Is Apple Thinking Of Launching Its Own Electric Car?

Apparently so. According to a Bloomberg report, Apple is looking to roll out an electric car in five years time. Although it has not officially confirmed its intention of producing and selling an electric car, Apple is reportedly pushing its development team to get a working prototype that is ready for mass production by the year 2020. This development team is said to be composed of 200 of the tech giant's employees, and has been steadily expanding in the last few months, taking in various experts in fields such as robotics and battery technology. There is much talk that the electric car that Apple is trying to put on the streets in the foreseeable future is a self-driving type. 

Rumors of Apple building an electric car first surfaced a week ago, when reports indicated that the company is in the process of assembling a team that would be in charge of bringing the project into life. It was further reported that Johann Jungwirth, CEO of Mercedes-Benz Research and Development North America until September of last year, was also joining the development team.

Moreover, earlier in February of this year, a certain company that produces batteries for electric cars had filed a lawsuit against Apple. A123 Systems, which specializes in advanced energy solutions for electric vehicles, had accused Apple of stealing away some of its top engineers in order to work for a team in Apple that handles batteries. A123 Systems further claimed that Apple was in the process of developing a big battery division in order to compete directly with A123's business.

If we try to dig a little deeper, we can find further evidence of Apple's plans to venture into electric vehicles. Last year, it was reported that Apple was actually having talks to try and acquire Tesla. Elon Musk, founder and CEO of Tesla, had admitted as much. But Musk was quick to note that Tesla is not up for sale. 

Apple's possible plans of launching an electric car certainly ties up with the company's iOS-run in-car platform CarPlay. For those not in the know, CarPlay allows users to do a number of things like answering messages or accessing iTunes, while inside a vehicle. It even offers assisted driving, that is for those willing to surrender control of their steering wheels.

It also helps that the idea of autonomous vehicles have been gaining some traction in recent years. Some industry experts are even predicting that after a decade, we could be seeing self-driving vehicles everywhere.

It seems that Apple agrees 100 percent with that idea. Of course, the company has not officially acknowledged it yet. But if this turns out to be true, Apple, with its resources and resourcefulness and all, has as good a chance as any to pull it off.