Update: According to a new Apple Car report, Apple has set a launch date of 2024 and says it will have a next-generation level battery.

"Apple Car ...... It's been years since I've heard that name," an old tech enthusiast might say as news of Cupertino's self-driving car arrives in their ears years ahead of schedule.

Rumors of an Apple-developed car have surfaced anew thanks to Taiwanese publication Economic Daily News. The report claims that an executive at the Taiwanese manufacturer tipped off the company that an Apple Car is being prepared for the third quarter of 2021.

The news of an Apple Car being released in 2021 is highly dubious.

Over the past few years, rumors about Apple's driverless car have abounded: in 2017, Apple received permission to test its self-driving system in California. And that same year, a Lexus car allegedly equipped with Apple's LiDAR device was spotted on California roads.

Meanwhile, Apple oracle and analyst Minqi Kuo has previously stated that the Apple Car will be released between 2023 and 2025. While this is not impossible, the idea that the Apple Car will be released in about 12 months, when we have seen few recent leaks about the Apple Car, is a serious eyebrow-raiser for us.

First of all, it is very difficult to test a car in secret. This is something that existing automakers struggle with, even when testing cars on a locked-down proving ground. And given how many leaks were made before the launch of the iPhone 12, AirPods Max, and MacBook Air M1 this year, we are very skeptical that Apple will be able to keep its in-house cars from being leaked at all.

Even if Apple could hide such a car, car manufacturing is a long process filled with various stages of development just to get to a prototype. Then a production line must be established and safety checks and approvals must be obtained. Apple has the funds to cover all of this, but it is still highly doubtful that they will release a car next year. At best, let's call it the iCar.

However, it is highly likely that the Apple Car will not be a car designed and built by Apple, but rather a self-driving system that Apple will provide to automakers.

Apple already uses LiDAR technology in the iPhone 12 Pro and iPad Pro, and has extensive experience in computer vision, image signal processing, and smart software, from Siri to the semantic rendering used in the latest iPhone cameras. experience. So applying that technology to driverless car systems is not a big leap.

Again, turning an iPhone into an iCar is quite a step up. And many companies that have tried to manufacture cars have failed. Vacuum cleaner maker Dyson tried to make an electric car, but found it was not commercially viable and scrapped the project. Tesla, which has only just begun to turn a steady profit this year and in late 2019, is the only true new entrant into the automotive world that has managed to enter, offer cars on a large scale, and survive.

In short, if an Apple car is on the road at the end of next year, we'll buy a hat, sauté it with fava beans, wash it down with a nice Chianti, and eat it; just as the iPhone 13 and upgraded iPad are expected to be, 2021 will be an I'm not saying it won't be an interesting year, but I doubt we'll see Tim Cook behind the wheel of an Apple-branded car at a press event in the near future.