The Apple Car: What We Know

Motor Trend got car and tech enthusiasts excited on Wednesday when it started teasing that it had an exclusive story on Apple’s (NASDAQ:AAPL) mysterious car.
However, that excitement quickly turned to scorn when the story was released Thursday. Those expecting an interesting scoop on the project, which is code named “Project Titan,” were sorely disappointed when instead of actual news they got a thinkpiece on what a car from Apple might look like.
As Chris Ziegler of The Verge states in one of the kinder stories on the Motor Trends report, “there isn’t a modicum of actual information about Apple’s plans.”
The headlines surrounding the Apple car show exactly how unimpressed people are. For instance, Slate published an article titled “If the Apple Car Looks Anything Like This, Apple is in Trouble,” while automobile news and gossip site Jalopnik published one called “Motor Trend’s Fake Apple Car is Extraordinarily Dumb and Dishonest.” Meanwhile, over at Seeking Alpha, Mark Hibben titled his article “Apple Car: Let’s Hope Motor Trend is Wrong.”

Twitter (NASDAQ:TWTR) users been even more scathing about the piece:

$5 says Motor Trend’s visualizations of Apple’s car are on par w/pre-2007 iPhone renderings. https://t.co/4RcUn8C9fW pic.twitter.com/8x8hmimAVQ

— Harry McCracken (@harrymccracken) April 14, 2016

Motor Trend’s speculative Apple Car rendering is just embarrassing https://t.co/HaCvG5AFBW

— Christopher Mims (@mims) April 14, 2016

Motor Trend: We Gathered A Group Of Experts Together To Make The Worst Possible Apple Car: https://t.co/WKO6XhySPE pic.twitter.com/fF5TXfNO4f

— John Paczkowski (@JohnPaczkowski) April 14, 2016

Jokes aside, many people are now more curious than ever about the Apple car — in particular, some are wondering if it will require as much lithium, graphite and cobalt as Tesla Motors’ (NASDAQ:TSLA) cars will eventually need. To find out whether there’s anything that can be said for sure about the car, we scoured the internet to see what information is actually out there.
Unsurprisingly, there aren’t a lot of facts. With that in mind, here are a few interesting statements about the car that are probably true:

• The car might be autonomous and electric — Apple’s car may be able to drive itself, an anonymous source told Reuters last year. The source told the news outlet that Apple was in the process of “gathering advice on parts and production methods … adding that Apple appeared not to be interested in combustion engine technology or conventional manufacturing methods.”
• Apple has registered three car-related domains — The domains are are apple.car, apple.cars and apple.auto, states MacRumors. And while it’s uncertain as to whether they’re related to a car (the alternative is that they have something to do with CarPlay), they’ve definitely caused some excitement.
• Elon Musk believes in the Apple car — Despite all of the Apple car rumors, some people still don’t believe the company is actually making one. But would you believe it if Tesla’s Elon Musk said it was true? According to the BBC, he’s described Apple’s car as an “open secret,” and has quipped, “[i]t’s pretty hard to hide something if you hire over a thousand engineers to do it.”

For more speculation on the Apple car, check out this article from Tech Times, and be sure to check back here for updates.
Don’t forget to follow us @INN_Lithium for more updates!

 
Securities Disclosure: I, Charlotte McLeod, hold no direct investment interest in any company mentioned in this article.
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