Apple trains staff for driverless car development

Apple Car: New boss named but car could be delayed

26 July

There's movement on the Apple Car front, reports the Wall Street Journal.

According to the newspaper, Apple has appointed a new chief to oversee its long-rumoured electric vehicle project. Bob Mansfield, a highly regarded former senior executive at the company, has played a central role in bringing the likes of the iPhone and MacBook Air to market.

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He now takes the reins of the "Project Titan" – the Apple car – following the departure Steve Zadesky earlier this year.

Mansfield first began working for Apple in 1999 and became one of its top executives. The International Business Times reports he left the company in 2013 to work on the "special projects" team, assisting on product lines such as the Apple Watch.

He was also a key figurehead during Steve Jobs's premiership of the company and made regular appearances during media keynote events and new product launches.

WSJ's report comes as rumours hit the web of Apple's car launching in 2021, a year later than many critics and insiders previously predicted.

The Drive says the challenges facing Apple as it enters the motor industry are a "magnitude more difficult than cranking out iPhones and MacBook Airs".

Talk of Apple building an EV have circulated for several years with very little in the way of cold, hard evidence – only dots to join.

Word points strongly to the company developing an all-electric car with some autonomous driving capabilities, similar to those that will produced by Tesla come the end of the decade.

Tesla boss Elon Musk has called the Apple Car an "open secret" given the amount of hearsay surrounding it and several notable Apple hires from the auto industry.

Apple invests $1bn in Chinese ride-sharing firm

13 May

Apple has invested $1bn (£693) in a Chinese ride-sharing firm Didi Chuxing, according to reports from Reuters.

The tech giant's "rare investment" is a move on chief executive Tim Cook's part, who wants to "better understand the critical Chinese market", adds the news agency.

It also gives Apple a stake in two technologies the company has long been rumoured to be pursuing – ride-sharing and automotive technology.

Didi Chuxing holds a greater market share in China than Uber and claims to provide more than 11 million rides a day, with an 87 per cent share of the market, reports the BBC.

In contrast, Uber "has been struggling to break into the Chinese market despite having won Chinese search engine Baidu as an investor". The US company is losing more than $1bn a year in the country, mostly down to huge sums spent on subsidised trips.

Apple has hit roadblocks in the Chinese market recently. Its most recent figures exposed the country as a weak spot, despite being its second-biggest market. The Movies and Books elements of Apple's iTunes service were recently banned in China, too.

Many see the move as the company diversifying its range of products and services given that its biggest seller – the iPhone – is beginning to stagnate and even decline, as investors warn of "peak iPhone" and a saturated smartphone market.

Inevitably, people are finding ways to link the new investment back to the much rumoured Apple Car, especially considering Cook's comments as he announced the new deal.

According to MacRumors, the chief executive said the company was focussing on Apple CarPlay, before adding: "That is what we do today in the car business, so we will have to see what the future holds."

Apple's car has previously been described as an "open secret" by Tesla Motors boss Elon Musk and Apple has reportedly been hiring many employees with strong automotive backgrounds in recent months.

Apple eyeing up 'large expanses of real estate' for AV project

06 May

Apple is looking to purchase "large expanses of real estate" in California for its long rumoured car project, a top San Francisco landlord told the Wall Street Journal.

They're not the only company searching for new premises, added Victor Coleman, the chief executive of one of California's largest real estate companies, Hudson Pacific. There was been a "definite movement" and a scramble for space and development facilities from companies known or rumoured to be developing autonomous cars, he said, citing interest from the likes of Google, Mercedes-Benz and Tesla as well as the Cupertino giant.

Apple is seeking around 800,000sq-ft of space to use as a facility to develop a car, while Google wants another 400,000sq-ft for its project, which has been in development since 2009.

The vast swathes of property being searched for is indicative of "Silicon Valley's growing importance in the auto industry", the WSJ adds.

While an 800,000sq-ft facility is large, it is dwarfed by some of the auto-plants and properties already owned by the companies. Tesla's Fremont base is 5.3 million sq-ft, while Apple's upcoming Apple Campus 2, which is set to open next year, is 2.8 million sq-ft. Google's Mountain View headquarters is also 5.3 million sq-ft - and both companies lease millions more.

MacRumors adds more, bringing up a former Pepsi plant Apple is rumoured to have leased, along with several buildings bought and rented by the company which have been named after various Greek mythological figures, fitting in with the heavily rumoured "Project Titan" title of its autonomous vehicle plan.

At the moment, properties and facilities linked to the Apple Car seem to be the most popular rumours. Last month, a secret Berlin lab was reported in the German press and then picked up by international media.

Apple Car: BMW and Daimler ditch Apple tie-up

21 April

Automotive big guns BMW and Daimler – the parent company of Mercedes-Benz – have reportedly left Apple out in the cold over a possible manufacturing tie-up for the California tech giant's long rumoured electric car project.

Initially reported by the German news website Handelsblatt, "industry sources" told the publication that the three companies have ended talks, with Apple unable to secure a deal and a possible manufacturing partner – something critics say the tech giant will desperately need given the firm has no experience in vehicle production.

The fallout is said to be over data. Apple wants deep iCloud integration into the car, while BMW and Daimler "have made customer data protection a key element of their future strategy". There were also misgivings about which company would lead the project, leading to deadlock, claims the report.

The story is linked to a separate leak regarding Apple's motor industry ambitions from earlier this week. The same Berlin facility previously reported to be a hub for the Apple Car is said to be in charge of the search for a German automotive manufacturing partner.

