Apple Ramps Up Efforts On Electric Car For 2019 Release

Apple has made a hiring and R&D push to get the Apple Car on the road by 2019.

It looks like the Apple Car has been given permission to push even harder for an earlier release date. According to an article just published by the Wall Street Journal earlier today (Sept. 21, 2015) “Consumer-electronics maker aims to finalize first vehicle in 2019.” Sources within Apple have designated Project Titan (as it’s called unofficially” the title “committed project” as well as setting a ship date for 2019. This decision came after more than a couple of months of investigating just how feasible an Apple Car could be which has resulted in a hiring binge by Apple that sees close to 1,800 people working on the project.

The WSJ article did raise some interesting questions worth asking. First, no one really knows how exactly Apple will go about manufacturing their Apple Car. Unlike their iPhones which is made by their manufacturing partner in Taiwan, few cars are made by this form of contract manufacturing. Then there’s the ship date of 2019 which is an ambitious deadline even for car manufacturers. And the market for electric cars isn’t entirely friendly with gas prices so cheap. But that line of thinking is quite shortsighted as gas prices fluctuate more than the stock market on any given day. Tightening of emissions standards does bode well for an electric car project as many automakers have dumped plenty of R&D money into EV alternatives of their most popular vehicles. The Frankfurt Motor show in Germany was testament to that with Porsche’s Mission-E and Audi’s Q6 E-Tron.

Cult of Mac does raise an interesting tidbit of information that might blow the cover on one of the biggest easter eggs by Apple of all time as this WSJ article could just be a giant smoke screen for the real details.

"For all those reporters and business analysts combing through public records looking for clues, Novotney’s LinkedIn profile offers a welcome laugh. It lists his title as “VP Program Management at Apple,” which is typically vague for Cupertino, and says he’s worked on various iPods.The joke comes in the summary section of the profile, which reads: “Proven innovator with strong technical/management background and extensive experience in driving technologies and products to market.” (Emphasis ours.)"