Skip to main content

Apple Has Hundreds Working On An Electric Car Design, Says WSJ



Apple is working on a car, according to the Wall Street Journal. The Mac maker kicked off a top-secret project to develop an electric car with a minivan aesthetic, per the WSJ’s sources, after CEO Tim Cook approved the project nearly a year ago. It includes “hundreds” of staffers and is led by Ford Motor vet and Apple VP Steve Zadesky. The project involves research into battery tech, robotics and metal production, according to the paper.

The report comes hot on the heels of a Financial Times story confirming Apple R&D efforts around car tech, and goes further than either that report or an earlier one from Business Insider wherein an Apple employee reportedly confirmed some kind of car-focused project. As I wrote earlier, it makes perfect logical sense that Apple would focus some effort on this area, given the direction in which the tech industry in general is headed.

Apple has allotted for as many as 1,000 people to work on the project, according to the newest report, and the team includes former Mercedez-Benz head of R&D Johann Jungwirth. The fact that Apple’s target in this case is an electric vehicle means earlier reports that it is seeking employees from Tesla (at the same time as Tesla is attempting to poach employees from Cupertino) make a lot of sense.

The WSJ, like the FT, reports that while design and research are underway, Apple still hasn’t decided on any kind of firm product release plans. Apple has also been rumored to have been working on various other product categories in the past, including an Apple television set, which never ended up as shipping products (or haven’t yet shipped, at least).

That isn’t to say Apple will never make a car, but the fact remains that this would be a dramatic departure from the company’s core business, with huge risk involved in actually shipping anything and at this point, it’s unclear how much they’d stand to gain from such a move.

Gross margins on the iPhone range fall just under 50 percent, according to analyst estimates, and Elon Musk has promised (but not necessarily achieved) a 25 percent gross margin on every vehicle. Still, Apple has a track record of achieving premiums unheard of at competitors, so it is conceivable it could find success in the luxury car space, given its expertise with supply-chain management.

Apple also stands to make big gains in a number of other areas even if it ultimately doesn’t ship any cars – research into making a vehicle includes research about how to build software for a car, and has benefits with regards to battery and materials tech. Money spent on R&D for a car (especially an EV), therefore, even if you don’t ship a car, doesn’t go to waste.

One more thing: With the Apple Watch, Apple is clearly interested in seeing how it can extend its reputation and a premium device-maker into other categories, and it’s approaching that market as a fashion brand rather than as a straightforward gadget-maker. Car research could be another step in the same direction, with Apple exploring how its brand might translate to premium goods beyond just the home computing market.
Labels:

Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

How To Hide Text In Microsoft Word 2007, Reveal It & Protect It

Sometimes what we hide is more important than what we reveal. Especially, documents with sensitive information, some things are supposed to be ‘for some eyes only’. Such scenarios are quite common, even for the more un-secretive among us. You want to show someone a letter composed in MS Word, but want to keep some of the content private; or it’s an official letter with some part of it having critical data. As important as these two are, the most common use could involve a normal printing job. Many a time we have to print different versions of a document, one copy for one set of eyes and others for other sets. Rather than creating multiple copies and therefore multiple printing jobs, what if we could just do it from the same document?  That too, without the hassle of repeated cut and paste. We can, with a simple feature in MS Word – it’s just called Hidden and let me show you how to use it to hide text in Microsoft Word 2007. It’s a simple single click process. Open the docum...
1 comment
Read more

Build Your Own Awesome Personal 3D Avatar with Avatara

Do you use social networks and want to build your own awesome 3D avatar? Maybe you want to send someone a cute cuddly image of yourself (kind of)? Or maybe you have your own ideas of what you would do with an Avatar… Well look no further than Avatara which I discovered from the MakeUseOf directory . You can create 3d avatars out of pre-set up templates or create your own from scratch. To start, visit Avatara’s homepage . You will see this screen: Click Get Started to umm, get started! That will take you to this screen: You see that you can build your own Avatar using an uploaded head shot like the Obama one above (just an example, guys). Or roll with one of their awesome avatars. I chose to start with a blank avatar by clicking Start with a blank avatar at the bottom of the screen. That takes you to here: I clicked on the filter at the top and told it to filter out everything but male characters and then I saw this: I rolled with Buck and continued. You need to click Select...
1 comment
Read more

Ex-Skypers Launch Virtual Whiteboard Deekit

Although seriously long in the tooth and being disrupted by a plethora of startups, for many years Skype has existed as an almost ubiquitous app in any remote team’s toolkit. So it seems apt that a new startup founded by a team of ex-Skype employees is set to tackle another aspect of online collaboration. Deekit, which exits private beta today, is a virtual and collaborative whiteboard to help remote teams work smarter. The Tallinn, Estonia-based startup is headed up by founder and CEO, Kaili Kleemeier, who was previously a Head of Operations at Skype. She and three colleagues quit the Internet calling giant in 2012 and spent a year researching ideas in the remote team space. They ended up focusing on creating a new virtual whiteboard, born out of Kleemeier’s experience collaborating with technical teams remotely, specifically helping Skype deal with incident management. “Working with remote teams has been a challenge in many ways – cultural differences, language differences, a...
Post a Comment
Read more