Project Titan reportedly was a division of Apple dedicated to research and development of an electric car to be manufactured by Apple. Or at least that’s what most rumor mongering sites claimed as Apple to date has yet to acknowledge the project, what it might have been for, or what the reason might have been for shelving the project. So let’s go into this realizing that unicorns and fairy dust are real so as to be able to suspend belief.
Taking a trip in the Way-Back machine of who the hell really knows (Patent Pending 2024), Steve Jobs himself was said to have expressed an interest in creating an electric car around the time the iPhone was first introduced and when Tesla debuted their first car in 2008.
From 2008 to to 2015, Apple was stealthily working on an electric car by showing absolutely no interest and with there being zero factual information available. In 2015, a few Apple Board members and a higher up in management for Apple said that indeed Jobs had been interested in such a thing and rumors were spread that Apple’s CEO Tim Cook had approved the project to commence with related engineers being hired to begin work back in 2014.
At some point, nearly every company that actually has been successful in making cars (electric or not) was going to partner with Apple to manufacture this car. An unveiling was set to occur in 2019 and a launch date of 2020. I suppose it needs to be said that 2019 and 2020 passed with neither event happening.
Tim Cook himself added fuel to the fire when he said in an interview dated in 2015,
“It would seem like there will be massive change in that industry, massive change. You may not agree with that. That’s what I think… We’ll see what we do in the future. I do think that the industry is at an inflection point for massive change.”.
From 2015 to 2020 there were a lot of reports of the following:
- Apple had some autonomous vehicles of differing counts permitted to be tested on roads in California. Parts of this being public records IS true.
- The number of people working on the project numbered between a few hundred to over a thousand and even some reports stating over 5000.
- Related to number 2, large amounts of hiring with equal reports of layoffs happening at various times.
- None of the reported hires or those let go seemed to be able to speak about the project with anything resembling believability so other reports of Men in Black mind wiping devices are assumed to also be true.
- Apple was allegedly attending conferences related to the manufacturing of electric cars or autonomous vehicles…or both.
- Apple purchasing several companies with ties to electric care or autonomous driving.
In 2020, the date for rollout was pushed to the 2024-2025 time frame.
More outlets reported about Apple teaming up with different companies that had US-based manufacturing plants. Another fun rumor was that the car on one hand was only autonomous for highways while somehow at the same time would not have a driver’s seat or steering wheel.
Bloomberg seemed to take over around 2022 on reporting about Project Titan. Many of the others just seemed to tire on the subject or couldn’t come up with creative ways to discuss something that had almost no proof but relied on innuendo.
With that in mind, Bloomberg reported that the Apple Car would be priced under 100 thousand dollars and that Apple had reduced their plans for self-driving and would instead focus on driving assistive technologies. It’s assumed that would include a seat for the driver and a steering wheel. Finally even Bloomberg had had enough and in February of 2024 reported that Apple had cancelled the project with a final release date of 2030.
Just kidding, Bloomberg never said the 2030 bit.
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