The iCar is Coming

(Macrumors image)

Reuters reports that Apple is moving ahead with its long-rumoured self-driving car:

Apple Inc is moving forward with self-driving car technology and is targeting 2024 to produce a passenger vehicle that could include its own breakthrough battery technology, people familiar with the matter told Reuters.

The iPhone maker’s automotive efforts, known as Project Titan, have proceeded unevenly since 2014 when it first started to design its own vehicle from scratch. At one point, Apple drew back the effort to focus on software and reassessed its goals. Doug Field, an Apple veteran who had worked at Tesla Inc, returned to oversee the project in 2018 and laid off 190 people from the team in 2019.

Since then, Apple has progressed enough that it now aims to build a vehicle for consumers, two people familiar with the effort said, asking not to be named because Apple’s plans are not public. Apple’s goal of building a personal vehicle for the mass market contrasts with rivals such as Alphabet Inc’s Waymo, which has built robo-taxis to carry passengers for a driverless ride-hailing service.

Central to Apple’s strategy is a new battery design that could “radically” reduce the cost of batteries and increase the vehicle’s range, according to a third person who has seen Apple’s battery design.

Personally, I'm most excited about injecting a fresh list of car-naming possibiities, e.g., golden delicious, honeycrisp, etc.

Mary Kay could award its top performers Pink Ladies instead of Pink Cadillacs, the Fuji and Rome models are tailor-named for overseas markets, and the Granny Smith would be perfect for elderly conservative (not in a political sense) drivers.

From a practical standpoint what's been holding me and other buyers back from buying an electric vehicle has been the limited range and the possibility of being stuck in the middle of nowhere without being able to recharge. Apple is smart enough to know that it should not be entering the highly competitive automobile market unless it had a technological advantage, like something "that could 'radically' reduce the cost of batteries and increase the vehicle’s range."

Yes....you wouldn't want to see your Apple run out of juice.