Another slip up for the Titan project (also known as T172) that Apple launched ten years ago.
Despite huge investments - there is talk of 3 billion dollars - the presentation of a car equipped with advanced autonomous driving features which was scheduled for 2026 will take place "not before 2028", as declared by the Cupertino company itself.
The reasons for this partial debacle, we read in the American magazine Robb Report, are not known, but what is known - partially also officially - is that the project has been revised several times and has undergone a series of reorganizations in strategies and in personnel almost always 'stolen' from other large car manufacturers.
At the beginning of the Titan program, in the second half of the last decade and after the stop of the secret negotiations with BMW and Mercedes, Apple had opened an automotive laboratory in Berlin, made up of around 15-20 'high level' people from the automotive industry German.
who worked on issues such as the "Apple Car" concepts, At the time there was also talk of a possible production collaboration with the Austrian company Magna Steyr.
In May 2016, Bob Mansfield (former Apple technology manager, one of the fathers of the iPhone, iPad and MacBookAir, recalled to the company for this project) was said to have announced to employees a first change in the Titan strategy.
Apple wasn't supposed to compete directly with Tesla, but go further.
According to Mansfield, the original idea of an electric car that gave access to the driver and was started via fingerprint and partially autonomous would have evolved into something more ambitious.
Over the years, however, difficulties (and failures) have repeatedly penalized the Titan idea and its realization.
As experience in autonomous driving developed in Cupertino, it was realized that designing and producing an electric car that interacted with the occupants like a gigantic smartphone - including thousands of apps and paid services - and that moved with high level of autonomy 4, was also complicated on a legislative level and above all in terms of business returns.
At this stage the factor that most distanced Apple from the original idea of its car was the relationship with the supply chain.
Accustomed with the various iPhones and iPads to being able to exercise decisive control over suppliers of detached parts and third-party assembly, the Cupertino company had to deal - without success - with manufacturers in the automotive sector who did not intend to commit to an Apple Car for higher development costs and above all for a numerically limited production.
Robb Report reports that the Silicon Valley company is now thinking of a relatively simpler car with an operating system to be updated via the Cloud (it's not exactly new) and with features - whether autonomous driving or not - capable of attracting customers young or at least attentive to the rapid progress of digital technologies.
Many contacts are underway to find an 'auto' partner such as, the American media indicate, those with Hyundai, Nissan, General Motors, Magna, Porsche and even Foxconn and LG.
But the doubt remains whether Apple can somehow manage to develop and produce an electric model according to this new timeframe.
After all, comments Robb Report, entering the electric car game is difficult, as Rivian and Lucid testify.
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