Apple building a car with poached Tesla staff, says report
Apple is working on a car that will mark the company’s first foray into the automotive space, a new report says.
Bryan Chaffin, co-founder of The Mac Observer, spoke to Business Insider and revealed he is ‘certain’ Apple is working on a car.
“What I learned is that Apple has been looking for – and acquiring – the kind of people from Tesla with expertise that is most suited to cars. So much so that
“From another source who travels in more rarified circles than yours truly, I also learned that a lot of people at the top in Silicon Valley consider it a given that Apple is working on a car.”
He then added he was close ‘to 100 per cent’ certain that Apple was attempting to build a car for the consumer market.
Related: Apple CarPlay review
Last week, BI also reported that an Apple employee revealed Tesla employees were ‘jumping ship’ to work at Apple.
“Apple’s latest project is too exciting to pass up,” the employee told the site. “
Unfortunately, the difference between Apple working on a car at its Cupertino HQ, and then actually launching a car for retail is pretty huge.
Companies will often explore new technologies but hold back on releasing them to the market for any number of reasons.
Apple currently employs around 50 ex-Tesla staff, many of which were engineers.
It’s also worth noting that Apple has invested plenty of cash in its CarPlay technology, so the Tesla employees could in fact be stationed in the software/aftermarket hardware department at the firm.