According to The Verge, Apple CEO Tim Cook visited BMW's Munich headquarters last year, and soon after, talks between the two companies ended.

MacRumors adds that rumours last year suggested that Apple could be interested in BMW's i3 as the basis of its electric car project, but with talks seemingly over, the company may have to move on.

As previously reported, the Austrian company Magna Steyr now looks like the frontrunner to become Apple's manufacturing partner for any car project it has up its sleeves. In the view of TechCrunch, with "top-shelf cred, less brand jealousy and probably less-demanding terms, Magna sounds like a good match for a well-heeled dilettante like Apple".

Apple Car project poaches top Tesla engineer

20 April

Apple has hired one of Tesla's top car engineers to work on its "special projects," claims a report in Electrek.

Chris Porritt, who was vice president of vehicle engineering at Elon Musk's company, is said to have taken up a senior post within "Project Titan", which many believe is the codename for the Apple Car development programme.

The move, if true, strongly suggests Apple is seriously stepping up its efforts to develop an electric vehicle.

News that the company may have taken on a top automotive figure links in with rumours of a big departure from the firm back in January, when a report claimed that Steve Zadesky, who was believed to have been leading Project Titan, had left, inflicting a big blow on the scheme.

Zadesky leaving Apple would place new arrival Porritt in the position of being one of the company's most senior automotive engineers "and a likely candidate to lead the Cupertino company's electric car initiative", says Electrek.

As the International Business Times points out, Tesla and Apple are two companies with a history of "cross-pollination". Many of Musk's former employees find work at the tech giant and vice versa. Indeed, the Tesla chief jokingly called Apple a "Tesla graveyard" last year.

Porritt's departure came a few months ago, but reports of him joining Apple have only now spread to the internet. He had been chief engineer at Aston Martin before joining Tesla in 2013, overseeing projects such as the firm's limited-edition One-77 and other iconic models.

According to Road & Track, his latest move is "encouraging news for auto enthusiasts".

"If Apple is indeed working on some kind of automobile, with Porritt at the lead, we can hopefully take comfort in the assumption that it will have decent driving dynamics," it says.

Apple Car 'secret lab' reported in Berlin

18 April

Tesla chief executive Elon Musk may have called Apple's long rumoured plans to enter the automotive industry an "open secret", but one German publication says the company is still keeping its plans very much behind closed doors.

A report published by Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung, picked up by reliable Apple dedicated sites such as AppleInsider, cites sources as saying the tech giant is running a clandestine operation in the German capital related to its long-rumoured car.

According to the report, Apple has between 15 to 20 people working at the shadow laboratory - "young professionals" from various strains of the German motor industry, with backgrounds in areas ranging from automotive engineering, software development, hardware and sales.

They're described as "progressive thinkers" and a collective of employees who otherwise would be held back by managers at more traditional, mainstream car manufacturers.

AppleInsider says the group operates the facility as "an incubator for ideas on future vehicles", paying particular attention to potential manufacturing tie-ups, legal issues and sales concerns among other matters.

The report also hints at what to expect if Apple releases a car. It echoes previous rumours that it will be all-electric, but self-driving capabilities may not be on the itinerary just yet – the technology needs more time to mature and Apple typically goes late to market on many of its electronics offerings.

The company is said to be looking into unconventional ownership models, too. It's reported that it is looking into a car-sharing platform similar to BMW's DriveNow electric car-sharing service.

There's even some alleged manufacturing details. It's said that Apple will make use of Magna Steyr's Vienna facility, a factory currently producing cars for Mini and Mercedes-Benz.

Despite rumours of the German lab, MacRumors still asserts that the majority of the car's development is happening under the watchful eye of executives in California, where hundreds of employees are said to be working at an Apple-leased facility.

However, 9 to 5 Mac adds it's "no surprise" that Apple could be considering Germany or Austria for the car's production after research and development is complete, "the region being home to many premium automotive brands including Audi, BMW, Mercedes, and Porsche".

Apple Car 'exclusive' panned by critics

15 April

While producing speculative renders for Apple's next iPhone handset is a favourite with the tech media, daring to reveal the Apple Car is not.

This week, US magazine Motor Trend spent time hyping what it claimed to be an Apple Car "exclusive", leading some to believe the publication had legitimate details and possibly pictures of the company's long rumoured electric vehicle.

Instead, says Jalopnik, all tech lovers were treated to was a "bad, desperate publicity stunt".

The magazine got together with several designers and technology experts to create a speculative render of Apple's reported entry into the auto industry and pushed it during a long, targeted social media campaign.

Both the "exclusive" and the image of the car have been heavily criticised.

According to The Verge, Motor Trend "deserves a lot of ribbing" for spending a "full day on Twitter teasing that it had some sort of Apple Car scoop" when in reality there "isn't a modicum of actual information about Apple's plans".

Slate says that the Apple car – if the company is indeed planning to release one – "is in trouble" if it resembles the Motor Trend rendering, the bronzed, autonomous pod on wheels looking as if it has been "designed by some people at a college in Pasadena, rather than by Apple".

9 to 5 Mac was equally scathing. "They’ve effectively just taken design cues from the iPhone, slapped some wheels on it and called it a car," says the site, highlighting that the car even has a line mimicking the antenna bands found on the iPhone 6 handsets. They add that this could have been an interesting speculative piece if done well.

In response, Motor Trend has recognised the hostile reaction, saying that when Apple eventually does bring a car to market, it should be just as controversial as the magazine's attempts to uncover it.