Apple Car Special: Experts on What Could Be a Game-Changer

June 23, 2017 admin_en Comments 0 Comment

Apple Car Special: Experts Look at What Could Be a Game-Changer

Exploring the Potential Influence of Apple’s Project Titan

No Obligation, Rapid & Ordinary Free Fresh Car Quote

The Apple Car and the Future of Self-Driving Vehicles

It’s a moment we’ve all had with an Apple product. When the ordinary awkwardness inbetween you and an electronic device becomes a relationship inbetween you and a friend. Mine happened way back when I used an early Compaq computer. The keyboard clacked. You typed things that looked like C:>find /V into DOS. And stories extruded across a murky screen in a green, constipated font. Then a friend let me use this thing called a Macintosh while she was away. I leisurely circled my right mitt to get used to its strange, plastic clicker-box.

All of a sudden, the screen blinked “Hello.” In script.

I’m not sure if I said hello back, but I might have. Encounter by encounter, Apple has woven a series of obtuse electronic implements into the fabric of our lives. How many times has somebody held up their iPhone and said, “This IS my life!” The automobile of today is a Compaq computer. And Apple knows it.

Steve Jobs knew it way back in 2008, too, when Apple was at an early iPhone crossroads. What to concentrate on next? An electrified car reportedly collective the brief list with the maturing multitouch smartphone. Given Cupertino’s less formidable, 2008-era resources, Jobs’ final pick proved insanely right: Its iPhone-fueled piggybank is now a brain-boggling, $216,000,000,000. That’s BILLLLion dollars, as Carl Sagan used to eccentrically over-pronounce it, stashed all around the world. What’s that mean to paycheck-to-Taco Bell types like us? It’s enough to purchase all the stock of GM, Ford, and Fiat Chrysler. Combined. And then buy Detroit again. Some of Apple’s shareholders have been clamoring for Cook and company to snap up Tesla with its liberate switch.

And sometimes, Apple has nonchalantly jangled that switch. In late 2013, Elon Musk met with Apple’s head of acquisitions and later huddled with Jony Ive, Apple’s chief design officer, at a post-Oscars party. Adding to the warm visuals, Laurene Jobs returned her husband’s famously plateless Mercedes-Benz SL55 AMG, getting a Model S. But Musk doubts an Apple deal will advance his purpose of creating a compelling mass-market EV. “I don’t presently see any screenplay that would improve that probability,” he said.

Read more about our sensational take on the Apple Car:

As Apple’s code-named Project Titan has inhaled Silicon Valley’s brightest car brains, it’s left enemies swirling in its wake. The tug-of-war has grown tense with Tesla, with Apple’s rumored $250,000 signing bonuses and Musk’s famous, “We always jokingly call Apple the ‘Tesla Graveyard.’ If you don’t make it at Tesla, you go work at Apple. I’m not kidding.” At a latest press dinner in Palo Alto, I sat next to an executive with a German brand who goes an SV tech center. “We’re battling to suspend onto people,” he said after a few drinks. “Recently, we actually hired somebody back from Apple. It felt like a victory.”

In September, the car was allegedly raised to “committed project” status with a two thousand nineteen release date.

An estimated 1,000 people are thought to be working at an Apple elaborate in Sunnyvale, California, according to AppleInsider. Operating under an apparent shell name, “SixtyEight Research,” employees have supposedly been told to turn around their Apple name badges (which already have their Apple logos deleted).

And then there’s the autonomous rumors. Apple has pored over the fine points of self-driving regulation with the California DMV. It’s supposedly negotiated use of the nearby GoMentum Station (the repurposed Concord Naval Weapons facility that’s now the nation’s largest secure autonomous-focused test site).

Early sightings of a camera-festooned Dodge Grand Caravan sparked speculation that the van was actually an autonomous prototype. Apple made a uncommon comment to quell the chatter: wrong, everybody. They’re just compositing their own version of Street View for Apple Maps. So maybe the car isn’t a minivan. Then what is it?

APPLE SEEDS Initial sketch work commences to take form. It features plain, seamless surfaces with minimal shut lines and an emphasis on truth in materials.

In September 2015, the car was allegedly raised to “committed project” status with a two thousand nineteen release date, presumably meaning its design completion. But after a program review, Ive “expressed his dissatisfaction.” Reportedly, it’s not moving swift enough. The program’s in disarray. Its goals are unclear. (Meantime, management’s been accused of unrealistic targets). Ive froze the hiring spree that was projected to spiral toward 1,800, AppleInsider heard. And program head, Steve Zadesky—6 years with Apple after a stint with Ford—resigned, tho’ it’s said to actually be for private reasons.

