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Apple Project Titan to start electric vehicle production in 2024, says Reuters

Central to Apple’s electric car strategy is a novel battery technology, says Reuters.
Written by Tiernan Ray, Senior Contributing Writer

Apple plans to start producing its own electric vehicle in 2024, according to a report this afternoon by Reuters that says the company's on-again, off-again Project Titan has a renewed momentum.

According to the report, by Reuters's Stephen Nellis, Norihiko Shirouzu, and Paul Lienert, multiple unnamed sources have told the news outlet that Project Titan is aiming to make a passenger vehicle for the mass market. 

The article relates that sources say things at Project Titan have "progressed" since Apple brought in a veteran of both Tesla and Apple, Doug Field, to take over operations in 2018. The car effort has seen something of a revolving door of executives over the years.

The New York Times in 2016 said the effort had been rebooted at Apple, and that dozens of layoffs happened

A key element, the article claims, is a "a new battery design that could 'radically' reduce the cost of batteries and increase the vehicle's range," according to a source who has seen the design of the battery. 

The battery is said to rely on a "unique 'monocell' design" that packs more material in each battery. The article claims Apple is considering a battery technology called lithium iron phosphate that's safer than lithium-ion batteries.

While Project Titan faded from view in recent years, Apple appeared to continue work on autonomous driving technology of various sorts, with a fleet of Lexus sedans cruising Silicon Valley on auto-pilot

Apple CEO Tim Cook in 2017 made remarks about working on autonomous driving in an interview with Bloomberg. That interview suggested to some the work on actually making a car was dead. 

The New York Times the same year reported that Apple had channeled its self-driving ambitions down a more prosaic route, a self-driving shuttle bus for its corporate campus. 

The company last year acquired Drive.ai, a Valley startup that had produced kits to retro-fit existing passenger vehicles for autonomous driving.

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