systems,” Cook said in a June 5 interview on Bloomberg Television that amounted to his most detailed comments yet on Apple’s automotive plans. “It’s a core technology that we view as very important.” He likened the effort to “the mother of all AI projects,” saying it’s “probably one of the most difficult AI projects to work on.”

The prospect of self-driving cars has seen a slew of technology companies push into the auto industry, according to McKinsey & Co. Alphabet Inc.’s Waymo unit has signed partnerships with Fiat Chrysler Automobiles NV and Lyft Inc. to develop the technology. And carmakers from BMW AG to General Motors Co. have opened sizable Silicon Valley offices and dedicated hundreds of millions of dollars to acquire autonomous vehicle startups.

Apple had initially been seeking to build its own car, before recalibrating those ambitions last year to prioritize the underlying technology for autonomous driving, Bloomberg News reported. The iPhone maker had hired more than 1,000 engineers to work on Project Titan, as the car team is known internally, after it started in 2014.

Ballooning costs and headcount led to Apple veteran Bob Mansfield being given the reins of the team in 2016. Cook has never before openly outlined Apple’s plans, though public filings have surfaced in recent months that provided snapshots of Apple’s efforts.

The iPhone maker secured a permit from the California Department of Motor Vehicles in April to test three self-driving sports-utility vehicles, photos of which emerged several weeks later. A half-dozen vehicles had been surreptitiously testing the autonomous technology on public roads in and around the San Francisco Bay area for at least a year, according to someone familiar with Project Titan. Apple spokesman Tom Neumayr declined to comment on how long the company has been conducting road tests.

In December, Steve Kenner, Apple’s director of product integrity, penned a letter to the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration revealing the company’s interest in automotive technology. It became public when it was published on a federal website. In the letter, Kenner wrote about the company’s excitement surrounding the potential for automated systems in fields like transportation.

“There is a major disruption looming there,” Cook said on Bloomberg Television, citing self-driving technology, electric vehicles and ride-hailing. “You’ve got kind of three vectors of change happening generally in the same time frame.”

Cook was also bullish about the prospects for electric vehicles, a market which last week helped Tesla Inc. become the world’s fourth-biggest carmaker by market capitalization, even as it ranks well outside the top 10 by unit sales.

“It’s a marvelous experience not to stop at the filling station or the gas station,” Cook said.

Apple invested $1 billion last year in Didi Chuxing, the biggest Chinese ride-hailing service. The announcement came soon after Mansfield took over Project Titan and set about cutting hundreds of engineers. Whereas Apple had initially been building its own car, Mansfield scrapped those plans in favor of building an autonomous driving system. The company will make a decision on whether to proceed with the push later this year, the people said at the time.

“Apple has long been the wild card in the autonomous car game,” said Michelle Krebs, executive analyst for Autotrader. “Now we know Apple is all in, and, judging by its track record in other areas, it will be a force. Apple’s strategy to commercialize autonomous vehicles remains to be seen -- will they partner and sell the technology or actually develop their own vehicles?”

In the interview on Bloomberg Television, Cook was hesitant to disclose whether Apple will ultimately manufacture its own car. "We’ll see where it takes us," Cook said. "We’re not really saying from a product point of view what we will do."

Apple just dismissed more than 200 employees from Project Titan, its autonomous vehicle group

Thurs, Jan 24, 2019

Apple dismissed just over 200 employees this week from Project Titan, its stealthy autonomous vehicle group, people familiar with the matter told CNBC.

An Apple spokesperson acknowledged the lay-offs and said the company still sees opportunity in the space:

“We have an incredibly talented team working on autonomous systems and associated technologies at Apple. As the team focuses their work on several key areas for 2019, some groups are being moved to projects in other parts of the company, where they will support machine learning and other initiatives, across all of Apple,” the spokesperson said.

“We continue to believe there is a huge opportunity with autonomous systems, that Apple has unique capabilities to contribute, and that this is the most ambitious machine learning project ever,” they added.

In August 2018, Apple enlisted a Tesla engineering vice president and Apple veteran, Doug Field, to lead the Titan team alongside Bob Mansfield. This week’s dismissals from the group were seen, internally, as anticipated restructuring under the relatively new leadership.

Other employees who were impacted by the restructuring of Project Titan are staying at Apple, but moving to different parts of the company.

Of late, Apple CEO Tim Cook has touted his company’s initiatives in health as the key to its future growth. “I believe, if you zoom out into the future, and you look back, and you ask the question, “What was Apple’s greatest contribution to mankind?” it will be about health,” Cook told CNBC’s Jim Cramer.

Meanwhile, Apple executives have remained mum in recent months on the company’s car prospects, which appear to have been scaled back from the initial rumored vehicle to a focus on software. In 2016, Apple laid off employees from the same group, shifting its strategy. Fully self-driving cars remain experimental, even for major players in the field such as Waymo, Cruise and Tesla.

Apple has been testing Lexus SUVs equipped with its autonomous driving software out on the roads around Cupertino since April 2017, and for the first time, the company has filed a disengagement report with the DMV.

. . .

According to the data, Apple registered 871.65 disengagements per 1000 miles, with a disengagement approximately every 1.1 mile. For comparison's sake, Waymo, Google's autonomous vehicle arm, had 0.09 disengagements per 1000 miles with 11,154.3 miles per disengagement.

Apple's total number of disengagements was higher than any other company doing autonomous vehicle testing, suggesting Apple drivers need to take over for the self-driving vehicle more frequently than other companies as it works out kinks in the software.

