Apple – s Project Titan Is Not About Building a Car, Tim Bajarin
Apple’s Project Titan Is Not About Building a Car
Amidst reports of layoffs across Apple’s rumored car division, I fielded several calls from reporters who assumed the news meant Project Titan was dead and Apple had abandoned car-related efforts altogether.
That’s absurd. If Cupertino was killing Project Titan, why would it bring back Bob Mansfield, former vice president of engineering, to manage the project? Instead, I imagine Mansfield returned, assessed Project Titan, and tightened its concentrate, which unluckily led to layoffs.
In the beginning, Apple likely hired a lot of people from many disciplines as it was researching and playing around with what it should do in the automotive space. Knowing Apple as I do, I would not be astonished if it entertained everything from doing its own car to fresh ways to integrate its technology into existing vehicles.
My individual belief is that Project Titan is not about creating an Apple Car. It just does not make sense given the competition from traditional auto makers. Instead, the fattest chance I see for Apple is creating software that makes existing cars wise or autonomous.
At its simplest level, Titan will beef up Apple’s CarPlay. But what if Apple created a “kit” or special self-driving package that is relatively effortless to deploy at a dealer or by a mechanic and integrates the sensors and cameras seen on Google’s self-driving vehicles into an existing car? An iPad in the dash could supply intelligence and navigation. And instead of an ugly 360-degree camera up top, Jony Ive and team could design a sleek roof attachment.
Think of what a goldmine that would be. Even if it’s pricey, it will be much cheaper than buying a fresh autonomous car.
Related
Of course, the other benefit is that Apple brings more people into its services ecosystem and grows its business beyond iPhones, iPads, and Macs.
In a latest LinkedIn post by Dan Lyons (aka Fake Steve Jobs), he stated that we might eventually “think of a car as just a container for software and services, a knot on the Internet of Things.” I believe this is at the heart of what Project Titan is indeed all about.
I realize that doing this type of “kit” is not effortless, but given the fact that Google has already done this to an existing car, it is in the sphere of possibility that Apple could do it, too. I would not be astonished to see it in the next few years, but even if Apple isn’t the very first to attempt it, I think retrofitting existing cars to make them self-driving vehicles will become big businesses in the next five to ten years.
Tim Bajarin is recognized as one of the leading industry consultants, analysts, and futurists covering the field of individual computers and consumer technology. Mr. Bajarin has been with Creative Strategies since one thousand nine hundred eighty one and has served as a consultant to most of the leading hardware and software vendors in the industry including IBM, Apple, Xerox, Compaq, Dell, AT&T, Microsoft, Polaroid, Lotus, Epson, Toshiba, and numerous others. Mr. Bajarin is known as a concise, futuristic analyst, credited with predicting the desktop publishing revolution three years before it. More »
More Stories by Tim
Scammers are creating fake profiles on services like LinkedIn in an effort to get people to download. More »
Rumors suggest Apple is adding facial recognition to iPhone 8. I hope this is true; I consider it to. More »
When used decently, AI and machine learning will be transformational. More »
