Ford is the latest auto manufacturer to be forced to “think different” as a result of the impending arrival of tech companies like Apple in the car industry.
Specifically, Ford is reshuffling some of its management team — giving new director of corporate strategy, Michael Seneski, the job of seeking partnerships with tech giants. This will be done under the leadership of former investment banker John Casesa, who is currently working to update Ford’s business model.
A new electric car company has revved up Apple Car conspiracy theorists who think the mysterious automaker may actually be a shell company for Apple’s automotive ambitions.
Faraday Future has already pulled in $1 billion in investments and is stocking up on top Tesla talent (just like Apple), but little else is known about the new company that currently boasts over 400 employees with plans to add 100 more of the best automotive engineers and designers in the world before the end of the year.
Take a look at the rendering of their future car:
Steve Jobs was considering building an Apple Car as far back as 2008, the year after successfully launching the iPhone, according to a new interview with Nest CEO and iPod co-creator Tony Fadell.
Speaking with Bloomberg TV’s Emily Chang, Fadell says that he and Jobs enjoyed “a couple of walks” (Jobs’ favored way of taking meetings), talking about a possible Apple vehicle.
It’s an open secret that Apple is building it’s own electric car, but according to the chairman of Ferrari, Sergio Marchionne, it’s unlikely that the company will actually manufacture the vehicle on its own.
In an interview this morning on CNBC, Marchionne said that he believes the automotive industry is a space where Apple could really exhibit its skills. However, designing a car and making it are two different things, so Apple will probably have to outsource production.
Apple Bike, anyone? According to a new report, Apple’s continued recruitment of auto experts has resulted in the closure of an electric motorcycle startup.
Called Mission Motors, the company had drawn comparisons with Tesla — only to shut down back in May after Apple raided some of its top engineers.
At least two Mission employees joined Apple in 2012, while over the past year another dozen are reported to have started work with the company.
Elon Musk has hit out at Apple’s rumored electric car project, saying that it’s filling its ranks with second rank people — who Tesla has already tried out and then gotten rid of.
“They have hired people we’ve fired,” Musk told German newspaper Handelsblatt. “We always jokingly call Apple the ‘Tesla Graveyard.’ If you don’t make it at Tesla, you go work at Apple. I’m not kidding.”
This week on Cult of Mac’s podcast: The embargoes have lifted and the iPhone 6s reviews are in. We’ll tell you what folks love — and don’t –about Apple’s newest iPhone. Plus: Apple car coming in 2019; why we love the new watchOS 2 update; and, with our three-month Apple Music trials running out, we ponder — is the service worth paying for?
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Morgan Stanley analysts Adam Jonas and Katy Huberty — who regularly follow Tesla and Apple — claim an autonomous Apple Car could save drivers a collective 400 billion hours of “non-productive” time each year.
“What is the value of 400 billion hours a year?” they write in a note to clients. “How much value could Apple create from this time or said another way how much are consumers willing to pay to recoup this time? It’s time to start thinking about… time.”
And we thought the Apple Watch was Apple’s attempt to focus on timekeeping!
Industry insiders are absolutely positive that Apple has no business entering the smartphone smartwatch car industry — with former GM Vice Chairman Bob Lutz telling CNBC that an Apple Car has the potential to be a, “gigantic money pit.”
Yep, we agree Lutz — an autonomous Apple Car has the potential to make loads of money for Apple.
Oh wait, you mean the bad kind of money pit?
An Apple exec reportedly working on the company’s secret car project might be playing mind games with the Apple Kremlinologists searching for clues.
Is it the tech world’s biggest insider joke, or a sly hint that Apple’s automotive ambitions are real?
The Apple Car might hit the road a lot sooner than some experts predicted, according to a new report that claims the iPhone-maker plans to rev up hiring on its secret electric car project in hopes of getting the vehicle finalized by 2019.
Apple met with officials at California’s Department of Motor Vehicles to discuss plans to test its self-driving Apple Car on public roads, according to a new report.
What does this mean? Quite possibly that we’re set to get a glimpse of the Apple car a lot sooner than most people figured.
Steve Jobs may have famously driven a silver Mercedes SL55 AMG without a license plate, but don’t think that Mercedes-Benz is lining up to be the company that builds Apple’s much-rumored electric car.
