Apple could be targeting a five-year time frame to have a vehicle on the road, with further information emerging about the tech giant’s potential foray into the auto industry.Bloomberg has reported Apple is working towards production of an electric vehicle by 2020, citing people with knowledge of the matter.
The sources, however, stated Apple could abandon or delay the project if executives are unhappy with its progress.
The car team already numbers around 200 people, Bloomberg reported one of the sources as stating, and began accelerating recruitment over the past couple of months, with Apple seeking out experts in technologies for batteries and robotics.
The Apple car story has been developing at pace over the past week, with reports emerging about the project and the news subsequently emerging that Apple is facing a lawsuit for allegedly poaching employees from car battery manufacturer A123 Systems, reported by legal website Law360.
Reuters reported the lawsuit states that around June 2014 Apple began aggressively poaching A123 engineers in charge of some of the company’s most critical projects, with A123 stating in a filing earlier this month in the Massachusetts federal court that the engineers left to pursue similar programs at Apple, in violation of their employment agreements.
The Wall Street Journal had reported the project, code-named “Titan”, is initially angled at working on the design of a vehicle resembling a minivan.
The reports followed the emergence of photos, first posted online by Bar Area blog Claycord, of a van decked out with an array of cameras on the streets of Concord, California, with CBS affiliate KPIX 5 tracking the vehicle to Apple.
