Apple is mashing the dash on rollout plans for its first-ever vehicle.
The Wall Street Journal is reporting that the tech juggernaut has set a target shipping date of 2019 for its electric car. The acceleration plans make sense, considering its CarPlay infotainment center can essentially turn existing vehicles into iPhones on wheels.
Designated as an internal "committed project" and code-named "Titan," Apple has been planning its vehicle for more than a year, having even recently even met with government officials in California to discuss its blueprint further.
This comes after The Guardian reported that Apple could use a decomissioned military facility, just east of San Francisco, as a possible automotive testing site and separate reports indicating that Apple recently hired new automotive engineers, many of which previously worked on Tesla's electric vehicles.
When recently asked about the planned vehicle by talk show host Stephen Colbert, Apple CEO Tim Cook said, "We look at a humber of things along the way, and we decide to really put our energies in a few of them."
It's interesting that Apple is reportedly prepping an electric vehicle, when fellow tech giant Google has been testing its autonomous cars since 2009. But auto experts aren't surprised, fully expecting Apple to continue with the industry's current wave of connectivity outweighing horsepower.
"The car is now the ultimate mobile device, so if I'm a big technology company looking at automobiles that are largely software driven, I'd be thinking, 'Hey, that's us,'" Thilo Koslowski, an automotive practice leader at the technology research firm Gartner, told USA Today about why Apple might think the time is now.
Koslowski added that Apple could additionally accelerate its plans to introduce its first car by purchasing an existing auto manufacturer.
"I can guarantee you that there are traditional automotive manufacturers that would offer up excess capacity on their production lines, particularly if the economy got tight," he said.
As Apple preps the release of its iPhone 6s and iPhone 6s Plus for Friday (September 25), its first-ever vehicle is reportedly only four years away. Talk about putting it on the fast track.
