Apple Car takes serious steps
- May 23
The almost mythical project of Apple Car has been in development at least since 2015, when its internal code name "Project Titan" first surfaced.
At that time, Business Insider managed to find out that about 600 Apple employees were allegedly assigned to the project, and that the company began to hire key employees from Tesla and other leading automobile companies. To this was added news about the Dodge Caravans roaming in San Francisco, also in 2015, equipped with Lidar and cameras on the roof, which, as CBS News found out, were registered on Apple.
However, the Titan project was not smooth, and failures occurred over the past years. In 2016, the former head of the Apple design for Joni Iv, as they say, had an audit of the Project Titan and his team, which by that time had more than 1000 employees (via Apple Insider). Steve Poskeski, one of the Apple leaders, who until that moment led the project, left the company, while Aiva’s review, apparently, led to the freezing of hiring. Apple veteran Bob Mansfield was designed to try to correct the problems (via WSJ), but by the end of 2016 it seemed that the Titan project could be canceled in favor of focusing exclusively on self -movement technology. As a result, the project was reported, and several key people left the team. Then new ups and downs followed, but by 2020 the Project Titan project was resumed as a full -fledged automobile project, which we reported in 2021.
Even when the Apple Car project, it would seem, returned to the right direction and was ready to produce an electric car with potentially full capabilities of independent driving, the project team continued to lose key members in competing automobile companies, at least judging by the information that leaked over time. The most noticeable of them was Dag Fild, a former Apple Vice-President for Mac, which was hired from Tesla and eventually became the fourth of the Apple Car project over the past six years, only in order to leave Apple again. Field left the company to lead the Ford efforts to develop EV technology. Hoping that everything will work like a clock, Apple appointed Kevin Lynch to this position, who headed work on Apple Watch software, as Bloomberg reports.
Lynch clearly intends to stabilize the project, and it was completely clear that Apple was still aimed at creating a full-fledged car, recently hiring Desi Uikashevich, a 31-year-old Ford veteran, which was also first reported by Bloomberg. Profile Uikashevich in LinkedIn shows that it is a highly qualified engineer who headed various global Ford engineering teams in areas such as interior design, chassis design, exterior design and electric design. Her arrival in Apple is the most powerful sign in recent years, indicating that the company stubbornly strives for the fact that the truck that it undoubtedly invests in the project led to the emergence of EV, which (I hope) will go on sale.
As Bloomberg notes, dozens of engineers from Tesla, Rivian, Waymo, Mercedes-Benz and Volvo recently joined in Uikashevich, which seems to be the last impetus for preparing the car for the market entering. Another exclusive Bloomberg material says that Apple is aimed at 2025, which means that by the time of entry into the market the car will be in active development for about ten years - unless, of course, this information is confirmed.
The long and difficult period of pregnancy, Apple Car, emphasizes how much it is more difficult to design and develop a car than consumer gadgets that Apple is most famous for. It is also unclear which company will produce an Apple car. As in the case of consumer equipment, which is "developed in California", but is produced in China, India and Vietnam, Apple does not own factories that could produce a car.
This means that Apple will inevitably have to cooperate with another automaker to bring your Apple Car to the market. Numerous Apple negotiations with auto manufacturers were reported that could lead to partnership, but at the time of writing an article about the transaction, nothing is known. If the Apple Car will ultimately enter the market, as expected, it will become the embodiment of a dream that goes back to the deceased Steve Jobs, a fan of Mercedes-Benz, who has long carried ambition to create his own car for his company.
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