Tim Cook says car industry will experience a ‘Massive change’

Apple looks very ambitious in its automotive projects. Apple CEO Tim Cook recently spoke at the WSJD live conference this Tuesday. He said in the coming years the automotive industry will undergo a “massive change”. However, he didn’t comment on the electric car project of Apple. It has now become clear that Apple is working on cars. Also Apple has been hiring a lot in the automotive sector. Recently it hired a number of employees of a motorcycle startup which ultimately closed down. Apple has been searching for suitable sites for testing self-driving cars.

According to the reports from The Wall Street Journal, Apple is now committed to the project and expects shipping by 2019. At the conference Cook focused on the vehicle software. He said, “When I look at the automobile, what I see is that software becomes an increasingly important part of the car of the future. You see that autonomous driving becomes much more important.” He looked very interested in this software. One such software is already available from the Cupertino Company by the name of ‘CarPlay’. It is a mobile OS developed for infotainment systems of the cars. He further added, “We’d like people as they enter their car to have an iPhone experience in their car … I don’t know what kind of car that you have today, but the interface provably isn’t in the top ten list of what you love about your car. The industry is at an inflection point for massive change … not just evolutionary change.”

Back in October when NPR host Robert Siegel asked Cook, “Is there going to be an Apple car?” Cook appeared evasive and asked Seigel if he had other questions. Jony Ive, chief design officer at Apple owns a lot of classic cars but complains about them as “disappointed with most modern cars.” Marc Newson who used to design for Ford has now joined Apple. Tim Cook said in an interview last year, “there are products we’re working on that no-one knows about … And part of some of those are going to come out and be blow-away probably.”

Jeff Williams, Apple executive said at the Re/code tech conference that the car is “the ultimate mobile device”. Also it was Steve Jobs (late Apple cofounder and CEO) wish to create a car. He once told New York Times, “that if he had more energy, he would have liked to take on Detroit with an Apple car.”