WSJ: Apple’s Secret ‘Project Titan’ Has Hundreds Working on a Car

Okay, so it looks like Apple’s secret car ambitions are turning out to be a real ‘thing’—if we are to believe new details provided to the Wall Street Journal by anonymous sources. These people note Apple employees are working on a secret electric vehicle (one source said it’s not a self driving car):

Apple has several hundred employees working secretly toward creating an Apple-branded electric vehicle, according to people familiar with the matter. They said the project, code-named “Titan,” has an initial design of a vehicle that resembles a minivan, one of these people said.

People familiar with the matter say the size of the Project Titan’s teams suggest Apple is serious. Executives have flown to as far as Austria to meet with contract manufacturers of luxury cars, which includes Canadian ties—the Magna Steyr unit of Magna International.

Apple CEO Tim Cook reportedly approved the plan close to a year ago and put product design VP Steve Zadesky in charge, granted with the freedom to pursue a 1,000-person team and recruit employees from various parts of the company, says a source.

The team allegedly works in a private location miles away from Apple’s Cupertino headquarters, “researching different types of robotics, metals and materials consistent with automobile manufacturing.”

Rumours of Apple working on a car further snowballed earlier today when the Financial Times reported Apple had poached a high-profile executive from Mercedes-Benz, which the WSJ reported as Johann Jungwirth, the former president and chief executive of the latter’s North America R&D arm.

Earlier this week, a source told Business Insider Apple was planning a vehicle that would give Tesla a “run for its money”, while The Mac Observer noted its own source said the percentage chance Apple was building a car instead of car-related technology was at “80 percent”.

Okay, so is Apple really building a car? They probably have a tonne of secret projects in the works and with $178 billion in cash, surely a vehicle would be one of them. But when I read the part about its design that “resembles a minivan”—that pretty much said this thing is most likely in its extremely early stages.

What do you think? Are we even close to being ready for an iCar? How much would AppleCare for this vehicle cost?!

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