Apple might be making a car, and it could drive itself

When you hear news about Apple it’s usually some sort of rumour about the next iPhone, or some bizarre new gadget that it may or may not be working on. You don’t really expect to hear about a car. You are now, because a couple of rumours appeared over the weekend regarding Apple’s own automotive ambitions.

According to the Wall Street Journal, Apple has hundreds of people working on a project codenamed ‘Titan’. It’s supposedly involves developing an electric car, something that it’s going to be developing over the next few years until it gets everything right. If it’s true, it means Apple is in it for the long haul and plans on making Steve Jobs’s ‘iCar’ dream a reality.

A follow-up rumour from Reuters claims that this car will also be self-driving, and according to an anonymous source it’s so that Apple is once again positioning itself to take on Google. But, unlike the report from the Wall Street Journal, Reuters is reporting that it’s less about the actual car, and more about the software controlling it.

Both of those reports seem to conflict with each other, but it is more than possible that the car mentioned by the WSJ is a prototype that will be used to test Apple’s own self-driving system. Similar to how Google has been doing things so far. From there it can sell the tech and associated systems to other car manufacturers to implement in their own vehicles.

Both points are unconfirmed rumours for now, and since it sounds like it’s early days then we probably won’t be hearing anything official for quite some time. Apple has been working on cars already with CarPlay, so expanding its focus certainly isn’t a stretch of the imagination.