What concerns the Apple Car (or iCar) risks becoming an infinite soap opera. The phantom car from Cupertino, also known as the Titan project, has been talked about for almost ten years now, given that the first rumors began to circulate in 2014. Rumors, however, never confirmed by Apple’s top management, with Tim Cook who in the past limited himself to showing interest in autonomous driving, comparing the car to a robot. Returning to the present, the latest updates on the iCar come from the Bloomberg agency, according to which the project has undergone changes for the umpteenth time. Apple would have slowed down the development of its car and would have also scaled back its technological ambitions.
After all, autonomous driving is proving to be an increasingly distant and difficult goal to achieve. Just under two months ago, for example, Ford and Volkswagen closed their subsidiary Argo AI, which was developing driverless technology. “Making large-scale profits with a fully autonomous vehicle is still a long way off,” Ford CEO Jim Farley said. As for Apple, however, its first car could debut no longer in 2025, but in 2026. A change due precisely to the awareness that fully autonomous driving is not currently feasible.
So, again according to Bloomberg, Apple would have decided to equip its car with a steering wheel and pedals, obviously accompanied by the best electronic assisted driving systems. Furthermore, the infotainment system would be almost ready: It should be based on a microprocessor specially developed by Apple and be called Denali – like the highest mountain in the USA – even if this name is already used by GMC for its “light trucks”. Finally, Bloomberg also speaks of a downsizing of the price, which originally would have been higher than $120,000 but could instead start from less than $100,000. While waiting to get to the end of the soap opera, we can observe the design hypothesis created by the American company Vanarama which was inspired by various Apple patents.