Apple buys self-driving car startup Drive.ai

June 25, 2019

Apple said Tuesday it had acquired Mountain View self-driving startup Drive.ai, even as the smaller company told state officials it planned to close its business and lay off 90 workers by Friday in a permanent closure of its business.

Apple has hired dozens of hardware and software engineers from Drive.ai, according to news site Axios, in what appears to be part of a renewed effort by the iPhone and Mac maker to branch out into self-driving cars.

Five former Drive.ai employees have changed their LinkedIn profiles to say they left Drive.ai in June and joined Apple the same month. Four of those workers list “special projects” in their job titles. Those employees include data, systems and software engineers.

Drive.ai sought to distinguish itself by making kits to turn regular cars into autonomous ones and sought headline-grabbing deals to put its cars to work, though it’s not clear how many of its partnerships turned into reality.

Adrian Fine, director of communications and policy at Drive.ai, declined to comment on the closure. A spokeswoman from Apple confirmed that Apple had purchased the company outright but did not answer other questions about the deal. It is not clear, for example, if CEO Bijit Halder, who still lists Drive.ai as his employer on LinkedIn but whose job was listed as subject to elimination in a notice Drive.ai filed with the state, will join Apple.

The company, which was last valued at around $200 million two years ago, argued that it was one of few futuristic ride services already serving the public.


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Founded in 1976 by three visionaries of the tech industry, Apple shifted to a different business model with the launch of the iPod in 2001. The biggest change of fortunes, however, came in 2007 when Steve Jobs took to the stage to demonstrate the iPhone to raving reviews from everybody.

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Despite a few lackluster moments in the post-Jobs era, the Cupertino-based giant headed by Tim Cook is doing great from a financial standpoint. Valued at more than a trillion dollars since August 2018, Apple passed the Saudi Arabian state-owned oil company in July 2020 as the world’s most valuable publicly-traded company. In other words, the iPhone and iPad maker has money to burn on projects that were unimaginable a decade ago.

“Titan” is the codename of an autonomous vehicle project that was entrusted in 2014 to a former Ford Motor Company engineer by the name of Steve Zadesky. Since then, rumors and official information combined to such an extent that nobody except for Tim Cook has the whole picture figured out.

According to Automotive News, people familiar with the matter suggest that 2024 is when the mystery vehicle is planned to enter production. Two sources further claim that the Apple Car may be pushed into 2025, which is pretty understandable if you remember that the health crisis isn’t over yet.

Just like the iPhone, the car is understood to be manufactured by an outside company. Automakers do this as well, including BMW and Toyota. Lest we forget, the Z4 and GR Supra sports cars are built in Austria by Magna Steyr.

In addition to fully autonomous features that would make even the Cruise Origin blush with admiration, the vehicle is said to use a monocell battery design. According to people in the know, this layout bulks up individual cells and frees up space by eliminating pouches and modules.

That’s a very tall order and an ambiguous description as well, but then again, Project Titan has been notoriously opaque to outsiders like you and me since day one. Apple is reportedly examining the chemistry for the battery right now, which means that a lot may change by 2024 or 2025.

Lithium iron phosphate (LFP) appears to be the most favored outcome because it's less prone to overheat than other lithium-ion batteries. Tesla has recently embraced this chemistry for the China-built Model 3 Standard Range Plus electric sedan, but there are a few problems with it.

While it may be more affordable than nickel cobalt aluminum (NCA), batteries that utilize lithium iron phosphate are less energy dense and weigh more. Oh, and by the way, LFP batteries also charge slower and have shorter lifespans.

Previous to this report, Taiwanese sources told the Economic Daily News that Apple may reveal the autonomous vehicle in the third quarter of 2021.

Apple's autonomous vehicle testing program saw a significant drawdown in 2019, with its fleet driving 72,201 miles less than it did in 2018. The company also appears to have changed its disengagement reporting protocol, information commonly used to gauge system efficacy.

According to numbers submitted by Apple to California's Department of Motor Vehicles, 23 of the company's 69 registered self-driving testbeds were active between December 2018 and November 2019. Collectively, the fleet of modified Lexus RX450h SUVs logged 7,544 miles during the reporting period, down from 79,754 miles in 2018.

Apple reported 64 disengagements across the 7,544 miles driven, which equates to 8.48 disengagements per 1,000 miles. This compares to a whopping 69,510 disengagements, or 871.65 disengagements per 1,000 miles, recorded in 2018. At the time, Apple's system was reported, on a disengagements-by-mile basis, as the worst-performing test platform in California. By contrast, then-front runner Waymo managed 0.09 disengagements per 1,000 miles over the same evaluation period.

While the improvement seems impressive, it should be noted that disengagement reporting is not a hard science. Typically, disengagements are defined as instances in which a self-driving vehicle's autonomous systems are unable to process current conditions, forcing it to pass control back to the human driver. Human interventions also count as disengagements.

As explained by Apple in a letter to California's DMV last year, the company in 2018 took a "conservative" approach to disengagements that required "drivers to proactively take manual control of the vehicle any time the system encounters a scenario beyond our currently proven abilities." Further, the company said its "software self-monitors and returns control back to the driver when it encounters any errors or issues during operation."

The letter implies Apple's built-in threshold for failure is, or at least was, much less tolerant than competing systems, a thesis was borne out in total disengagement figures recorded during the period. From December 2017 through November 2018, the 47 other firms testing automated vehicles on California roads clocked a cumulative 3,040 disengagements over nearly 2 million logged miles.