In his latest Power On newsletter, Bloomberg’s Mark Gurman suggests the Apple Car could still be coming later this decade. The Project Titan has suffered from several drawbacks over the past years. Still, the journalist mentions that not only is Apple readying to enter the mixed reality market with the Vision Pro but the electric vehicle market as well.
Talking about what would be Apple’s upcoming product to help the company restore revenue growth, Gurman says that the mixed reality headset won’t be it, but there’s a chance with the Apple Car. He writes:
“But to truly reinvigorate its business, Apple needs one of its hallmark ‘next big things.’ In that vein, the company is preparing to enter the mixed-reality and electric vehicle markets. A car is still a ways out: The company doesn’t expect to ship anything until later in the decade.”
The last time we heard about the Apple Car was by the end of September. At that time, analyst Ming-Chi Kuo said the development of this product had lost “all visibility,” with the insider saying he didn’t expect Apple Car to go into mass production within the next few years” – and only a major acquisition could help Cupertino released its long-expected vehicle.
Apple Car seems more unlikely to launch
Over time, BGR reported how many drawbacks and changes in leadership this product had. Five months ago, I wrote that, despite renewed chatter, Apple Car didn’t seem anywhere close to launching.
At the time, Wedbush analyst Daniel Ives said on CNBC that the only question about the Apple Car is “when, not if” it will launch.
While the Wedbush analyst said the exact same thing in 2021 about Apple entering the electric vehicle market, it seems the Cupertino firm is still struggling with this project. Over almost ten years, BGR has reported on drawbacks, changes in the project’s core, executives departing the company, and the dissolving of an entire team.
At the time, Ives still believed a 2026 announcement was possible, which aligns with what Bloomberg reported at the end of 2022. In March, top insider Ming-Chi Kuo said the team behind the project was dissolved, and it would take up to six months to align expectations and decide what to do next. Now that six months have passed, the project doesn’t look like going anywhere.
That said, little do we really know about the long-rumored Project Titan: a 2026 launch window with a “less ambitious” design, as Apple plans to enter a new market two years after starting selling its spatial computer Vision Pro headset – according to Bloomberg.
BGR’s Yoni Heisler wrote an interesting piece about Apple Car’s future last year. In the article, he brings up something he wrote a long time ago, which still makes sense:
Personally, I don’t think Apple has concrete plans to release a car to production by 2020 or any specific date in the future. Rather, I think Apple has put together a team to explore the possibility of developing a car. More to the point, I think Apple is assembling a group of extremely smart individuals in order to assess the viability of further research. I think Apple’s car ambitions, at this point, represent nothing more than a typical R&D project, albeit on a grander scale.
While Apple is still unsure of what it will announce – or if it will ever announce something on the EV market – we’ll have to wait for future reports. That said, the company should start looking for another source of income, as mixed reality and EV markets won’t be the solution for weakening revenue.
