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Could we see an electric car from Apple in 2019?

Apple may be breaking into the electric automotive industry as soon as 2019, as “sources familiar with the matter” have told The Wall Street Journal.

This drive to put electric-powered rubber on the road comes from an internal project codenamed ‘Titan”. Apple has given the project the go ahead to triple its already 600-strong workforce. This would mean that close to 1 800 employees would be tasked with creating the vehicle.

Several automotive industry pros are already part of the project, including Doug Betts, a motoring industry veteran of 30 years  and a former executive at Fiat Chrysler.

By all accounts, Apple’s serious about its plans for releasing an electric car. In May it met with an official from GoMentum Station – a testing ground for driverless cars, and in August a lawyer from Apple met with California officials to discuss self-driving cars.

Both meetings point towards the Apple car being driverless, but The Wall Street Journal’s source says that the first car Apple plans to ship won’t be fully autonomous, but “is part of the product’s long-term plans”.

Creating a new vehicle and ensuring it makes it through the numerous hurdles to become a roadworthy, marketable vehicle in just four years seems like a daunting task. However, the most well-known electric car company, Tesla Motors, was founded in 2003 and managed to ship a limited number of prototype Roadsters only three years later in 2006.

In addition, Apple’s projected “ship date” may simply refer to a time in which the engineers working on the project finalise the car’s features and send it to the next stage of the creation process.

[Source – The Wall Street Journal, Image – Unoffical concept art by menithings]

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