Even if it takes another 20 years for Apple to formally confirm a car project, the rumors will never die. In fact, this Sunday, Bloomberg’s Mark Gurman discussed some of the latest rumors revolving around the Apple Car in the latest edition of his weekly newsletter – Power On. If you’ve been keeping up, you know that Gurman’s own reporting pegs sometime in 2025 as a likely launch date for the Apple Car. This may end up being the case, but Gurman now adds that actually getting your hands on an Apple Car might not be possible until much later in the decade. Unlike with a new iPhone, the launch could come years after the reveal.
Apple Car launch rumors continue piling up
Apple, as Gurman notes, is one of the most secretive companies on the planet. It hasn’t done nearly as good a job of keeping secrets in recent years, but the point stands. In order to actually launch a car, Apple would need to publicly test a final model on city streets. Once Apple begins the process, it could take years to complete. This would obviously spoil the design, as everyone would spot the car around the world, which means a public launch event would likely precede any such tests.
Additionally, Apple would work with regulators, manufacturers, repair centers, and fleet management companies. In other words, if Apple does show the car off for the first time in 2025, consumers will be waiting at least a few years to place an order for the product.
Gurman also provided some useful context in the form of other recent EV launches:
Tesla Inc. showed off the Model S in 2009 before ultimately shipping it in 2012. The Model 3 delay was much shorter, having been announced in 2016 before the first cars rolled off the assembly line in mid-2017. The Model Y was announced in March 2019 and shipped almost exactly one year later. Looking beyond Elon Musk’s company, the first Lucid Group Inc. prototype was shown at the end of 2016, and the first models only started shipping this month. Rivian Automotive Inc’s. pickup truck was introduced in 2018, and the first deliveries started in September. In other words, don’t expect to ride in an Apple car for a long time.
Apple’s next decade of products
As competitive as the automotive market is, Apple certainly won’t rush to get its entry to the market. The last thing Apple wants is to be the subject of as many controversies as Tesla has been in recent years. The Cupertino company will take its time getting the Apple Car right.
Of course, the electric vehicle is just one of the new product categories Apple plans to explore. In the same newsletter, Gurman talked about Apple’s plans for its long-rumored headset and glasses. Much like the Apple Car, we shouldn’t expect their reveals to line up with their retail launches. Gurman predicts that the delay between the reveal and the launch of the mixed reality headset could rival that of the Apple Watch. Apple released the Apple Watch 227 days after its reveal. As such, we might not see the headset on store shelves until late 2022 or early 2023.
