In a story about a wearable “iWatch,” New York Times writer Nick Bilton wrote that Apple’s Steve Jobs wanted his company to pursue making a new car. It’s just a one-liner in the story that mentions other possible products coming from the world’s most valuable technology company.
The Apple car isn’t such a crazy idea, considering that Google is in the midst of creating self-driving cars. Apple is also considering making Bilton wrote, “In a meeting in his office before he died, Steven P. Jobs, Apple’s co-founder and former chief executive, told John Markoff of The New York Times that if he had more energy, he would have liked to take on Detroit with an Apple car.”
The iCar has been talked about before, including Apple board member Mickey Drexler. But it’s interesting to see that Jobs would consider such a product to be his dying wish for Apple to pursue. Jobs evidently never began the work on designing the car. But cars really be part of the “mobile lifestyle” that has begun to take over consumer behavior when it comes to technology gadgets.
I for one would love to see a technology company’s take on how to get around, Jetsons-style, in the future. Tesla’s Model S sedan features a 17-inch touchscreen that seems a lot like an iPad in your vehicle. If you had an iPad there instead, you could get access to many more apps. But it would have to be filtered through a driver safety restriction, which wouldn’t allow you to run apps that would be dangerous to watch during driving, like YouTube videos.
Of course, it’s now Tim Cook’s call on whether Apple should branch out into making a car. But with Tesla making electric cars, it already seems like the car industry has its disruptor. Now if Apple could make better electric car batteries….