Apple’s not-so-secret electric car project has added yet another Telsa engineer to its growing ranks.
Former Telsa VP of Vehicle Engineering Chris Porritt has reportedly been hired by Apple. Porritt also recently worked at Aston Martin as chief engineer. Now he’ll be working on “special projects” at Apple — like Project Titan.
It seems that research for Apple’s automotive “Project Titan” is picking up speed, with a newly published report claiming Cupertino has opened a small R&D office in Berlin — with the sole purpose of inventing the electric car of the future.
The new Apple car facility employs between 15 and 20 “top-class” employees, many of whom have previously worked in Germany’s buoyant automotive industry. Skills include everything from creating software to mechanical engineering and sales expertise.
The striking thing about Motor Trend‘s piece on the rumored Apple car is all the talk of the “user experience.”
The various auto designers and experts interviewed by Motor Trend speculate that Apple will try to redefine the car “experience.” They talk about stuff like acoustics, and look and feel, rather than specs like miles per gallon or engine torque.
They predict that Apple will bring a better “user experience” to the car of the future, not just a better physical product.
This reminded me of interviewing Apple’s designers for my Jony Ive book. They explained that the design group takes exactly this approach when thinking about new Apple products. Instead of starting with chip speeds or screen resolutions, they begin by asking each other how the new product should make the user feel.
And thinking about this made me realize why Jony Ive has a chauffeur. It’s not because he’s a one percenter. It’s about Project Titan, Apple’s future car.
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We haven’t heard too much about Apple’s “Project Titan” electric car project since its project lead quit the company, and Jony Ive reportedly put a hiring freeze in place after deciding things weren’t on the right track.
But a new report claims that Apple’s car investigations are continuing to progress — as Apple buys up and leases various buildings in Sunnyvale, with documents filed with the city suggesting that these will be used for automotive R&D.
Fiat CEO and self-proclaimed “Apple freak” Sergio Marchionne, is ready to embrace a future where Apple designs cars, but he wants his company to make it.
Marchionne made an appearance at the Geneva auto show today and said that if Apple’s really thinking about making a car on its own, they must have some type of illness.
Steve Jobs famously recruited then-Pepsi CEO John Sculley to join Apple with the line, “Do you want to sell sugar water for the rest of your life, or do you want to come with me and change the world?”
More than 30 years later, that iconic line could be rewritten as, “Do you want to bottle sugar water all your life, or do you want to help build the Apple Car?” — because Apple has reportedly leased a former Pepsi bottling plant, which may be used for Cupertino’s rumored electric vehicle research.
Apple is supposedly revving up the engines on its electric car project, and it’s waking up the neighbors in the process.
At least one resident who lives near Apple’s top-secret automotive campus in Sunnyvale, California, has filed a complaint with the city for what the person describes as really loud “motor noises” coming from the Apple campus late at night — even though electric cars are mostly silent.
Jony Ive is apparently not pleased with progress on the secret Apple car project.
Apple has more than 1,000 employees working on its electric car, dubbed Project Titan, but the company reportedly has put a hiring freeze in place after a post-holiday progress review revealed the Apple car isn’t on the right track.
Apple VP Steve Zadesky was personally tapped by Tim Cook to lead Project Titan. But it looks like the so-called Apple Car will need to come to market under a new leader, as Zadesky is planning on leaving the company after 16 years.
Some new (circumstantial) evidence is lending further weight to the possibility that we may one day cruise down the street in an Apple Car.
Listings on domain search site Who.is show that Apple is buying up car-related web domains like crazy. The sites in question are “apple.car,” “apple.cars,” and “apple.auto.” This is not the absolute, ironclad confirmation a lot of Apple Car fans are looking for, but it may point to some news coming.
Or it may not.
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.”
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 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.
Project Titan, Apple’s hundreds-strong initiative to create a next-generation electric car, is continuing to ramp up.
Word has it that Cupertino has just hired one of the industry’s veteran manufacturing executives to help push the so-called Apple car to market.
Apple’s secret electric car project won’t be hitting highways for at least another five years (if ever), but that’s not stopping concept artists from dreaming up what a Project Titan vehicle might look like.
The folks at Freelancer held an Apple concept car contest this week, with the winner taking home a $1,500 prize. Top honors went to this semi-autonomous electric car concept from Aristomenis Tsirbas that oozes with Apple’s traditional minimalist design. Other features include custom LED head and tail lights, and discreet hatch doors that open laterally.
Here’s a look with the doors open:
Tech pioneers like Bill Gates, Stephen Hawking, and Elon Musk have warned humanity of the dangers of AI for years, and Apple co-founder Steve Wozniak says he’s finally a beliver in the doomsday scenarios.
“Computers are going to take over from humans, no question,” Woz told the Australian Financial Review in a recent interview from his US home.
The man who sparked the personal computer revolution with the invention of the Apple II says ‘the future is scary and very bad for people’ because computers will eventually get faster than us and wipe us out.
