Over the past decade, Apple has become a tech giant annually spouting out new gadgets that people use in every aspect of their lives. Everyone has seen the iPod, iPhone, iPad, iHome, Apple watch, and MacBook, but now there is a new creation brewing in the depths of Apple’s ‘creativity factory’ that we may not have seen coming: an electric car.
This vehicle, currently under the moniker ‘Project Titan,’ began surfacing on the internet as a rumor in early 2015 when a source claimed that Apple had been considering the idea for a while. Later, it was found that Steve Jobs himself thought of building a car in 2008, but later changed his mind in favor of developing the iPhone.
Over the past year and a half, the evidence pointing to Apple’s decision to develop an electric vehicle has only become more convicting. In a statement, Tesla CEO Elon Musk said that it was an “open secret” that Apple was building an electric car and even said that Apple has hired more than a thousand automobile engineers.
Even with the prospect of a new competitor on the market, Musk along with the head of Mercedes-Benz, Dieter Zetsche, don’t seem too concerned about Apple joining the playing field.
“If there were a rumour that Mercedes or Daimler planned to start building smartphones,” Zetsche told Australian publication Motoring, “then [Apple] would not be sleepless at night. And the same applies to me.”
Ex-CEO of General Motors, Dan Akerson, seems to have a similar opinion on the matter.
“A lot of people who don’t ever operate in it don’t understand and have a tendency to underestimate [the development process],” he said in a telephone interview with Bloomberg.
Apple is believed to be operating ‘Project Titan’ under a shell company called SixtyEight Research in Sunnyvale, California, where they purchased a variety of real estate that seemed to fit the bill for building a car.
For now, not much is known of the mysterious Apple automobile project, but it’ll be interesting to watch Apple introduce itself into another highly competitive industry. It’ll be even more interesting to watch them succeed—or crash and burn.
