Apple reportedly looking to enter electric car market by 2019
Apple could be driving its way into the electric car market by 2019, according to a report in the Wall Street Journal.
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The newspaper said that Apple is designating it internally as a “committed project” and looks to ship at 2019. The technology company spent more than a year investigating an Apple branded car, and even met with government officials in California.
While Google looks into self-driving cars, people familiar with the Apple project (code-named Titan) say the plan was not to make the car fully autonomous at this stage. Apple's only foray into the automotive industry so far has been CarPlay, a dashboard operating system that works with the iPhone.
UBS’ initial reaction to the news was one of some concern, but the broker is withholding judgement until more details are fleshed out.
Analyst Steven Milunovich said there were some reasons for Apple to enter the auto market, including that the business needs large consumer markets to fuel growth.
He also pointed out that the opportune time is approaching for Apple, “given the two disruptions of electric vehicles and autonomous driving”.
Apple will also be wanting to make it integrate with a raft of Apple products.
“Tim Cook has referred to "iOS everywhere" while Jeff Williams said that "the car is the ultimate mobile device," and arguably Apple's designers can improve on the customer experience while loading it with Apple products (especially in autonomous driving), said Milunovich.
However he warns that Apple has plenty of electrical engineers but not mechanical engineers, and that the company’s product cycles are long.
“Apple's brand is fantastic but might not stretch enough to include cars. Electric cars essentially are software and batteries - Apple knows software but batteries are on an anti-Moore's Law curve of a about 5% improvement.”
The report comes on the back of another iPhone and iPad product launch earlier this month, in which the tech giant unveiled the iPhone 6S, the IPad Pro, a new Apple TV system, and iOS9.