Ive, the world’s most celebrated industrial designer, is the Cupertino Car Czar. Once tempted by a Royal College of Art’s automotive class, he instead chose industrial design at Newcastle Polytechnic (now Northumbria University) and later became Jobs’ right palm. And what does he drive? A Bentley Mulsanne and an Aston Martin DB4. His design co-conspirator, Marc Newson, penned Ford’s one thousand nine hundred ninety nine 021C concept for J Mays and curiously also wields an Aston Martin, a one thousand nine hundred twenty nine Bugatti, a ’50s Ferrari, and a Lamborghini Miura. (Another Apple designer, Julian Hönig, worked at Lamborghini.) These are impeccable-taste, Goodwood-attending, genuine car guys. And Newson, for one, has a dim view of current automotive design. Per a Wall Street Journal interview, “There were moments when cars somehow encapsulated everything that was good about progress. But right now we’re at the bottom of a trough.”

To get a higher vantage point on all this, we traveled to the hills above Pasadena, California. The ArtCenter College of Design’s famous Hillside Campus is a giant beam-and-glass shoe box designed by Craig Ellsworth, dropped in an arroyo above the Rose Cup. Here, childlike scribbles flower to sophisticated artistry. Within is a curriculum that’s so influential that it’s essentially become the international epicenter of automotive design. We’re at its far end, sprinkled around a table.

On my left is Stewart Reed, ArtCenter’s chair of transportation design who recently envisioned the bodywork of Peter Mullin’s unfinished Type sixty four Bugatti. Tim Huntzinger, professor in graduate transportation systems and design, has worked for Fisker, Rivian, and Daqri, an L.A. augmented reality company. Tim Brewer, a faculty member and an inventor of the very first mouse scroll wheel. Di Bao is a Chinese national specializing in interiors and now interns with Volkswagen. Akash Chudasama, a latest grad student with an aerospace engineering degree, has interned at JPL. On my right is Garrett DeBry, who’s intrigued by individual mobility and would become our Apple Car designer of record, folding the group’s ideas together and placing them in his own imaginative envelope to create the photos you see here.

OK, everyone—imagine Apple is our client. And we’re going to brainstorm what its car will be.

“My iPhone has become my social life and my career life,” Chudasama says. “I don’t indeed use this to make calls. I use it for everything else. So if they can make a telephone—something that’s been around a hundred years—part of your way of life, what will they do with a car?”

“You tell me,” I reply.

“It’ll be your entire way of life,” Chudasama says. “And most likely also the walled garden that turns some people off but others want for the impeccable practice someone else has anticipated for you. Tesla is kinda there; the BMW i3 isn’t there yet, but aesthetics aside, it’s a indeed easy-to-use car, elementary to get into its back seat.”

There’s instant dissension. “I totally disagree,” Huntzinger says.

“The i3 is Windows. They’ve crammed too much functionality into the vehicle, so it actually gets in the way of the practice. The eucalyptus wood is cool, but if you count them, there are thirty five different materials in your field of view.”

Reed takes the high ground. “I just got out of a meeting with a manufacturer who is now calling their designers ‘experience designers,’ ” he says. “Their team sounds like a movie squad: acoustics, haptics, interpreters. To me, that would be an Apple treatment.”

How about car-sharing? Apple products have always been premium. You spend more to have them, and you prize their finish. Besides the visible reason—saving money—why would you share your car if you wouldn’t share your phone?

Stewart: “That’s a question we’ve spent fourteen weeks discussing with another manufacturer—how do you share a premium product?”

Chudasama: “The car would be ownable if you want to own it, but the real value of the phone isn’t the hardware but in its apps. Traditionally your connection to a car is through its steering wheel; now it might be more about how the total transportation practice makes you feel.” Eyes turn to a sleek MacBook Pro on the table; you feel good without even touching it.

DeBry: “The advertisement for the iPod was a black silhouette jamming to music, and that sold the entire thing. A car that comes to mind was Volvo‘s YCC Concept that was designed by women for women. It even had a fuckhole in its seat for a ponytail. That’s truly anticipating use cases. The core practice of an Apple vehicle is that it’s as effortless to use as possible.”

Might the famous Apple ease of use be particularly suited for countries with developing driver populations, such as China? “Owning a car in any city is a ache, so an Apple Car could make urban transit simpler, Huntzinger says. “With iPhones in the pockets of many non-Apple Car drivers (and pedestrians), the entire urban system could be communicating with itself.”

Reed taps the brakes on this thinking. “I feel many of us are getting too focused on the rise of urbanization,” he says. “Remember, the best-selling vehicle in the country is still a Ford F-150.” But an autonomous future could blur these lines; you could sleep on your way home or commence to work on the way in.

DeBry: “People historically travel for about a half-hour—whether it’s by foot or pony or car. But an autonomous model could switch that. Apple could sell this as providing you a half-hour of your life back. It’s a time machine, particularly valuable as careers become more immersive.” My caution not to get too optimistic about autonomy’s timeline proves futile.

Herding cats, I ask again: So what’s the Apple Car? Stewart: “It’s the old-time, indeed fine family chauffeur who knows the family, knows your schedules.”

Chudasama: “It could be more of a little, mono-shaped minivan.” Minivan? “No, we’re talking about a premium mono-volume.” Sketches begin to emerge on the dry-erase board.

