The Wall Street Journal reports that Apple has hundreds of people working on a top secret project: an electric minivan. The massive undertaking, codenamed "Titan", is expected to last years, and it's entirely possible that Apple will abandon it. But if it doesn't, Steve Jobs's iCar dream will finally come true.
This shouldn't come as a huge surprise. There are years' worth of rumors that Apple is interested in getting into the car business outside of the more famous Steve Jobs iCar rumor. And just recently, a janky-looking Dodge Caravan outfitted with what appears to be self-driving car technology has been spotted around the Bay Area. However, it's worth noting that that minivan might just be doing work for Apple Maps.
As salacious as this latest report about Apple's automotive ambitions sound, it's really worth hammering home the fact that the insanely rich company has all kinds of projects in the works at all times. As Tim Cook told Charlie Rose last year, "There are products that we're working on that no one knows about, that haven't been rumored about yet."
All that said, this is exciting. The explosive success and growth of Tesla has shown the world how the car can be reinvented (without dirty destructive gasoline, at that) and built into a machine the future deserves. Apple has a fine tradition of making the best product in any given sector even better. So if the company that gave us the iPhone wants to give us an iCar, we can't wait to see it—but we'll definitely be waiting years if not forever. [WSJ]
Image by Michael Hession