Ecocars4sale are excited about the Apple iCar Concept

LONDON - May 22, 2016 - PRLog -- According to Business Insider, Apple intends to give Tesla a run for their money by coming up with an electric car. Apple is also poaching engineers from the giant phone manufacturer, Samsung. Moreover, there has been ongoing reassignment of many technicians within Apple to concentrate on the development of the car, dubbed "Project Titan."

While there is no official information from Apple, the car is predicted to be either electric or self-driven. However, we dissect carefully to the pieces of evidence substantiating the development of the iCar.

Prominent Rumours of iCar Development

Purchase of Car Related Domain Names By Apple, it's rumoured by MacRumours that a couple of car-related domains had been purchased by Apple in December 2015. They include apple.car, apple.cars and apple.auto. This domain names were brought into light by Whois, an IP address service that traces addresses to their owners. However, none of the domain names are active despite being registered through MarkMonitorInc as at January 8, 2016.

However, the firm may be buying the domains for their in-car system, CarPlay. Additionally, this may be a way to divert attention from the Apple iCar (https://www.ecocars4sale.com/apple-electric-cars-for-sale) making firm. Previously there was a rumour that Apple had also added iCloud.com to its portfolio and that got MacRumours frenzied.

Elon Musk Confirms Existence of iCar In an Interview

Elon Musk, Tesla's CEO confirmed that Apple was developing a rival car in an interview with BBC. He said it was obvious for the giant electronic device manufacturer to come up with an electric car after hiring a great number of renowned technicians from top electronic manufacturing firms. However, the CEO has downplayed rumours that he is worried about the stiff competition that would be brought about by iCar, according to a German Newspaper.

Digital Plates

Electric, a website claims that Apple plans to be the first company to boast of digital license plates. Apple hired Reviver's ex-director Ronan O Braonain, who was working on producing digital license plates that would be the first of its kind in the world today. His LinkedIn profile, reads that he spent five years at BMW as a software engineer, later moving to Vision Fleet, a company offering electric vehicle management software to become its CTO. He is currently at Apple working on Project Titan.

Negotiations with BMW

Reuters confirms that Tim Cook and other top officials have occasionally visit to BMW to push for the CarPlay system to be adopted by BMW i3 electric vehicle after being the first auto firm to incorporate iPod facilities to its cars. However, Apple is also interested in observing how the carbon filter present in BMW i3 car functions in order to incorporate it in the iCar. The deal is rumoured to have started in the autumn of 2014 and it's approaching the final stages.

Hiring Veterans in the Auto Industry

This is the clearest sign that Apple is working on an iCar. Apple hired Doug Betts, who has vast experienced having worked for Toyota and Nissan for over 25 years. Currently, his LinkedIn profile reads that he is at operations division in Apple, confirming Wall Street Journal's rumour that an iCar is being developed.

Paul Furghale, a Swiss researcher accredited with the developing of self-parking cars. Many Tesla's technicians who developed the Tesla Model 3 and engineers are moving to Apple after getting hefty bonuses and a pay increase of up to 60%, Tesla CEO Elon Musk confirmed to Apple Insider. Samsung is also experiencing a high employee turnover; mainly the technicians who develop its batteries, thanks to Apple's competitive benefits and annual pay checks.

Secret iCar Facility

The R&D facility run by Johann Jungwith, ex-head at Mercedes, is rumoured to be the iCar's developing facility where meeting regarding to the manufacturing and hiring of auto exes is being done, according to Times Magazine.

Project Titan Big Team

Apple has taken the project seriously to the extent of tripling the strong team from 600 to 1800 to help the firm attain its iCar 2019 target.

Release Date: When is the iCar being launched?

The timeframe set for iCar's launch is early 2020 according to Bloomberg since Apple is pushing its team to begin mass production of the iCar by then. In addition, to develop a car takes over five years and by pushing for this deadline, Apple aggressiveness to rival GM and Tesla can be seen here.By 2019, the engineers behind iCar will have signed off the main features of the car before proceeding to mass production for different markets in the world.

How will the iCar look?

Apple is renowned for its expertise in the electronics world. Nothing short is expected of the iCar as it has to under gorgeous testing before it's released to the market. If it launches a car, it will indeed be beautiful as its products.

Patents

Apple boasts of filling patents related to the auto industry in 2011, where one would unlock his car from any iDevice. Another patent was obtained in 2009 relating to the in-car camera integration system where it would be used to detect hand signals to operate some of the cars function such as locking the car.

Leaked Images

Apple has played so well in making the iCar a top secret. Releasing its images before final release wouldn't be that easy. Additionally, Apple is not doing tests on the iCar on public roads. Images circulating on YouTube are of sensor van seen in the streets of San Francisco and New York. This was being used as a mapping vehicle collecting data vital for the development of future versions of Apple's Maps.