Brewer: “Sleek metal—the mono-volume doesn’t have to have those minivan stigmas.”

Reed: “And the future of automotive glass isn’t laminated safety glass. It’ll be in the field of hard-coated polycarbonates that permit expansive glass surfaces for augmented or, as I choose to call them, ‘merged-reality’ projections.”

Time to pin the group down. Going around the table: What would your Apple Car look like? “I would commence from the inwards out,” Bao says, “with usability coming very first.”

Brewer: “What’ll be most striking will be the quality of its parting lines, how materials come together. The big gaps on current cars make them seem dated.”

Chudasama: “It’ll be a mobility device. A way of life. It won’t be taking cues from an animal or something. Rather, it would be fair to what it indeed is. It’s not faking its meaning.”

Huntzinger picks up on that. “Those haunches and big wheels are old memes we use just because people think they’re valuable,” he says.

Chudasama: “The fresh premium is ‘convenience’. We want our time back. That’s the most valuable thing we have.”

Huntzinger: “I think it’ll look like a blend of Toyota‘s Me.We concept and Marc Newson’s Ford 021C concept. There’s a trend toward super-organic forms—and some can be timeless, but in five years we’ll know exactly when they were made. Apple’s truly good at finding ways to rail that line inbetween arousing without having a timestamp on them.”

Reed: “The glazing would be beautiful, well-proportioned with some automotive cues that look sure-footed and capable, not cutesy. Approaching it will be like walking up to an amazing store in Tokyo, the way the door opens up and presents isn’t a door you grab but a roof that raises and you walk in.” DeBry is kicking off to sketch.

The response of most carmaking veterans to the Apple rumors has been one noisy harrumph. Lighting up a La Libertad Robusto cigar, he puffs smoke and growls, “Cars are very complicated. These software guys will never figure out how to build them.” PayPal co-founder Elon Musk has. And in the same manner Google is expected to collaborate with Ford, Apple will very likely contract it out. Last year, Tim Cook visited the BMW i3 plant in Leipzig, Germany, that’s pioneering the mass production of carbon-fiber chassis, and reps also toured Magna-Steyr, a contract builder of premium (sometimes aluminum) cars in Austria. Either way, it makes sense that Apple outsources the manufacturing intricacies overseas (iPhone/Foxconn-like), avoiding U.S. taxes that could take upward of a forty percent bite from its overseas war chest.

“Well, maybe,” our archetypal veteran barks. “But,” as the stogie lolls inbetween his molars, “Apple is used to fat profits. Car margins are paper-slim. They’d be crazy to build cars.” Apple’s margin was about forty percent last year. But making smartphones is intensely competitive, too, and its $53.Four billion profit in two thousand fifteen reflects strategies that legacy car companies should investigate, not dismiss. However, we’re being presumptuous of the Apple Car’s business model.

ZipCar and Uber are the early breezes of a cyclone of collective use/ownership that’s readying to deepthroat the industry’s spreadsheets right off their monitors. Substituting single-user ownership with a collective model could collapse your get-around costs. A latest Deloitte examine projected our typical per-mile travel costs (that’s all-inclusive) pulling down seventy percent for collective, fully autonomous vehicles. Meantime, a manufacturer that retains ownership could charge for all that way-greater use while at the same time building far fewer cars. Among Apple’s notable hires is Rónán Ó Braonáin, who comes from Reviver, a company developing digital license plates and vehicle-to-vehicle networking. It’s been noted that collective use might need plates that identify both the car and its current driver.

Yet all this might be missing something thicker. Albeit making ever-more billions is surely motivating, many Cupertino watchers have been wondering if the Macintosh magic is fading since Jobs’ death. The iPad has slumped. The Apple Observe is, well, a nifty see kinda thing. Android is leisurely turning its bread-and-butter smartphone into a commodity—like soft drinks are commodities. Back when Jobs was romancing Pepsi’s John Sculley into being Apple’s CEO, he famously asked, “Do you want to sell sugared water for the rest of your life? Or do you want to come with me and switch the world?” For Cook and Ive, an Apple Car might be the response to Steve Jobs’ question about themselves.

Apple of Your Eyes: The Windshield

If the iPhone six screen is the Mona Lisa of multitouch, an automobile’s windshield and dash would be a blank Sistine ceiling. But what should it look like? Google has amassed its fortune by connecting search-related advertising to people sitting at their desks. Transplant that idea into a car, and it becomes the moving world as seen through Apple’s eyes.

