“We had a couple walks – and this was in 2008 – about ‘if we were to build a auto, what would we build?'”, said Nadell, speaking with Bloomberg. That experience for Fadell he says is unlike riding with people behind the wheel of a taxi, Uber, or Lyft vehicle as “most people don’t know how to drive, they’re not professional at it”.
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Considering the fact that Apple now has more cash than any other company on the planet, it’s easy to imagine them getting into the automotive sphere in a major way. The pair posed hypothetical questions to each other, such as: “If we were to build a auto, what would we build? How would you fuel it or power it?” he said.
Back then, there were a lot of projects which Apple said no to. In a 2012 court testimony, Apple’s marketing head Phil Schiller said executives had discussed building a vehicle in 2007, before the launch of the first iPhone.
Fadell, who now leads the Google Glass division, believes that the concept of on-demand, self-driving cars ordered through a smartphone app has already been sold successfully to consumers.
The real challenge, in his estimation, is the connectivity software that will enable things like autonomy.
A new team of Apple employees has been formed to focus on the new project, dubbed Project Titan, and it is rumored to begin production by 2020. But, Tim Cook’s decision to resume work on Apple’s smart-car could be an help it become established in a market where smart cars are still a luxury.
Fadell points out that both cars and iPhones are made of the same parts: batteries, computers, motors and mechanical structures. “It even has a motor in it”, Fadell said. If you look at an iPhone, it has all the same things.
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Fadell also pointed out that phones and cars aren’t really all that different, so the business may make sense for a company like Apple.