“We do not plan to become the Foxconn of Apple,” said Dieter Zetsche, chief executive of Daimler, the company which builds Mercedes vehicles, speaking at this week’s Frankfurt International Motor Show.
BMW’s CEO Harald Krüger thinks an Apple Car modelled on BMW’s electric i3 vehicle would be a “nice idea,” although he’s keeping tight-lipped about the chances of it actually happening.
And when there’s the potential of iPhone money involved, who can blame him?
Project Titan, Apple’s hundreds-strong car initiative, may be continuing to ramp up, but according to Piper Jaffray analyst Gene Munster, it’ll be a while before we see an Apple car.
In a new research note to clients, Munster suggests that an Apple-branded automobile is close to a decade away — although that’s not going to stop it from affecting Apple’s stock price in the meantime.
Because who needs more than rumors to decide how Apple’s doing, right?
If you ignore its share price, Apple is doing incredibly well under Tim Cook, thanks in large part to the success of the iPhone 6 and 6 Plus. But its newest offerings, Apple Watch and Apple Music, may be off to rocky starts.
This leads us to ask, once again, whether Apple has lost its spark without Steve Jobs. Is the company as exciting or as innovative under Cook? If Apple Watch can’t get us all to wear smartwatches and Apple Music doesn’t put Spotify out of business, does Apple have what it takes to revolutionize another industry?
Join us as we battle it out over those questions in this week’s Friday Night Fight between Cult of Android and Cult of Mac.
This week on Cult of Mac’s podcast: Why we’re convinced we’ll see an iPad Pro come fall, and what we expect from Apple’s giant shield tablet of power. Plus: The iPhone 6s back gets a bend test, and the results are surprising; and Apple leases a secret facility to test its autonomous car.
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Apple has already scooped up a cadre of automotive experts for its not-so-secret electric car project, and it appears the company just added one more Tesla Motors engineer to its growing roster.
Jamie Carlson, a senior engineer from Tesla, appears to have joined Apple’s Project Titan. His most recent LinkedIn posting that reveals he’s been working on “Special Projects” at Apple since August 2015.
Apple has been slowly poaching some of Daimler’s top talent for its own car project that is nearly ready for testing, but according to Daimler CEO, Dieter Zetsche, it wouldn’t be totally inconceivable for Apple and the Mercedes-maker to work together on a future automotive project.
Zetsche said that “different types” of cooperation with Apple and Google are possible in the future, as carmakers have realized they need software experts and telecoms to help create the next-generation of automobiles.
This week, Apple has released a ton of new updates into the wild, including better-and-better versions of iOS 8, an iTunes that does Apple Music a bit better, and a Boot Camp that will let you run Windows 10 on your Mac. Try that on your Chromebook.
We’ve got a ton more, too, like killer tips and tricks for the public beta of iOS 9, a slick feature on trailblazer photographers who took selfies back in the day, and some ideas on how Apple Watch should track weightlifting sessions at your local gym.
All that and much, much more in this week’s Cult of Mac Magazine
(Note: Because of Cult of Mac’s recent redesign, some images are not displaying properly in this week’s issue of Cult of Mac Magazine. We apologize in advance — and we’re working on it.)
Apple is looking to bring fighter-jet technology to your car’s dashboard, according to a new report that claims the iPhone maker is working on a 27- to 50-inch heads-up display for automobiles that will be completely controlled by gestures.
It’s an open secret that Apple is poised to take on the auto industry with its rumored electric car project, and according to Apple design guru Marc Newson, the automotive industry is stalled.
In a new interview, the Apple designer touches on a number of topics, ranging from his love of fountain pens to his current design pet peeve: boring cars.
We still don’t even know if Apple is really building an car (even though there are a lot of signs that it is), but whatever the iPhone-maker’s next play in the auto-market is, the company’s about to generate a lot of innovation and competition in the market, says Ford CEO Mark Fields.
Apple’s been stealing top talent from automakers over the past few months to help it work on the company’s electric car project, but according to a new rumor, Apple wanted to steal the entire body of another luxury automaker’s car to get its project on the road.
Amid continuing rumors that it might be building an electric car, Apple revealed that is has boosted its research-and-development spending by $1.5 billion this year.
While Apple is dumping more money into R&D, it’s been able to trim costs in other areas. In its Securities and Exchange Commission filing for the fiscal quarter that ended June 27, Apple lowered its capital-spending projections for the year by 8 percent, which could amount to $1 billion in savings.