The vehicle will become an extension of your Apple device. — Garrett DeBry, designer of Motor Trend’s imagined Apple Car

Approaching the Apple Car with your phone or see pre-positions the seat and mirrors. The climate control prepares your cabin temperature. Your music swells. The door rises. You climb in. The dash—smooth, featureless leather that notably lacks today’s electronic screens—suddenly brightens with projected displays. A Siri avatar welcomes you. “Hello. Any errands on our way to work, Bob?” You’re still a bit sleepy this morning, so you reply, “Starbucks.” Siri: “OK, I’ll call in your grande latte. But let’s go to the one on Fifth Street instead. There’s construction on our normal route.” The dash’s graphics are swipable and expandable with only the simplest instruments because electrical drivetrains no longer need monitoring. You can even throw some graphics up onto the augmented windshield. Made of Corning’s skinny automotive Gorilla glass, it’s wraparound to maximize the augmented field of view. “Siri, I have a lot of work today, so I’ll need to eat at my desk again. Any ideas?” Siri: “I sense that you’ve gained four pounds recently despite our going to the gym three days last week. Your Facebook friend Jill, who has similar tastes, liked a cucumber salad at the Blue Garden Cafe that’s right along our way. I’ll highlight it as we get close.” Beyond downloading entertainment from iTunes, the car will be a private assistant. And one Apple might hope you adopt for your non-driving time, as well. An augmented reality “windshield” is among the most persistent Apple Car rumors and thought to be the likeliest part to sustain if the rest of Project Titan is canceled.

Want to see how our final Apple Car renderings took form? Check out these preliminary sketches right here.

Apple Car Sensational: Experts on What Could Be a Game-Changer

Apple Car Special: Experts Look at What Could Be a Game-Changer

Exploring the Potential Influence of Apple’s Project Titan

No Obligation, Rapid & Elementary Free Fresh Car Quote

The Apple Car and the Future of Self-Driving Vehicles

Abruptly, the screen blinked “Hello.” In script.

I’m not sure if I said hello back, but I might have. Encounter by encounter, Apple has woven a series of obtuse electronic contraptions into the fabric of our lives. How many times has somebody held up their iPhone and said, “This IS my life!” The automobile of today is a Compaq computer. And Apple knows it.

Steve Jobs knew it way back in 2008, too, when Apple was at an early iPhone crossroads. What to concentrate on next? An electrical car reportedly collective the brief list with the maturing multitouch smartphone. Given Cupertino’s less formidable, 2008-era resources, Jobs’ final pick proved insanely right: Its iPhone-fueled piggybank is now a brain-boggling, $216,000,000,000. That’s BILLLLion dollars, as Carl Sagan used to eccentrically over-pronounce it, stashed all around the world. What’s that mean to paycheck-to-Taco Bell types like us? It’s enough to purchase all the stock of GM, Ford, and Fiat Chrysler. Combined. And then buy Detroit again. Some of Apple’s shareholders have been clamoring for Cook and company to snap up Tesla with its liberate switch.

Read more about our off the hook take on the Apple Car:

As Apple’s code-named Project Titan has inhaled Silicon Valley’s brightest car brains, it’s left enemies swirling in its wake. The tug-of-war has grown tense with Tesla, with Apple’s rumored $250,000 signing bonuses and Musk’s famous, “We always jokingly call Apple the ‘Tesla Graveyard.’ If you don’t make it at Tesla, you go work at Apple. I’m not kidding.” At a latest press dinner in Palo Alto, I sat next to an executive with a German brand who goes an SV tech center. “We’re battling to dangle onto people,” he said after a few drinks. “Recently, we actually hired somebody back from Apple. It felt like a victory.”

In September, the car was allegedly raised to “committed project” status with a two thousand nineteen release date.

An estimated 1,000 people are thought to be working at an Apple complicated in Sunnyvale, California, according to AppleInsider. Operating under an apparent shell name, “SixtyEight Research,” employees have supposedly been told to turn around their Apple name badges (which already have their Apple logos deleted).

APPLE SEEDS Initial sketch work starts to take form. It features elementary, seamless surfaces with minimal shut lines and an emphasis on truth in materials.

In September 2015, the car was allegedly raised to “committed project” status with a two thousand nineteen release date, presumably meaning its design completion. But after a program review, Ive “expressed his discomfort.” Reportedly, it’s not moving swift enough. The program’s in disarray. Its goals are unclear. (Meantime, management’s been accused of unrealistic targets). Ive froze the hiring spree that was projected to spiral toward 1,800, AppleInsider heard. And program head, Steve Zadesky—6 years with Apple after a stint with Ford—resigned, however it’s said to actually be for individual reasons.

Ive, the world’s most celebrated industrial designer, is the Cupertino Car Czar. Once tempted by a Royal College of Art’s automotive class, he instead chose industrial design at Newcastle Polytechnic (now Northumbria University) and later became Jobs’ right palm. And what does he drive? A Bentley Mulsanne and an Aston Martin DB4. His design co-conspirator, Marc Newson, penned Ford’s one thousand nine hundred ninety nine 021C concept for J Mays and curiously also possesses an Aston Martin, a one thousand nine hundred twenty nine Bugatti, a ’50s Ferrari, and a Lamborghini Miura. (Another Apple designer, Julian Hönig, worked at Lamborghini.) These are impeccable-taste, Goodwood-attending, genuine car guys. And Newson, for one, has a dim view of current automotive design. Per a Wall Street Journal interview, “There were moments when cars somehow encapsulated everything that was good about progress. But right now we’re at the bottom of a trough.”

