I watched the big Apple Event today, just in case they said anything about an Apple Car. They didn’t. Because of course they didn’t. Nobody thought they would, right? Well, now we know for sure: no car. So we can all rest easy.
I mean, sure, I was plenty excited to see that the iPhone 7 comes in black and—get this—jet black, and I can’t wait to not see those two kinds of black hidden under people’s phone cases. And hey, no more headphone jack! What am I supposed to pack pocket lint into now?
Oh, and Mario is now officially on the iPhone, so that’s fun. But no car. No mention of a car. No hint of a car. No car. I’m writing all this because they’re making me, because there’s no damn car here, okay.
In fact, the only car seen at all in the whole event was the Range Rover Tim Cook got dropped off in:
To be clear, Apple does not manufacture Range Rovers, or, to date, any other car.
So far, what we can say we definitively know about Apple’s secretive car project, known as Project Titan, is still a sadly meager list that speaks more to Apple’s skill at keeping secrets than anything about building cars. There’s some hints here, so it’s worth going over.
One definitive thing we know is that Apple has some buildings with a garage, and they occasionally make enough noise in there to piss off the neighbors. We know that Bob Mansfield, is heading up the project. Mansfield was in charge of hardware engineering for the MacBook Air, the iMac, the iPad, as well as some work on the Apple Watch. Apple has also poached Chris Porritt, ex-Tesla Vice President of Vehicle Engineering and, before that, Aston Martin Chief Engineer, as well as designer Marc Newsom.
Apple’s car is expected to be electric, and very likely have some degree of autonomy; perhaps even autonomous only. We know of only one car purchased by Apple for their secretive division: a 1957 Fiat Multipla, a tiny, one-box, rear-engine microvan.
So, yeah, this whole post is just to say that everything is just as it was, Apple Car-wise: we don’t know shit. I’m still hoping it’ll be my robotic errand-getter idea, but, based on what we actually, really know, the fucker could be a ceramic-bodied twin-cab pickup truck with a central bed and powered by a roof-mounted radial-7 cylinder engine that runs on the recycled drippings from gyro meat cones.
There’s no fucking Apple Car yet. It’s fine.