Yet More Sources Confirm the Apple Car

I’ll preface this post by saying I’m still having trouble buying this – but the growing pile of reports citing allegedly reliable sources means that I won’t be able to do this for long. So here we are: another report today seems to reveal that Apple is, indeed, working on a car.

A post on MacObserver (via Business Insider) doubles down on reports we’ve been hearing since last week when a mysterious Apple-leased van with camera equipment on the roof was spotted driving (ITSELF?!) around California. The post’s author, Bryan Chaffin, offered up his justification for saying, with no apparent wiggle room, that “Apple is working on a car.” Behold:

“Apple has been looking for—and acquiring—the kind of people from Tesla with expertise that is most suited to cars. So much so that I went from being a doubter to a believer almost instantly.

From another source who travels in more rarified circles than yours truly, I also learned that a lot of people at the top in Silicon Valley consider it a given that Apple is working on a car. This is circumstantial, at best, but if you’re going to crowd-source wisdom, you could do a lot worse than polling the C-suite.

I should add that when I asked one of my sources flat out to put a percentage chance on Apple working on an actual car—rather than some kind of car-related technology—I was told, ‘80 percent.’”

The post goes on to relate the fact that as Apple was gearing up to debut the iPhone, rumors that this was happening was dismissed because Apple had no telecom-industry experience. That’s a good example to offer to justify why it’s not so crazy to dismiss this notion.

On the other hand, the iPhone isn’t so different from an iPod. And neither are so different from a computer. All three devices have hard drives, RAM, and operating systems that let users access data through different kinds of user interfaces. None of these really have anything in common with an actual, honest-to-goodness car.

Making a working, moving vehicle, even if it runs on Apple’s software, is a pretty big step up from making consumer electronics. It’s not impossible, but it still feels like too big a step. Then again, I’d be more willing to believe that Apple has partnered with an automaker that’s looking to revolutionize its own products. I can totally see a Ford-Apple partnership, where a new line of Ford-made electric cars run using an Apple Auto operating system.

But hey, what do I know? At this point, the reports keep piling up, and nothing stays a secret in Silicon Valley for long. It seems as though we’ll find out one way or another before too long.

[Sources: MacObserver via Business Insider]