OK, everyone—imagine Apple is our client. And we’re going to brainstorm what its car will be.

“You tell me,” I reply.

“It’ll be your entire way of life,” Chudasama says. “And very likely also the walled garden that turns some people off but others want for the impeccable practice someone else has anticipated for you. Tesla is kinda there; the BMW i3 isn’t there yet, but aesthetics aside, it’s a truly easy-to-use car, elementary to get into its back seat.”

There’s instant dissension. “I totally disagree,” Huntzinger says.

Reed takes the high ground. “I just got out of a meeting with a manufacturer who is now calling their designers ‘experience designers,’ ” he says. “Their team sounds like a movie team: acoustics, haptics, interpreters. To me, that would be an Apple treatment.”

How about car-sharing? Apple products have always been premium. You spend more to have them, and you prize their finish. Besides the evident reason—saving money—why would you share your car if you wouldn’t share your phone?

Stewart: “That’s a question we’ve spent fourteen weeks discussing with another manufacturer—how do you share a premium product?”

DeBry: “The advertisement for the iPod was a black silhouette jamming to music, and that sold the entire thing. A car that comes to mind was Volvo‘s YCC Concept that was designed by women for women. It even had a slot in its seat for a ponytail. That’s truly anticipating use cases. The core practice of an Apple vehicle is that it’s as effortless to use as possible.”

Might the famous Apple ease of use be particularly suited for countries with developing driver populations, such as China? “Owning a car in any city is a agony, so an Apple Car could make urban transit simpler, Huntzinger says. “With iPhones in the pockets of many non-Apple Car drivers (and pedestrians), the entire urban system could be communicating with itself.”

Herding cats, I ask again: So what’s the Apple Car? Stewart: “It’s the old-time, indeed fine family chauffeur who knows the family, knows your schedules.”

Chudasama: “It could be more of a lil’, mono-shaped minivan.” Minivan? “No, we’re talking about a premium mono-volume.” Sketches begin to emerge on the dry-erase board.

Brewer: “Sleek metal—the mono-volume doesn’t have to have those minivan stigmas.”

Reed: “And the future of automotive glass isn’t laminated safety glass. It’ll be in the area of hard-coated polycarbonates that permit expansive glass surfaces for augmented or, as I choose to call them, ‘merged-reality’ projections.”

Time to pin the group down. Going around the table: What would your Apple Car look like? “I would embark from the inwards out,” Bao says, “with usability coming very first.”

Brewer: “What’ll be most striking will be the quality of its parting lines, how materials come together. The big gaps on current cars make them seem dated.”

Chudasama: “It’ll be a mobility device. A way of life. It won’t be taking cues from an animal or something. Rather, it would be fair to what it indeed is. It’s not faking its meaning.”

Huntzinger picks up on that. “Those haunches and big wheels are old memes we use just because people think they’re valuable,” he says.

Chudasama: “The fresh premium is ‘convenience’. We want our time back. That’s the most valuable thing we have.”

Yet all this might be missing something fatter. Albeit making ever-more billions is surely motivating, many Cupertino watchers have been wondering if the Macintosh magic is fading since Jobs’ death. The iPad has slumped. The Apple Observe is, well, a nifty see kinda thing. Android is leisurely turning its bread-and-butter smartphone into a commodity—like soft drinks are commodities. Back when Jobs was romancing Pepsi’s John Sculley into being Apple’s CEO, he famously asked, “Do you want to sell sugared water for the rest of your life? Or do you want to come with me and switch the world?” For Cook and Ive, an Apple Car might be the reaction to Steve Jobs’ question about themselves.

Apple of Your Eyes: The Windshield

The vehicle will become an extension of your Apple device. — Garrett DeBry, designer of Motor Trend’s imagined Apple Car

Approaching the Apple Car with your phone or see pre-positions the seat and mirrors. The climate control prepares your cabin temperature. Your music swells. The door rises. You climb in. The dash—smooth, featureless leather that notably lacks today’s electronic screens—suddenly brightens with projected displays. A Siri avatar salutes you. “Hello. Any errands on our way to work, Bob?” You’re still a bit sleepy this morning, so you reply, “Starbucks.” Siri: “OK, I’ll call in your grande latte. But let’s go to the one on Fifth Street instead. There’s construction on our normal route.” The dash’s graphics are swipable and expandable with only the simplest instruments because electrified drivetrains no longer need monitoring. You can even throw some graphics up onto the augmented windshield. Made of Corning’s lean automotive Gorilla glass, it’s wraparound to maximize the augmented field of view. “Siri, I have a lot of work today, so I’ll need to eat at my desk again. Any ideas?” Siri: “I sense that you’ve gained four pounds recently despite our going to the gym three days last week. Your Facebook friend Jill, who has similar tastes, liked a cucumber salad at the Blue Garden Cafe that’s right along our way. I’ll highlight it as we get close.” Beyond downloading entertainment from iTunes, the car will be a private assistant. And one Apple might hope you adopt for your non-driving time, as well. An augmented reality “windshield” is among the most persistent Apple Car rumors and thought to be the likeliest part to get through if the rest of Project Titan is canceled.

