Volkswagen’s top designer is looking to Apple for some design inspiration
Apple abandoned its plan to build its own car from the wheels up, but car fans might still see some Apple-inspired autos hitting highways by 2020. not be making its own car anymore, but you might still see some Apple-inspired cars on the road by 2020.
In a recent interview, VW head of design, Klaus Bischoff told reporters that his team is looking at Apple products on how to style is the first generation of electric cars. VW is aiming to bust out major profits when its first line of battery-powered vehicles launch publicly in 2020.
“We are currently redefining the Volkswagen values for the age of electrification,” Klaus Bischoff said in the interview. “What’s at stake is to be as significant, purist and clear as possible and also to visualize a completely new architecture.”
Apple has been the design leader in the arena of smartphones, tablets, personal computers and now smart speakers. While competitors like Samsung and Huawei are busy aping features from the iPhone, Apple has been setting the direction for design. Bischoff says he wants his company to do the same with cars.
VW has been a bit behind the market when it comes to electric vehicles. The company pushed its diesel for years before it was caught cheating emissions. Now VW is pledging to invest $42.45 billion into EVs and self-driving technology.
Buster Hein is a freelance writer who lives in Phoenix, Arizona. Twitter: @bst3r.
One response to “VW’s electric cars will be inspired by Apple design”
Folks, if originality is a salient nationalist, plagiarism is the insidious traitor.
Before you allude our dear Apple to the ‘esteemed’ automaker, VW, you may want to consider one Josef Ganz, the auto designer and maker who was a thorn in the side of Hitler and his friend, Ferdinand Porsche.
There is a documentary on Ganz in the making, the nuts and bolts of which may be uncomfortable and inconvenient to Apple. It’s a long story but a preamble to the movie may go like this:-
For a century Porsche embraced Hitler’s ruse and laughed with VW. They brushed off the Jew they stole from until hard evidence emerged in the biography. Seven years since the publication of Paul Schilperoord’s The Extraordinary Life of Josef Ganz, there has been no litigation, no denial, no admission, not even a forced laugh.
The beguiled and ‘proud’ owners of the brand are another story but the expose of the theft should wipe the smirk off ‘esteemed’ automaker.
In essence, it will be difficult to take the whole measure of the brand and place it on the table, unless you celebrate the uncomfortable and inconvenient parts of Ferdinand Porsche, or rather the discomfort and inconvenience to Josef Ganz’s, life.