Apple, according to the Wall Street Journal, is building an electric car which resembles a minivan very closely. The newspaper also reveals that Tim Cook had approved of the project almost a year ago.
Led by Apple VP (and Ford Motors veteran) Steve Zadesky, the project has a number of staff members who are shouldering responsibilities in battery tech, metal production and robotics.
This story comes right after a report by the Financial Times as well as Business Insider where, according to the latter publication, an Apple employee had reported work on a car-based project. This comes as no surprise that Apple would focus its efforts on such an area considering where the tech industry is headed at the moment.
In fact, Apple has about 1000 members working on this project alone with Johann Jungwirth, who is the former head of R&D at Mercedez-Benz. Also, with the car being an electric one, both Apple and Tesla are actually poaching employees from each other.
That said, even though design and research is underway, there have been no announcements when it comes to product research plans. The company has also be rumored to have been working on a television set apart from other product categories but no finished products have been released just yet.
Of course, this does not mean that Apple will never release a car but it’s not very difficult to see that this would be very different from their core business while not being clear as to how they can benefit from such a business move.
Yet given the Apple Watch, it’s clear that the company wants to build on its reputation as a premium device-maker in other categories.