Want to see how our final Apple Car renderings took form? Check out these preliminary sketches right here.

Apple Car Sensational: Experts on What Could Be a Game-Changer

Apple Car Off the hook: Experts Look at What Could Be a Game-Changer

Exploring the Potential Influence of Apple’s Project Titan

No Obligation, Rapid & Elementary Free Fresh Car Quote

The Apple Car and the Future of Self-Driving Vehicles

It’s a moment we’ve all had with an Apple product. When the ordinary awkwardness inbetween you and an electronic device becomes a relationship inbetween you and a friend. Mine happened way back when I used an early Compaq computer. The keyboard clacked. You typed things that looked like C:>find /V into DOS. And stories extruded across a murky screen in a green, constipated font. Then a friend let me use this thing called a Macintosh while she was away. I leisurely circled my right arm to get used to its strange, plastic clicker-box.

All of a sudden, the screen blinked “Hello.” In script.

I’m not sure if I said hello back, but I might have. Encounter by encounter, Apple has woven a series of obtuse electronic devices into the fabric of our lives. How many times has somebody held up their iPhone and said, “This IS my life!” The automobile of today is a Compaq computer. And Apple knows it.

And sometimes, Apple has nonchalantly jangled that switch. In late 2013, Elon Musk met with Apple’s head of acquisitions and later huddled with Jony Ive, Apple’s chief design officer, at a post-Oscars party. Adding to the warm visuals, Laurene Jobs returned her husband’s famously plateless Mercedes-Benz SL55 AMG, getting a Model S. But Musk doubts an Apple deal will advance his purpose of creating a compelling mass-market EV. “I don’t presently see any script that would improve that probability,” he said.

Read more about our sensational take on the Apple Car:

As Apple’s code-named Project Titan has inhaled Silicon Valley’s brightest car brains, it’s left enemies swirling in its wake. The tug-of-war has grown tense with Tesla, with Apple’s rumored $250,000 signing bonuses and Musk’s famous, “We always jokingly call Apple the ‘Tesla Graveyard.’ If you don’t make it at Tesla, you go work at Apple. I’m not kidding.” At a latest press dinner in Palo Alto, I sat next to an executive with a German brand who goes an SV tech center. “We’re battling to dangle onto people,” he said after a few drinks. “Recently, we actually hired somebody back from Apple. It felt like a victory.”

In September, the car was allegedly raised to “committed project” status with a two thousand nineteen release date.

APPLE SEEDS Initial sketch work starts to take form. It features ordinary, seamless surfaces with minimal shut lines and an emphasis on truth in materials.

Ive, the world’s most celebrated industrial designer, is the Cupertino Car Czar. Once tempted by a Royal College of Art’s automotive class, he instead chose industrial design at Newcastle Polytechnic (now Northumbria University) and later became Jobs’ right arm. And what does he drive? A Bentley Mulsanne and an Aston Martin DB4. His design co-conspirator, Marc Newson, penned Ford’s one thousand nine hundred ninety nine 021C concept for J Mays and curiously also wields an Aston Martin, a one thousand nine hundred twenty nine Bugatti, a ’50s Ferrari, and a Lamborghini Miura. (Another Apple designer, Julian Hönig, worked at Lamborghini.) These are impeccable-taste, Goodwood-attending, genuine car guys. And Newson, for one, has a dim view of current automotive design. Per a Wall Street Journal interview, “There were moments when cars somehow encapsulated everything that was good about progress. But right now we’re at the bottom of a trough.”

On my left is Stewart Reed, ArtCenter’s chair of transportation design who recently envisioned the bodywork of Peter Mullin’s unfinished Type sixty four Bugatti. Tim Huntzinger, professor in graduate transportation systems and design, has worked for Fisker, Rivian, and Daqri, an L.A. augmented reality company. Tim Brewer, a faculty member and an inventor of the very first mouse scroll wheel. Di Bao is a Chinese national specializing in interiors and now interns with Volkswagen. Akash Chudasama, a latest grad student with an aerospace engineering degree, has interned at JPL. On my right is Garrett DeBry, who’s intrigued by private mobility and would become our Apple Car designer of record, folding the group’s ideas together and placing them in his own imaginative envelope to create the pictures you see here.

OK, everyone—imagine Apple is our client. And we’re going to brainstorm what its car will be.

“My iPhone has become my social life and my career life,” Chudasama says. “I don’t truly use this to make calls. I use it for everything else. So if they can make a telephone—something that’s been around a hundred years—part of your way of life, what will they do with a car?”

“You tell me,” I reply.

There’s instant dissension. “I totally disagree,” Huntzinger says.

