We haven’t heard rumors about Apple’s possible electric car for a long time, but now a new rumor puts it on the horizon again, with a planned launch date of 2024.
This vehicle is part of Apple’s Project Titan, an internal group focused on automotive and autonomous driving technologies.
Project Titan is believed to have started in earnest in 2014, when Apple began designing a vehicle of its own in hopes of taking its ‘Think Different’ motto from iPhone to transportation. However, years later, the focus shifted: Project Titan ditched the team members, and the goal shifted to developing technologies that Apple could license to other automakers.
Now things seem to have turned in the opposite direction again. Earlier this month, we learned that the head of AI, John Giannandrea, was taking control of Project Titan.
“Apple has made enough progress that it now aims to build a vehicle for consumers,” two sources tell Reuters, and the idea of an Apple-branded electric vehicle is close.
The change is due to Apple’s developments in one of the most challenging areas in electric vehicles right now: battery technology.
Balancing factors such as power density and overall battery size, to ensure sufficient range, avoiding safety risks and keeping the vehicle competitively priced, has proven to be a major headache for vehicle manufacturers. electrical However, Apple is said to have discovered something new.
Its new “single-cell” design appears to use larger individual cells and eliminates traditional pockets and modules. This allows for a higher density.
It is believed that Apple would not assemble the vehicle itself but would partner with a manufacturing specialist. As with other automakers, the parts list would be a third party component list. However, it is also possible that Apple will take advantage of its own developments for elements such as sensors.
The LIDAR sensor is an example. It is believed that the Apple car will have multiple LIDAR sensors that can build a depth map of the environment, to cope with different distances. Some of them could use technology that we have already seen Apple integrate into commercial products such as the LiDAR scanner on the iPhone 12 Pro and iPad Pro.
