14 DAY TRIAL // Rumors about Apple making an electric / driverless car abound. The company has reportedly assembled a team of hundreds, and is planning to scale up the project to as many as 1,000 engineers and project managers, according to recent industry chatter.
But what if the Apple-owned minivans spotted roaming the streets of the US of A are not the actual product everyone expects from the Cupertino giant? That’s one question that many skeptics have asked, knowing the hardships incurred by existing carmakers with decades of experience behind them.
The EV train could come and go before Apple has a chance to hop aboard
One of the most persistent rumors regarding Apple’s automotive effort - dubbed Project Titan - is an electric vehicle with smart software built-in. Another such rumor goes even further, calling it a driverless effort. Both could be true, but a safer bet would be just the software.
The president of automotive consulting firm The CarLab, Eric Noble, thinks electric vehicles may be like a summer fling in the automotive industry.
“Another risk is that electric vehicles are in danger of being passed over,” Noble said. “You could argue that Honda and Toyota are already doing that.”
Hydrogen fuel cells seem like a better choice
There are examples that at least some vendors have already abandoned plans to enter the electric vehicle market, and switched over to hydrogen-powered vehicles.
Hydrogen fuel cells imply that a car can be recharged in minutes, not hours like EVs, while “state tax rebates for hydrogen fuel cells can be double that given to buyers of electric cars,” according to Bloomberg.
“These incentive programs may start to turn the tide toward hydrogen over electric drive,” Noble said, according to the report.
For Apple, it could just be a software game
It is therefore believed that at least in the initial stages of this effort, Apple is focusing its resources on creating software (think CarPlay squared) for existing vehicles. Perhaps even new mapping technology, and other crazy stuff that you may have read in various patents cited by the blogosphere.
It’s certainly a possibility, but we won’t know for sure until someone leaks the next major development in Apple’s project.