Apple is set to release its electric car in 2019 and has reportedly begun accelerating its work on the product, according to The Wall Street Journal. The project, which is codenamed "Titan," has been in the works for more than a year and will reportedly lead to the tripling of the current 600-person team to help the acceleration effort.
Little detail is known about the project, although in the past few months Apple has been hiring an increasing number of employees with automotive and engineering backgrounds, according to USA Today. Some of these employees include those from the electric car company Tesla.
"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,'" said Thilo Koslowski, vice president of Gartnet, the largest technology advisory company in the world.
Although this marks the first time Apple will enter the automobile market, it plans to take the knowledge that it has gained in the development of iPhones and integrate it into its car products. This includes expertise on batteries, sensors and hardware-software integration.
It is currently not clear whether Apple will manufacture the car itself, according to Gizmodo. Traditionally, the company contracts the manufacturing of its devices to other companies.
