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Apple Car is Aiming for 2025 Debut According to BloombergApple Car is Aiming for 2025 Debut According to Bloomberg

Bloomberg’s sources say the company’s EV will be autonomous, with no steering wheel or pedals.

Dan Carney, Senior Editor

November 19, 2021

2 Min Read
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Dan Carney, with Prisma AI

Apple’s will-they-or-won’t-they Titan project to develop an electric car is accelerating, with the goal of building a fully autonomous car without a steering wheel by 2025. That’s according to highly placed sources inside the company who spoke to Bloomberg's Mark Gurman.

Apple’s project leader Kevin Lynch reportedly decided to go all-in on autonomy rather than launching initially with conventional EV and adding self-driving capability later, Bloomberg reports.

The company is said to have finished most of the “core work” on the specialized processor it plans to employ to drive the car, though obviously a 2025 delivery target is extremely ambitious.

Apple’s Silicon Valley engineers may embrace the “move fast and break things” philosophy, but they are still faced with the reality that autonomous driving seems to be sliding away into the future as the full challenge of developing such systems becomes more clear to proponents.

“Generalized self-driving is a hard problem, as it requires solving a large part of real-world AI,” admitted Tesla boss Elon Musk in response to questions about continuing delays in his company’s Full Self Driving technology. “Didn’t expect it to be so hard, but the difficulty is obvious in retrospect. Nothing has more degrees of freedom than reality.”

Related:Myth No More: Hyundai Says the Apple Car Is Coming

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With this in mind, it remains to be seen whether Apple’s team can solve these problems in such a short time frame. The company is said to favor a design that has a “lounge-like” configuration with a central display and no controls for a driver.

It will be interesting to see what progress Apple can make, but after seeing so many other companies’ efforts humbled by the difficulty of reality, a 2025 debut sounds optimistic at best.

At the same time, Apple's Taiwanese supplier of much of its electronic hardware, Foxconn, is actively seeking U.S. sites to locate factories to build EVs under contract as it makes phones for other companies today.

About the Author

Dan Carney

Senior Editor, Design News

Dan’s coverage of the auto industry over three decades has taken him to the racetracks, automotive engineering centers, vehicle simulators, wind tunnels, and crash-test labs of the world.

A member of the North American Car, Truck, and Utility of the Year jury, Dan also contributes car reviews to Popular Science magazine, serves on the International Engine of the Year jury, and has judged the collegiate Formula SAE competition.

Dan is a winner of the International Motor Press Association's Ken Purdy Award for automotive writing, as well as the National Motorsports Press Association's award for magazine writing and the Washington Automotive Press Association's Golden Quill award.

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He has held a Sports Car Club of America racing license since 1991, is an SCCA National race winner, two-time SCCA Runoffs competitor in Formula F, and an Old Dominion Region Driver of the Year award winner. Co-drove a Ford Focus 1.0-liter EcoBoost to 16 Federation Internationale de l’Automobile-accredited world speed records over distances from just under 1km to over 4,104km at the CERAM test circuit in Mortefontaine, France.

He was also a longtime contributor to the Society of Automotive Engineers' Automotive Engineering International magazine.

He specializes in analyzing technical developments, particularly in the areas of motorsports, efficiency, and safety.

He has been published in The New York Times, NBC News, Motor Trend, Popular Mechanics, The Washington Post, Hagerty, AutoTrader.com, Maxim, RaceCar Engineering, AutoWeek, Virginia Living, and others.

Dan has authored books on the Honda S2000 and Dodge Viper sports cars and contributed automotive content to the consumer finance book, Fight For Your Money.

He is a member and past president of the Washington Automotive Press Association and is a member of the Society of Automotive Engineers

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