Reports Suggest Apple Is Building Tesla-Fighting Electric Car
It’s not just any electric car that Apple is reportedly designing in secret. Apple has built an empire with its design prowess and – if it really is the entering electronic vehicle market – the company best known for its smartphones will face an equally design-conscious and well-established competitor in Tesla. Under these circumstances it only makes sense that Apple is pulling out all the stops to build a marketing-busting electric, uh, minivan.
That’s the word on the street, anyway, and by that we mean the Wall Street Journal. Apple is known for keeping product development secrets better than traditionally leaky tech companies, so there is a lot about the vehicle that is a mystery. For one thing, the car is reported to be minivan shaped – there’s no confirmation that the vehicle will actually be meant to cart around the little league team. And how likely is a minivan, even a marvel of engineering and design – as any Apple product must be – to carry the codename Titan?
Tesla Model S
What is known is that Apple considered building a car long before it released the first iPhone (while Steve Jobs was at the helm) and it has brought in employees from the auto industry, including Steve Zadesky, who came to Apple by way of Ford more than 15 years ago. More recently, Apple and Tesla have engaged in a small employee-poaching war, in which Tesla founder and CEO Elon Musk has claimed victory, telling Bloomberg Businessweek, “Apple tries very hard to recruit from Tesla. But so far they’ve actually recruited very few people.”
As intriguing as an Applemobile is, the rumored project may never see the light of day. Apple sometimes starts projects in secret and then shelves them – as seems to have happened to the electronic car idea once already. But here’s hoping that there’s more to it this time around.
That’s the word on the street, anyway, and by that we mean the Wall Street Journal. Apple is known for keeping product development secrets better than traditionally leaky tech companies, so there is a lot about the vehicle that is a mystery. For one thing, the car is reported to be minivan shaped – there’s no confirmation that the vehicle will actually be meant to cart around the little league team. And how likely is a minivan, even a marvel of engineering and design – as any Apple product must be – to carry the codename Titan?
Tesla Model S
What is known is that Apple considered building a car long before it released the first iPhone (while Steve Jobs was at the helm) and it has brought in employees from the auto industry, including Steve Zadesky, who came to Apple by way of Ford more than 15 years ago. More recently, Apple and Tesla have engaged in a small employee-poaching war, in which Tesla founder and CEO Elon Musk has claimed victory, telling Bloomberg Businessweek, “Apple tries very hard to recruit from Tesla. But so far they’ve actually recruited very few people.”
As intriguing as an Applemobile is, the rumored project may never see the light of day. Apple sometimes starts projects in secret and then shelves them – as seems to have happened to the electronic car idea once already. But here’s hoping that there’s more to it this time around.
