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A major acquisition is the only way the Apple Car can launch this decade, top insider suggests

Published Sep 27th, 2023 2:38PM EDT
Apple CarPlay displayed in a Tesla Model S
Image: Jonathan S. Geller

Could Apple Car be released any time soon? According to analyst Ming-Chi Kuo, “the development of the Apple Car seems to have lost all visibility at the moment.”

The insider says that if Apple doesn’t adopt an acquisition strategy to enter the automotive market, “I doubt that the Apple Car can go into mass production within the next few years.”

Over time, BGR reported how many drawbacks and changes in leadership this product had. Three 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, we only have two real details about the long-rumored Project Titan: a 2026 launch window and 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.

José Adorno Tech News Reporter

José is a Tech News Reporter at BGR. He has previously covered Apple and iPhone news for 9to5Mac, and was a producer and web editor for Latin America broadcaster TV Globo. He is based out of Brazil.