Apple is developing an electric car, and some believe it will be released in 2021
The Economic Daily News (EDN) reported that the Apple Car electric car could be presented earlier than expected – allegedly in September 2021. However, journalists warned that their source, although related to supply chains, is still rather dubious. Apple Car is a product that the Cupertino giant has been working on for years, and it appears regularly in rumours, patent applications, and analyst reports.
Previously it was thought that it would be years before the car appeared, but a new report suggests that Apple could show its car in operation as early as next year. As the date, one of the participants in the Apple supply chains in Taiwan named September 2021 – this is at least two years earlier than previously thought. Apple is said to be accelerating component shipments from Taiwanese aftermarket manufacturers such as Heda, Heqin, Tomita and BizLink-KY.
The EDN report claims that other auto parts factories are also ramping up production for Apple Car, which also supports an earlier announcement of the promising product. Hein, for example, is set to expand mass production after completing its relocation at the end of this year, as well as opening a fifth line for one of its factories by the second quarter of 2021.
And while EDN often provides correct information about what’s going on in Apple’s supply chains, it doesn’t accurately predict product release dates. It is likely that Apple is indeed developing its supply of auto parts, but it seems highly unlikely that the electric car will be launched in just 10 months.
First, it takes a long time to get cars up and running, possibly much longer than the iPhone. The sheer number and size of parts for car production will require massive manufacturing facilities for assembly, which have not yet been rumoured. Other car manufacturers are also highly secretive, but leaks about unreleased vehicles appear long before they are launched. A similar cycle would be expected for Apple Car if the project was in its final stages.
It is more plausible that Apple’s supply chain orders are the initial stage of preparing a small number of vehicles for testing purposes. Perhaps we will see something more or less real in September 2021, but it is unlikely that it will be a production car. The usually more accurate date analyst Ming-Chi Kuo previously predicted that Apple Car would not go mainstream until 2023. By the way, we recently wrote that Apple is already cooperating with TSMC in preparing the release in the US of chips for the Apple Car robotic car in the spirit of Tesla.
