Apple changed the smartphone world with the iPhone, the watch world with the Apple Watch, and now it’s working on an Apple Car.
Even though Apple is famously secretive about its projects, there are a few things we already know about the ‘iCar’.
READ MORE: Sneak peek at the highly-anticipated world-first Apple car
What is the Apple car called?
The first thing we should note is even though everybody is sort of expecting Apple to call it the ‘iCar’, there’s no official name yet.
The Apple Car is internally known as ‘Project Titan’, but we know from experience that code names used for a certain project are almost never used for the finished product.
Not that it matters anyway, because aside from the name, people will mostly be interested in its tech.
A software-first vehicle
Rumors about Apple’s intention to build a car first surfaced in 2014, roughly around the same time Tesla went ‘mainstream’, so to speak.
The market wasn’t ready then, but it is ready now because these days, cars are defined by software and tech, not their engine, especially considering most cars don’t really have an engine anymore.
The Apple Car will run on Apple’s iOS.
After all, this is nothing new.
Even Huawei makes both the car and the software that runs it.
More recently, Mercedes unveiled its first in-house OS, becoming the first legacy brand to engineer the operative system for its own cars.
Spec and performance
Apple’s car will be electric and autonomous, but it won’t be fast.
Apple wants to build a cruiser, not a racer.
In terms of tech and features, the Apple Car will be a lot closer to a Tesla than, say, a BMW or an Audi.
Speaking to the BBC, Elon Musk was one of the first key figures in the auto industry to acknowledge the Apple Car was happening.
“It’s pretty hard to hide something [that Project Titan exists, ed.] if you hire a thousand engineers to do it,” Musk said.
Apple Car pricing and availability
The Apple Car is unlikely to be unveiled anytime before 2026, and it won’t be cheap.
Apple’s products are generally more expensive than their rivals.
This is true for the iPhone, Apple Watch, iPad and MacBook.
It is especially true for Apple’s VR headset, the ‘Vision Pro‘, which is nearly ten times more expensive than Meta’s Quest 3.
There’s no reason to believe this’ll change with the Apple Car, which will likely be marketed in the same price bracket as the Tesla Model X and the newly-unveiled Sony Afeela EV.
We expect a price tag of around $100,000.
