Is Apple still building an Apple Car?
For a number of years it has been speculated that Apple is going to build a self-driving car. This project later weakened towards ‘autonomous systems’. However, there are increasing signs that a car is being worked on in secret. The newest pouch in the pouch: Doug Field, former VP hardware at Apple, returns to Apple after five years at Tesla .
Project Titan
After years of speculation halfway 2016 the rumors about the Apple Car more concretely, when Apple recalled Bob Mansfield from his retirement . He was going to lead the Project Titan, as Apple’s self-driving car is called internally. The project was ambitious : it looked, for example, at automatic doors that opened without sound and locks and an interior without pedals and steering wheel. Apple even tried to reinvent the wheel: spherical wheels would be much more efficient for sloping movements than lap.
But at the end of 2016 the New York Times reported that Project Titan had been put in the fridge and hundreds of employees had were out of service or transferred. Half a year later, Tim Cook abandoned that it focuses on autonomous systems – and that while Apple never exhausts future projects.
Developments Apple Car Continue
Maybe Tim Cook made the statement because it suits him well if the world thinks that Apple has the car by heart. In the meantime, the developments just continued. For example, Apple had a breakthrough with object recognition for self-driving cars and works together with the second largest battery manufacturer in the world to produce batteries for electric vehicles.
Doug Field: Apple – Tesla – Apple
The contracting of Doug Field is a new reason to believe that Project Titan is still in full development. Field worked until 2013 as Vice President of Mac hardware engineering – under Bob Mansfield. After five years as VP or engineering at Tesla, the world’s largest electric car manufacturer, he returns to Apple to work with Bob Mansfield again. Well, of course, one person does not say much, but it is the umpteenth signal. And as Apple expert John Gruber states : ‘Apple’s modus operandi is always to make the whole thing. Apple makes products, not parts. “ The road is still long, but there is another traffic light extra green.