Apple’s never-ending electric car project isn’t in great shape. Not content with reducing its ambitions in terms of autonomous driving, it is once again pushed back by a few years.
The Apple Car is a bit like the Arlesian of the apple brand. The one we wait for, wait for, and wait for again. And that never happens. We have indeed been talking about this famous electric car which is in the Cupertino company’s plans for years, but still nothing on the horizon. This is regularly the case in the automobile industry with models announced years in advance. But we still don’t end up seeing them. But at Apple, the culture of secrecy which surrounds all of the brand’s future products is nothing compared to that applied to this “Apple Car”!
So ultimately, when we hear about it, it’s almost a good sign. The one that the project is not definitively stopped. And precisely, the American media Bloomberg seems to have had the first information for quite a while on what we also call “Project Titan”.
Good news: it’s still in the pipeline. Bad news: it is much less ambitious than initially… and rejected!
3 more years in sight
One of the last times we heard about the Google Car was in 2022, and we were talking about a release in three years. Or 2025. But that was before. Because since then, the arrival date has only been pushed back. So that according to Bloomberg, the deadline would now be 2028.
In question ? No doubt multiple factors, despite the hiring of battery specialists left and right, among major automobile manufacturers. And of course at Tesla. However, it seems that it is in particular the development of autonomous driving that poses a problem. Remember that the initial project was indeed to make a fully autonomous car. More robotoxi than individual car.
And then it seems that the cursor has largely moved since then, to concentrate on the development of a car which provides assistance to the driver, always with the need for the latter to remain ready to regain control at any time. moment. A level 2 semi-autonomous driving car like what is already happening almost everywhere nowadays in fact!
Hit or miss !
According to BloombergApple would really be saying to itself “ Make it or break it” , literally ” hit or miss“. A breaking point that we can understand as the development of the product in question has already taken more than a decade. And above all, it swallows up a lot of money.
Well, it’s not as if Apple had fallen considerably behind the competition. Let’s not talk about Tesla, which managed to put its Model Y on the top step of the sales podium in Europe in 2023, a first for an electric car! We are just waiting for confirmation, but the electric SUV could also have the world crown, ahead of other cars, all engines combined.
But Apple’s other big competitors have also taken a lead, even when they are foreign to automobiles. Sony has teamed up with Honda to create a tech electric vehicle brand called Afeela. While for Alphabet, Google’s parent company, Waymo autonomous taxis are already on the roads. Without obviously forgetting the Xiaomi car!
We are undoubtedly not at the end of our surprises with this long-awaited Apple Car. And Bloomberg cites sources close to the matter who said that Apple management is giving itself the option of simply canceling the project. In case.
The targeted sale price would be around $100,000. We then understand better why Apple is refining its project.