Anticipating the Apple Car: Tech giant’s long-awaited electric vehicle could feature a customisable touchscreen dashboard, swivelling seats and a Siri-like ‘intelligent automated assistant’
- Despite tantalising rumours going back as far as 2014, little is known about Apple’s plans for an electric car
- However, the tech firm has been seen testing self-driving tech in California and has patented automobile tech
- UK car leasing firm Vanarama has taken inspiration to bring a possible Apple Car to digital life
- Its design sports rear coach doors, and borrows from the aesthetic of products like the MacBook
Like a heat mirage shimmering over the road ahead, Apple’s much-awaited contribution to the electric car market has been teasing us from the horizon since rumours of its development first emerged back in late 2014.
Despite having the potential to be the California-based firm’s biggest project yet, both figuratively and literally, precious little has been officially revealed about the plans for the Apple Car.
Nevertheless, signs of development are abound, from the firm’s apparent ongoing tests of self-driving software around Cupertino via a fleet of sensor-laden Lexus SUVs to the filing of an assortment of suggestive patents.
Based on these, experts have anticipated what the Apple Car could look like and the revolutionary features it might sport, from a customisable touchscreen dashboard to a Siri-like ‘intelligent automated assistant’.
Brought to life by artists with the UK car leasing firm Vanarama, the gorgeous mock-up has the sleek, minimalist lines that make Apple’s tech offerings so distinctive, down to the glowing Apple logo on the radiator grille.
Like a heat mirage shimmering over the road ahead, Apple’s much-awaited contribution to the electric car market has been teasing us from the horizon since rumours of its development first emerged back in late 2014
As imagined by Vanarama’s artists, the sleek vehicle’s interior sports a sweeping, customisable, tactile touchscreen interface in place of a conventional dashboard
Pictured: a diagram from Apple’s patent for a reconfigurable in-vehicle instrument panel display. Unlike in Vanarama’s reconstruction, the one depicted in the patent only covers part of the dashboard
Vanarama experts have anticipated what the Apple Car could look like (pictured) and the features it might sport — from a customisable touchscreen dashboard to a Siri-like ‘intelligent automated assistant’ — based on real-life patent filings
APPLE CAR TIMELINE
While little is known about the development and progress of the Apple Car, rumours have long abound:
2008 — Then-Apple CEO Steve Jobs first expresses an interest in an Apple Car in the wake of both the launch of the original iPhone and the release of Tesla Motor’s first car, according to iPod inventor Tony Fadell and Apple board member Mickey Drexler.
2014 — An electric car project, codenamed ‘Titan’ is allegedly given the go-ahead by Apple CEO Tim Cook.
2015 — Apple is said to have hired new employees for the project, alongside meeting with self-driving car experts and GoMentum Station, a California-based testing ground for autonomous vehicles. The firm hires Daimler Trucks subsidiary Torc to fit sensors to two Lexus SUVs in a project known internally as ‘Baja’.
2016 — Bloomberg reports that Apple has decided to switch its priority over to developing software to power self-driving solutions. However, sources suggest that the firm is still looking to ultimately create a car of its own.
2017 — Tim Cook acknowledges that Apple is working on self-driving technologies. Rumours arise that the firm will be testing autonomous cars on California roads.
2018 — Apple registers 27 self-driving cars with California’s Department of Motor Vehicles. The firm enters a rumoured partnership with Volkswagen to produce an autonomous electric shuttle bus. The FBI charge a former Apple employee for stealing trade secrets relating to project Titan. In August, an Apple self-driving car is rear-ended during road testing.
2019 — Drive.ai, an autonomous vehicle start-up, is acquired by Apple.
2020 — Reuters reports that Apple is working towards a possible Apple Car launch in 2024.
2021 — Industry scuttlebutt has it that Apple is in talks with Hyundai and Kia to jointly produce self-driving electric cars, but the vehicle manufacturers deny this. More rumours emerge of a 2024 launch goal — this time in collaboration with Toyota and its Korean partners.
‘Rumours of a car created by Apple started as early as 2014 and have gained momentum since,’ said Vanarama CEO Andy Alderson.
‘It has become a big deal in the car industry and beyond, and here at Vanarama we were eager to see what the Apple Car could look like.
‘To give us an idea, we searched for official patents filed by Apple itself and combined them with the design cues and aesthetics we’ve come to expect from the tech company. The result is our vision of the Apple car.
‘Although there is virtually no way of knowing what the finished product will look like, these patents are perhaps the best indication as to the direction Apple is taking.’
The stand-out patented concept that seems most likely to be realised in the Apple Car is a sleek touchscreen interface — one which Vanarama has imagined sweeping across the totality of the vehicle’s dashboard.
According to the patent, the interface will offer tactile feedback and will be both ‘stylistically attractive’ and fully ‘customizable by the user’.
