Apple has delayed long-running plans to build its own electric cars, Bloomberg reports.
Citing “people with knowledge of the matter,” Bloomberg says Apple won’t release the iCar until 2026 at the earliest.
Rumors outweigh facts
Known internally as Project Titan, the Apple Car effort has been around since at least 2014. Rumors have flowed frequently. Apple neither confirms nor denies them.
Bloomberg’s report has some details about the supposed car. The press service suggests that the vehicle will carry a six-figure price tag. It will have assistance systems that will allow the driver “to perform other tasks – for example, watching a movie or playing a game – on a motorway and be alerted with enough time to switch to manual control s ‘he reaches the streets of the city or encounters adverse weather conditions’.
Self-driving ambitions made easy
The automotive industry uses a five-level framework to describe automation technology. Level 1 systems can intervene briefly to keep a driver safe, such as automatic emergency braking systems that help brake a car to try to avoid hitting an object on the road. Level 5 systems are completely self-contained and don’t even have a steering wheel or foot pedal.
Related: Self-driving cars – Everything you need to know
Earlier reports indicated that Apple was aiming to produce a Tier 5 system. Bloomberg’s new report describes something closer to Tier 3 – still a cut above anything currently on sale.
Bloomberg says the Apple Car will be priced “in roughly the same price range as the entry-level version of Tesla’s Model S and Mercedes-Benz’s EQS.
But Bloomberg notes that the car is “considered to be at the ‘pre-prototype’ stage.”
