steve jobsREUTERS/Kimberly White
Steve Jobs, Apple Inc.’s Chief Executive Officer, introduces the new MacBook’s aluminum laptop enclosure at a news conference in Cupertino, California, in this October 14, 2008 file photo.
Steve Jobs had considered making a car for years, according to a new interview.
Bloomberg’s Emily Chang, spoke with former Apple executive and Nest founder Tony Fadell, who revealed that he and Jobs had numerous discussions about building some sort of Apple vehicle.
Fadell points out that both cars and iPhones are made of the same parts: batteries, computers, motors and mechanical structures. So theoretically, a company could scale up from making tiny cell phones to giant cars, even though the two run on different (and complicated) software and services.
Fadell made his car discussions with Jobs sound like brainstorming sessions, not something Apple would actually act on.
“We had a couple walks —and this was in 2008 — about, ‘If we were to build a car what would we build?’” Fadell told Chang. “And we would just go crazy looking at ‘Oh, what would a dashboard be, and what would this be, what would seats be, how would you fuel it or power it?’”
Ultimately, Jobs felt Apple employees were too busy on another, more impactful product than connected cars: cell phones.
“There were a lot of things we said no to,” Fadell said. “At the end of the day, what was the one [product] that had the greatest impact on the world? And it was cell phones. So we said, ‘Okay, we’re going to put all our energy on that. Forget all that other stuff. Those things are interesting, we’ll let some other company do it.’”
The company may finally be ready to tackle cars though. Apple is reported to have about 600 people working on a car initiative internally titled, “Project Titan,” according to the Wall Street Journal, and the company may release its first vehicle as early as 2019.
Source: Business Insider
Written by: Alyson Shontell
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