FIAT CEO: Apple is planning an 'intervention' in the automotive industry
First reported by Reuters, Fiat Chrysler boss Sergio Marchionne recently visited California - and while there he met with Tesla, Google, and Apple.
Just the fact that Marchionne met with Apple is significant - Tesla is primarily a automotive business, and Google makes no secret of its self-driving car ambitions. But Apple is tight-lipped over any future plans to move into the automotive space.
Despite this secrecy, there has been a slew of leaks in recent months about "Project Titan," a secretive internal Apple unit that allegedly has hundreds of employees working to develop an electric car. And now, the CEO of the seventh-largest car company in the world is meeting with Apple. Reuters is sparse on details on what Cook and Marchionne discussed, reporting only:
With regard to Apple's Cook, he said: "He's interested in Apple's intervention in the car, that's his role." Marchionne was not more specific about Apple.
Here's some of the other evidence for Apple's rumoured electric car:
- Apple and Tesla are locked in a battle for talent, with Apple offering $250,000 signing bonuses to engineers.
- There is a secretive Apple development facility in Cupertino, California, Apple Insider found, which includes an "auto work area" and a "repair garage."
- Mysterious vans with cameras mounted on registered to Apple have been sighted all across America, with speculation as to their purpose ranging from mapping software to self-driving car technology.
- Apple is also hiring robotics engineers to work "in a unique development team."
- Citing "a person familiar with its work," the Wall Street Journal reports that Apple has hundreds of people working on Project Titan, though the electric car will not come to the market for years. It's allegedly led by VP Steve Zadesky - a veteran of Ford.
- The Apple Car has allegedly been common knowledge for months in certain tech circles, according to Bryan Chaffin from The Mac Observer, who says that "a lot of people at the top in Silicon Valley consider it a given that Apple is working on a car."
- Apple design chief Jony Ive has been complaining about American cars for years.
- An Apple employee reached out to us to tell us the company is working on something that will "give Tesla a run for its money."
- CEO Tim Cook said in an interview last year that "there are products we're working on that no-one knows about."
- The late Apple co-founder and CEO Steve Jobs always wanted to build a car, telling the New York Times before he died "that if he had more energy, he would have liked to take on Detroit with an Apple car."