The prospects of seeing an Apple-branded vehicle are indeed exciting, given Apple’s track record of redefining product categories. The new employees specialise in mechanics, manufacturing and robotics. Apple has officially declared that its first batch of electric cars will be shipped in 2019. Since February of this year, Apple managed to snag such stellar automotive talents as Paul Furgale, the Swiss researcher who led the V-Charge project developing self-parking cars.
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At the end of 2014, Apple was reportedly sitting on US$178 billion ($255 billion) of cash. It will be interesting to see what it comes up with, particularly with no prior experience in the area. Apple has given instructions to the leaders involved in the development of the electric vehicle to triple the 600 persons assigned to carrying out with the Apple auto task. It uses preferences stored in your iPhone that could automatically adjust the position of the seat, headrest and steering wheel. The one thing Apple does not know is the automobile manufacturing. Shortly after that, Bloomberg reported that in fact, Tesla had itself been poaching Apple employees to go in the other direction, claiming “at least” 150 workers had joined the EV and now stationary energy storage maker.
Plus, we’re fairly certain that Apple is creating its own version of Google Street View, so the project in question might actually relate to Maps.
How much could a auto mean to Apple (AAPL) earnings? “And the same applies to me”. In an optimistic scenario, the number of shipments could grow to over 250,000 units by 2025, assuming that the company launches more models and variants along the way, while expanding distribution into worldwide markets.
In a video of CNBC, Bob Lutz, former GM and BMW executive, commented regarding Apple’s creation of iCar. He said: “There’s no reason to assume Apple will do a better job than General Motors, Ford, Volkswagen, Toyota or Hyundai”. Having said that, the company to which Apple is perhaps most often compared within the tech sector, Tesla, found that shipping automobiles on time was critical. This report follows Apple’s efforts to hire big time automotive experts in its clan and also hunting for locations to test the autonomous cars.
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It tends to take automakers around five to seven years to develop a vehicle, so 2020 sounds like a good bet to us.