The ‘Reconfigurable Tactile Control Display’, as Apple has called it, ‘is also thought to be lower in cost than most conventional instrument panels and may have applications in other fields such as military vehicles, control systems, home automation systems, CAD or Graphics terminals, and the like.’
To match Apple’s design sensibilities, the mock-up car imagines the display without any clear edges or boundaries, with Vanarama proposing that the dashboard might detect occupants’ phones or smartwatches to load custom interface layouts, suggest likely destinations via satnav-based maps and even pull up custom music playlists for the journey.
A number of other patents, meanwhile, hint at the potential for the Apple Car to have an unusual car body structure, with no central door pillars and rear coach doors — such as seen on some Lincoln Continentals and the modern Rolls-Royce Ghost — allowing for easier passenger entry via a ‘continuous opening’.
The vehicle’s forward seating, meanwhile, is imagined as being able to swivel fully round to face the passengers in the rear of the car, who in turn are separated by a sleek, table-like divider.
This internal flexibility could facilitate a more social travelling experience when the car is in self-driving mode, while still allowing the occupant of the driver’s seat to turn around and retake control when required.
Alongside the expectations of an autonomous mode for the Apple Car, another patent hints at a Siri-like ‘intelligent automated assistant’ that — alongside responding to direct commands and requests — would also be able to monitor the vehicle’s environment and either react or offer recommendations to the driver accordingly.
Vanarama designed the radiator grill on the front of its mock-up to mirror the ‘cheese grater’ ventilation holes on the case of the Mac Pro workstations and servers.
The centre of the grill, meanwhile, is bedecked with a backlit Apple logo — as long adorned the lids of many MacBook models — a motif replicated on the steering column, leather headrests, rear lights and wheel hubs.
Vanarama’s imagining of the Apple Car can be explored in 3D via a ‘virtual product reveal’ on its website.
Vanarama’s artists designed the radiator grill on the front of the mock-up (left) to mirror the ‘cheese grater’ ventilation holes on the case of the Mac Pro workstations and servers (right)
Alongside the expectations of an autonomous mode for the Apple Car, another patent hints at a Siri-like ‘intelligent automated assistant’ that — alongside responding to direct commands and requests — would also be able to monitor the vehicle’s environment and either react or offer recommendations to the driver accordingly
‘We searched for official patents filed by Apple itself and combined them with the design cues and aesthetics we’ve come to expect from the tech company. The result is our vision of the Apple car,’ explained Mr Alderson
‘Although there is virtually no way of knowing what the finished [Apple Car] product will look like, these patents are perhaps the best indication as to the direction Apple is taking,’ Mr Alderson concluded
WHO WILL TAKE POLE POSITION? THE APPLE CAR MAY FACE COMPETION FROM GOOGLE AND SAMSUNG
INSIDE THE GOOGLE CAR
Apple is not the only tech giant looking to enter the automobile market — with Google having conceived of fitted scaled-down wind turbine systems into car wing mirrors to help power on-board systems, Vanarama has reported.
This additional power could be fed, for example, into the onboard infotainment, navigation or temperature control systems — helping to reduce the demand on the (most likely) electric vehicle’s battery.
In the sketch below, Vanarama have imagined some of the features that might appear in a Google car — including a heads-up display on the forward windscreen, a Google Maps-eques navigation display and a steering wheel in the firm’s colours.
Google’s parent company, Alphabet, has already entered the self-driving arena through another of its subsidiaries, Waymo, which already operates an autonomous taxi service in the greater Phoenix, Arizona area.
Pictured: Vanarama have also imagined some of the features that might appear in a Google car — including a heads-up display on the forward windscreen, a Google Maps-eques navigation display and a steering wheel in the firm’s colours
INSIDE THE SAMSUNG CAR
While Apple might have been cooking up their automobile offering for more than a decade now and Alphabet is already ferrying people around Arizona in self-driving cabs, it would be foolish to underestimate Samsung’s potential, Vanarama have said — at least if some of their ambitious patents that might see automotive application are anything to go by.
Proposed tech includes an organic light-emitted element that might conceivable be able to illuminate car interior with something that passes for natural light, as well as a photosensitive resin that, applied in layers, could slowly break down to keep your car look brand new for years after purchase.
In their mock-up of what a Samsung car interior might look like, Vanarama have imagined a heads-up 3D display, a dashboard interface that takes advantage of the firm’s patented folding screen technology (as seen on the Samsung Fold suite of smartphones) and a non-invasive biometric cuff to assess whether drivers might be too drunk to drive.
Pictured: In their mock-up of what a Samsung car interior might look like, Vanarama have imagined a heads-up 3D display, a dashboard interface that takes advantage of the firm’s patented folding screen technology (as seen on the Samsung Fold suite of smartphones) and a non-invasive biometric cuff to assess whether drivers might be too drunk to drive
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