Stewart: “That’s a question we’ve spent fourteen weeks discussing with another manufacturer—how do you share a premium product?”

Herding cats, I ask again: So what’s the Apple Car? Stewart: “It’s the old-time, indeed superb family chauffeur who knows the family, knows your schedules.”

Chudasama: “It could be more of a lil’, mono-shaped minivan.” Minivan? “No, we’re talking about a premium mono-volume.” Sketches commence to emerge on the dry-erase board.

Brewer: “Sleek metal—the mono-volume doesn’t have to have those minivan stigmas.”

Time to pin the group down. Going around the table: What would your Apple Car look like? “I would embark from the inwards out,” Bao says, “with usability coming very first.”

Brewer: “What’ll be most striking will be the quality of its parting lines, how materials come together. The big gaps on current cars make them seem dated.”

Chudasama: “It’ll be a mobility device. A way of life. It won’t be taking cues from an animal or something. Rather, it would be fair to what it indeed is. It’s not faking its meaning.”

Huntzinger picks up on that. “Those haunches and big wheels are old memes we use just because people think they’re valuable,” he says.

Chudasama: “The fresh premium is ‘convenience’. We want our time back. That’s the most valuable thing we have.”

The response of most carmaking veterans to the Apple rumors has been one noisy harrumph. Lighting up a La Libertad Robusto cigar, he puffs smoke and growls, “Cars are very complicated. These software guys will never figure out how to build them.” PayPal co-founder Elon Musk has. And in the same manner Google is expected to collaborate with Ford, Apple will most likely contract it out. Last year, Tim Cook visited the BMW i3 plant in Leipzig, Germany, that’s pioneering the mass production of carbon-fiber chassis, and reps also toured Magna-Steyr, a contract builder of premium (sometimes aluminum) cars in Austria. Either way, it makes sense that Apple outsources the manufacturing intricacies overseas (iPhone/Foxconn-like), avoiding U.S. taxes that could take upward of a forty percent bite from its overseas war chest.

“Well, maybe,” our archetypal veteran barks. “But,” as the stogie lolls inbetween his molars, “Apple is used to fat profits. Car margins are paper-slim. They’d be crazy to build cars.” Apple’s margin was about forty percent last year. But making smartphones is intensely competitive, too, and its $53.Four billion profit in two thousand fifteen reflects strategies that legacy car companies should explore, not dismiss. However, we’re being presumptuous of the Apple Car’s business model.

ZipCar and Uber are the early breezes of a cyclone of collective use/ownership that’s readying to suck the industry’s spreadsheets right off their monitors. Substituting single-user ownership with a collective model could collapse your get-around costs. A latest Deloitte explore projected our typical per-mile travel costs (that’s all-inclusive) ripping off seventy percent for collective, fully autonomous vehicles. Meantime, a manufacturer that retains ownership could charge for all that way-greater use while at the same time building far fewer cars. Among Apple’s notable hires is Rónán Ó Braonáin, who comes from Reviver, a company developing digital license plates and vehicle-to-vehicle networking. It’s been noted that collective use might need plates that identify both the car and its current driver.

Yet all this might be missing something thicker. Albeit making ever-more billions is surely motivating, many Cupertino watchers have been wondering if the Macintosh magic is fading since Jobs’ death. The iPad has slumped. The Apple See is, well, a nifty see kinda thing. Android is leisurely turning its bread-and-butter smartphone into a commodity—like soft drinks are commodities. Back when Jobs was romancing Pepsi’s John Sculley into being Apple’s CEO, he famously asked, “Do you want to sell sugared water for the rest of your life? Or do you want to come with me and switch the world?” For Cook and Ive, an Apple Car might be the response to Steve Jobs’ question about themselves.

Apple of Your Eyes: The Windshield

The vehicle will become an extension of your Apple device. — Garrett DeBry, designer of Motor Trend’s imagined Apple Car

Approaching the Apple Car with your phone or see pre-positions the seat and mirrors. The climate control prepares your cabin temperature. Your music swells. The door rises. You climb in. The dash—smooth, featureless leather that notably lacks today’s electronic screens—suddenly brightens with projected displays. A Siri avatar salutes you. “Hello. Any errands on our way to work, Bob?” You’re still a bit sleepy this morning, so you reply, “Starbucks.” Siri: “OK, I’ll call in your grande latte. But let’s go to the one on Fifth Street instead. There’s construction on our normal route.” The dash’s graphics are swipable and expandable with only the simplest instruments because electrified drivetrains no longer need monitoring. You can even throw some graphics up onto the augmented windshield. Made of Corning’s lean automotive Gorilla glass, it’s wraparound to maximize the augmented field of view. “Siri, I have a lot of work today, so I’ll need to eat at my desk again. Any ideas?” Siri: “I sense that you’ve gained four pounds recently despite our going to the gym three days last week. Your Facebook friend Jill, who has similar tastes, liked a cucumber salad at the Blue Garden Cafe that’s right along our way. I’ll highlight it as we get close.” Beyond downloading entertainment from iTunes, the car will be a private assistant. And one Apple might hope you adopt for your non-driving time, as well. An augmented reality “windshield” is among the most persistent Apple Car rumors and thought to be the likeliest part to get through if the rest of Project Titan is canceled.

