While Elon Musk is laying the groundwork for the next phase of electric Teslas and Google appears busy developing its own self-driving car, it’s almost easy to forget Apple is quietly working on Project Titan, the tech giant’s own car project. Not much is known about Project Titan; reports say Apple is working to develop its own autonomous, electric vehicles, ostensibly to compete with other tech companies and automakers, as sales of its flagship tech products lag. Now, The Wall Street Journal reports, Project Titan has new leadership.
A longtime Apple executive, Bob Mansfield, will lead the company’s car-making efforts, sources say. Project Titan, which is tentatively scheduled to launch in 2021, is a team of “hundreds” of employees, the Journal reports, though Apple has never publicly acknowledged that it’s so much as working on a car project. Mansfield has been at Apple since 1999, when he joined to work for Steve Jobs, and would go on to oversee the engineering development behind Apple products like the iPad and the MacBook Air. In 2013, he started reporting to C.E.O. Tim Cook for special projects. One of these projects, according to the Journal, is now the Apple Car. Steve Zadesky, who was originally assigned to lead Project Titan, stepped down and left the company for personal reasons earlier in 2016.
Aside from making its own cars, Apple has been investing in the future of transportation in other ways. Earlier this year, Apple poured $1 billion into Didi, an Uber rival in China. Working with Didi (and by extension, with Lyft, with whom Didi has its own strategic partnership) lets Apple work with two big ride-hailing giants on the future of transportation, hinting at the possibility of self-driving vehicles. While it’s not clear that Didi is working on any sort of autonomous-vehicle project, Lyft has been working with G.M., one of its investors, on self-driving cars. Cook has only spoken in the most vague terms about the potential for an Apple vehicle. “There will be a massive change in the industry,” he said onstage in October at the WSJDLive conference. Indeed.
