Every few weeks, it seems like we have another big piece of the puzzle that is Apple’s supposed electric car project. Reports flared up about a year ago, and from the sounds of it, Apple has hundreds of staff and surely heaps of money poured into it.
But you won’t hear that from Apple, and certainly not from CEO Tim Cook. Executives have carefully dodged the question over the past several months, and now in an interview with Fortune, Cook again tiptoes around the query. But this time, he lets on a bit about it without getting into specifics. Asked point-blank to reveal the project, he replies, “Yeah, I’m probably not going to do that.”
“The great thing about being here is we’re curious people,” he continues. “We explore technologies, and we explore products. And we’re always thinking about ways that Apple can make great products that people love, that help them in some way. And we don’t go into very many categories, as you know. We edit very much. We talk about a lot of things and do fewer. We debate many things and do a lot fewer.”
Last year, The Wall Street Journal suggested that Project Titan was a “committed project,” and that the team had been given the go-ahead to triple its team size from 600 people at the time. However, Tim Cook seems to imply they haven’t reached that stage, despite being unwilling to even confirm the nature of the project.
“We don’t have to spend large amounts to explore. So I can’t talk about this certain area that you’re talking about. But when we start spending large amounts of money, we’re committed at that point. But we explore things with teams of people. And that’s a part of being curious,” he says.
His responses are purposefully vague, of course, but it’s interesting how Cook doesn’t outright deny the project or shut down the line of questioning – the full interview goes a little further into the dynamics of the car industry, in fact. Also, there’s one other neat tidbit in the interview: Cook says they hope to open the new spaceship-like headquarters early next year, and that they’re working with Steve Jobs’ widow Laurene and family on how to “honor him in the right kind of way.”
Source: Fortune via 9to5Google