Want to see how our final Apple Car renderings took form? Check out these preliminary sketches right here.

Apple Car Special: Experts on What Could Be a Game-Changer

Apple Car Special: Experts Look at What Could Be a Game-Changer

Exploring the Potential Influence of Apple’s Project Titan

No Obligation, Rapid & Ordinary Free Fresh Car Quote

The Apple Car and the Future of Self-Driving Vehicles

It’s a moment we’ve all had with an Apple product. When the ordinary awkwardness inbetween you and an electronic device becomes a relationship inbetween you and a friend. Mine happened way back when I used an early Compaq computer. The keyboard clacked. You typed things that looked like C:>find /V into DOS. And stories extruded across a murky screen in a green, constipated font. Then a friend let me use this thing called a Macintosh while she was away. I leisurely circled my right forearm to get used to its strange, plastic clicker-box.

All of a sudden, the screen blinked “Hello.” In script.

I’m not sure if I said hello back, but I might have. Encounter by encounter, Apple has woven a series of obtuse electronic instruments into the fabric of our lives. How many times has somebody held up their iPhone and said, “This IS my life!” The automobile of today is a Compaq computer. And Apple knows it.

Read more about our special take on the Apple Car:

As Apple’s code-named Project Titan has inhaled Silicon Valley’s brightest car brains, it’s left enemies swirling in its wake. The tug-of-war has grown tense with Tesla, with Apple’s rumored $250,000 signing bonuses and Musk’s famous, “We always jokingly call Apple the ‘Tesla Graveyard.’ If you don’t make it at Tesla, you go work at Apple. I’m not kidding.” At a latest press dinner in Palo Alto, I sat next to an executive with a German brand who goes an SV tech center. “We’re battling to string up onto people,” he said after a few drinks. “Recently, we actually hired somebody back from Apple. It felt like a victory.”

In September, the car was allegedly raised to “committed project” status with a two thousand nineteen release date.

APPLE SEEDS Initial sketch work commences to take form. It features plain, seamless surfaces with minimal shut lines and an emphasis on truth in materials.

In September 2015, the car was allegedly raised to “committed project” status with a two thousand nineteen release date, presumably meaning its design completion. But after a program review, Ive “expressed his dissatisfaction.” Reportedly, it’s not moving prompt enough. The program’s in disarray. Its goals are unclear. (Meantime, management’s been accused of unrealistic targets). Ive froze the hiring spree that was projected to spiral toward 1,800, AppleInsider heard. And program head, Steve Zadesky—6 years with Apple after a stint with Ford—resigned, tho’ it’s said to actually be for private reasons.

Ive, the world’s most celebrated industrial designer, is the Cupertino Car Czar. Once tempted by a Royal College of Art’s automotive class, he instead chose industrial design at Newcastle Polytechnic (now Northumbria University) and later became Jobs’ right arm. And what does he drive? A Bentley Mulsanne and an Aston Martin DB4. His design co-conspirator, Marc Newson, penned Ford’s one thousand nine hundred ninety nine 021C concept for J Mays and curiously also wields an Aston Martin, a one thousand nine hundred twenty nine Bugatti, a ’50s Ferrari, and a Lamborghini Miura. (Another Apple designer, Julian Hönig, worked at Lamborghini.) These are impeccable-taste, Goodwood-attending, genuine car guys. And Newson, for one, has a dim view of current automotive design. Per a Wall Street Journal interview, “There were moments when cars somehow encapsulated everything that was good about progress. But right now we’re at the bottom of a trough.”

OK, everyone—imagine Apple is our client. And we’re going to brainstorm what its car will be.

“You tell me,” I reply.

There’s instant dissension. “I totally disagree,” Huntzinger says.

How about car-sharing? Apple products have always been premium. You spend more to have them, and you prize their finish. Besides the demonstrable reason—saving money—why would you share your car if you wouldn’t share your phone?

Stewart: “That’s a question we’ve spent fourteen weeks discussing with another manufacturer—how do you share a premium product?”

DeBry: “The advertisement for the iPod was a black silhouette jamming to music, and that sold the entire thing. A car that comes to mind was Volvo‘s YCC Concept that was designed by women for women. It even had a crevice in its seat for a ponytail. That’s indeed anticipating use cases. The core practice of an Apple vehicle is that it’s as effortless to use as possible.”

Herding cats, I ask again: So what’s the Apple Car? Stewart: “It’s the old-time, truly excellent family chauffeur who knows the family, knows your schedules.”

Chudasama: “It could be more of a lil’, mono-shaped minivan.” Minivan? “No, we’re talking about a premium mono-volume.” Sketches embark to emerge on the dry-erase board.