Apple likely to rebuild team for its electric car project by year-end

Tech giant Apple is said to be giving another push to ‘Project Titan’, its rumoured electric car project, by reportedly planning to build a team for it before the end of the year.

Analyst Ming-Chi Kuo wrote on Twitter: “My latest survey indicates that Apple will likely build the new Apple Car project team before the end of 2022.”

“Apple is building a new team to accelerate the project that was laying dormant during the Covid pandemic”, Kuo wrote.

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Project under wraps

Apple went through many stages of its rumoured car project, never confirming nor denying the existence of it, reports ArenaEV.

Industry analysts have been predicting an Apple Car for years now, it began as a simple city car and now it is looking more to be a fully-autonomous vehicle that will not require any input from the driver, the report said.

Leaks around the Project Titan have been in the circulation since 2014. As per the reports, the company also formed a so-called shell company, the SixtyEight Research, to work on the autonomous car.

Setbacks plague project

The project has faced several major setbacks since 2014 like changes in leadership, teams walking away, direction of the project changing completely, sudden changes of management, etc. An earlier report also suggested that Apple placed a hiring freeze on the autonomous car team as few executives were not happy with progress.

Bob Mansfield, who was the VP of Technologies at Apple, currently leads the project.

With all the restrictions and wider industry aftershocks slowly subsiding, it looks like Apple wants to get back on track with the Titan Project, the report said.

IronHeart in the pipeline

Apart from the autonomous car project, Apple is also working on a car software project called ‘IronHeart’, which is aimed at making Apple CarPlay, a system that connects a car’s infotainment system to a user’s iPhone, a lot more powerful.

According to media reports, Apple is planning to team up with carmakers and expand the reach of what more an iPhone can do in a vehicle, including controlling the air conditioning and adjusting the seats, as well as accessing the speedometer, temperature, and humidity sensor readings.

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If successful, this new system would enable Apple to essentially make CarPlay the main infotainment system for the car, as well as build new apps and functionalities for drivers. It would also be the biggest automotive initiative from Apple since the company launched CarPlay in 2014.

(With Agency inputs)