Apple Speeds Up Electric-Car Work

Posted: September 21, 2015 | Author: Pundit Planet | Filed under: Mediasphere, Science & Technology, U.S. News | Tags: Apple Inc, Autonomous car, Battery (electricity), Electric car, Free trade zone, iPhone, Shanghai, Tesla Motors, The Wall Street Journal, Titan (Blizzard Entertainment project) |Leave a comment

Daisuke Wakabayashi reports: Apple Inc. is accelerating efforts to build an electric car, designating it internally as a “committed project” and setting a target ship date for 2019, according to people familiar with the matter.

The go-ahead came after the company spent more than a year investigating the feasibility of an Apple-branded car, including meetings with two groups of government officials in California. Leaders of the project, code-named Titan , have been given permission to triple the 600-person team, the people familiar with the matter said.

‘We look at a number of things along the way, and we decided to really put out energies in a few of them.’

—Tim Cook, Apple’s CEO

Apple has hired experts in driverless cars, but the people familiar with Apple’s plans said the Cupertino, Calif., company doesn’t currently plan to make its first electric vehicle fully autonomous. That capability is part of the product’s long-term plans, the people familiar with the matter said.

[Read the full story here, at WSJ]

Apple’s commitment is a sign that the company sees an opportunity to become a player in the automotive industry by applying expertise that it has honed in developing iPhones—in areas such as batteries, sensors and hardware-software integration—to the next generation of cars.

An Apple spokesman declined to comment.

There are many unanswered questions about Apple’s automotive foray. It isn’t clear whether Apple has a manufacturing partner to become the car equivalent of Hon Hai Precision Industry Co., the Taiwanese contract manufacturer that builds most iPhones and is known by the trade name Foxconn. Most major auto makers build and run their own factories, but that hasn’t been Apple’s strategy with iPhones or iPads. Contract manufacturing in the auto industry usually is limited to a few niche models.

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The 2019 target is ambitious. Building a car is a complex endeavor, even more so for a company without any experience. Once Apple completes its designs and prototypes, a vehicle would still need to undergo a litany of tests before it could clear regulatory hurdles.

In Apple’s parlance, a “ship date” doesn’t necessarily mean the date that customers receive a new product; it can also mean the date that engineers sign off on the product’s main features.

[Read the full text of Daisuke Wakabayashi‘s article here, at WSJ]

It isn’t uncommon for a project of this size and complexity to miss ship date deadlines. People familiar with the project said there is skepticism within the team that the 2019 target is achievable.

The global market for electric cars has been weak because of low gas prices and concerns about vehicle price and battery range. To date, Tesla Motors Inc. and Nissan Motor Co. sell two of the best-known and highest-volume battery-powered vehicles, but volumes are only a sliver of the industry’s 85 million annual vehicle sales.

Emissions standards are tightening around the world, however, leading most major car companies to invest billions of dollars in plans to launch electric cars between now and the end of the decade. By the time an Apple car would make its debut, brands spanning General Motors Co.’s Chevrolet to Volkswagen AG’s Audi and Porsche will have long-range electric vehicles aimed at the mass market.

Earlier this year, The Wall Street Journal reported that Apple had several hundred people investigating an electric vehicle with an initial design resembling a minivan.

Apple has ramped up hiring since then, pulling in…(read more)

Source: WSJ