The question whether Apple is building a car or not has seen more twists and turns than an Abbas-Mustan movie. And yet, until very recently, there was no definitive answer to it. Now, however, Tim Cook has laid the secret bare, and revealed to everyone that Apple is, in fact, working on a Car!
Of course, the ever secretive Tim Cook would never openly say it. He hinted at it very strongly and didn’t deny the claim outrightly! Coming from Apple, that’s as much of a confession as you’re probably going to get!! Quartz reports —
Cook did not explicitly lay out Apple’s plans, but he spoke of “three vectors of change” that are set to disrupt the auto industry—self-driving cars, electric cars, and ride-sharing companies—and he did say that his company is focusing on “autonomous systems.”
Cook went on to talk about how very challenging it is the build the AI that will eventually run these autonomous cars. He was confident, however, that tech will definitely be here one day. He felt it’s more of “when” question and so much an “if” question.
Apple hadn’t concentrated on building AI tech for a very long time, focusing their energies more on hardware and Apple specific software. However, in the wake of immense competition from Google and Amazon on the AI front, Apple has stepped up its game as well. It is now one of the topics that frequently comes up at Apple’s events and press releases about future plans.
All this has still not cleared the confusion on Apple’s involvement in the auto-world completely. For example, it’s still unclear if Apple is actually looking to build a physical car or just the technology behind it.
And perhaps Apple is actually focusing on something entirely different—as Cook said, cars are just one of many things that can benefit from operating on their own. “Autonomy is incredibly exciting for us, but we’ll see where it takes us,” Cook said. “We’re not really saying [from] a product point of view what we will do, but where we are being straightforward is that it’s a core technology that we view as very important.”
While Apple really doesn’t like running their software on others’ hardware, we think Apple will be ready to make an exception here. Especially if their aim is a universal autonomous driving ecosystem, in which case, their tech needs to be compatible with all the makes and models.
Either way, we are very excited about what Apple will come up with. And given the revelations made by Cook, it’s safe to assume that Apple is about to reach a big milestone in the completion of the project. Otherwise, Cook would never have breathed a word of it! All in all, exciting times ahead!