This article was discussed in our Next Byte podcast. 

The full article will continue below.

What Do We Know?

Honestly, not a lot. It's no surprise that Apple has strongly protected the details about this project as much as possible; however, we have some information about what the final product could look like based on patents, hiring decisions, and discussions with other automakers.

The Talent

Dr. Michael Schwekutsch | Senior Director of Engineering - Special Projects Group

Dr. Schwekutsch led the powertrain development at Tesla between 2015 - 2019.

Doug Field | Vice President - Special Projects Group

Mr. Field was in charge of the Tesla Model S program between 2013 - 2018.

Notable Patents

U.S. Patent #10,908,328

Visibility system to assist driving in poor conditions

U.S. Patent #10,948,582

Stabilizing system when on slippery roads 

U.S. Patent #10,825,255

AR display to beat motion sickness in case you really hate looking out the window

U.S. Patent #10,843,525

Dynamic tinted windows to tune the amount of privacy you'd like at any given time

U.S. Patent #10,878,699

advanced situational awareness system to notify passenger of passing ambulances, etc.

U.S. Patent #10,875,380

Optimized climate control based on passenger body part temperatures

U.S. Patent #10,878,699 

Autonomous charging to make manual charging obsolete

U.S. Patent #10,891,745

Realtime depth sensing to potentially assist an autonomous driving system.

There's a lot more patents related to Project Titan (codename for the Apple car project) but from the shortlist above a somewhat coherent picture starts to come together: A passenger experience-centric, autonomous, electric vehicle. There is no way to confirm if all of the applications of these patents will be bundled together in one product or if Apple has longterm ambitions and consumers will see bits and pieces of this technology as time goes on.

Manufacturing Partners

Hyundai/Kia

Apple was in talks with Hyundai for quite some time and in early February, it seemed like a deal was getting finalized where Apple would be designing the vehicle and Hyundai would take on the manufacturing at their Kia factory in Georgia. Unfortunately, the deal fell apart shortly after being made public.

Foxconn

Foxconn has been one of Apple's biggest manufacturing partners for quite some time and they've announced plans to start manufacturing electric vehicles by 2023. The company has dismissed it's rumored partnership with Apple to manufacturer the tech giants first EV but, given their duos proven history along with Apple's inability to secure an established automotive manufacturer as a partner, it would make sense that they team up to push Project Titan to the finish line.