[NewsPoster]

Based on various rumors and other speculation about a possible "Apple Car" the company is allegedly working on, automotive trade publication Motor Trend on Thursday published a multi-page but fact-free speculative spread on what such a vehicle might be like. A number of 3D renders of the alleged project, designed by Garrett DeBry and rendered by Mind Over Eye, appears to envisage a car version of the iPhone and iPad designs, including the gold colors. The fanciful illustrations imagine Tesla-like "wing" doors, LED-based ambient interior lighting, and wireless charging for the electric vehicle.

The renders, based on extensive designs from DeBry and the creative team, imagine LED-based turn signals and headlight illumination strips that closely resemble the ceramic bands found on the current iPhone, along with a unified accelerate/brake pedal that acts like the "volume rocker," with the right side increasing speed and the left side slowing or stopping the "Apple Car." The magazine imagines the vehicle being sold in the same colors as present-day iPhones as well, and featuring Apple-logo hubcaps. Access to the vehicle would be through two "falcon wing" doors that provide access to all four seats, and instrumentation on the car would be an expanded form of Apple's CarPlay technology.

The interior appears to presume mostly auto-driving capabilities, but suggests a mixture of heads-up displays of key information on the windshield itself, leaving the traditional "dashboard" to handle mapping and entertainment options, along with the ability to adjust preferences for both driver and passenger entertainment and environmental control. The heads-up display shows a heavily augmented-reality 360-degree view, identifying hazards (such as pedestrians), the path forward, current weather conditions at the destination, and turn-by-turn directions.

It is difficult to determine exactly what Apple is working on with regards to automotive technology. The company has made no secret of its interest in the market, but is unlikely to be creating its own branded car -- various regulatory paperwork and other indications that would suggest such a project have yet to be filed, though on the typical timetable of car prototyping, it is still reasonably early days. CEO Tim Cook told shareholders at the last general meeting that the company was working on an exciting project that will take quite some time to complete, and this could this could line up with the expected multi-year timeline for "from scratch" automobile production, which would result in an offering for sale some time in 2019-2021.

However, while Apple has hired a number of experts from the hybrid and electric vehicle realms (and both poaches and has been poached by Tesla and other carmakers for top talent), its modest leased facilities and lack of any factory or parts overtures have suggested that the so-called "Project Titan" may either be a designing partnership with a secret but established automaker, or less of a project to create an entire car itself, and more of a project to help design the next generation of safety-conscious, self-driving, highly-computerized, and environmentally-powered vehicles, leaving the manufacturing to partners -- in other words, focusing on "avionics" hardware design to augment the company's existing CarPlay technology more than fully going into the car business itself.

[prl99]

Sorry Motor Trend, but it's wildly ugly. Headlight bands? Don't think those would be of much use. Why would the designer think Apple would design a car to look like an iPhone? He obviously doesn't understand Apple.

[Charles Martin]

Yeah, this is one designer who is never going to get an offer from Apple.

[prl99]

Apple doesn't have to come out with a wildly crazy car design for it to be successful, it just needs to work (just like all the other Apple products). I'd rather it not stand out or look like it was designed for a movie, I just want it to run several hundred miles on a charge (yes, I'd like to drive from WA to CA (ok maybe one overnight stop) on one or two charges), have the minimal amount of parts necessary to make the car run and stop, and not have all the stupid bells and whistles new cars have that cause them to cost and arm and two legs to repair. Apple has always tried to KISS, which would be a revolutionary change for the current automobile industry. My 1964 Chevy II Nova was easy to repair and tune up. It simply ran. That can't be said for today's cars that require a computer that works with the computer in the car to repair it. You might as well buy a new car if there's a problem.

[coffeetime]

Wow. So beautiful.....NOT. Can Apple beat the new Tesla Model 3? I wonder.

[Charles Martin]

By the time an "Apple Car" appears, Tesla will be on to the Model 4, so I think the question is moot. I confess the M3 looks incredibly promising ... I wonder if they'd loan us a review unit ...

[coffeetime]

@Charles. Do the auto-pilot thingy if you did get the loan. That's a killer feature that other car manufactures are still testing it.

[Steve Wilkinson]

Holy fright, that's some nasty ID work! (Though, I guess not all that uncommon for ID student projects... but I think this guy isn't a student anymore... pretty scary stuff.)

I think my favorite part is the side control panel in the driver's door. Apparently, this guy hasn't even driven a car... or, I suppose, engaged his brain while working on this. Wow, just wow.

Originally Posted by coffeetime 

@Charles. Do the auto-pilot thingy if you did get the loan. That's a killer feature that other car manufactures are still testing it.

Maybe literally a killer feature. Have you seen some of the videos of people trying it out? It clearly isn't ready for the prime-time of average public common sense (or lack of). It does show where the actual state of this AI-driven car stuff is at though.