The ten years of rumors and conjecture have come to an end for the Apple Car. Bloomberg revealed last week that the multibillion-dollar project had been abandoned. The electric vehicle was never truly real, but thanks to a superb post-mortem by Bloomberg’s Mark Gurman, we now know a lot of fresh information about the vehicle that was never built.
The narrative contains numerous startling information regarding the plans for the car that various Apple officials had, as well as the reasons why the project finally failed. However, the descriptions of the intended appearance of the vehicle contain some of the most interesting facts.
At one point, Apple’s leaders were adamant that the autonomous “microbus” should not include a steering wheel or pedals. It would have “club seating like a private plane” and curved sides and a glass roof. Famed Apple designer Jony Ive thought the interior should be “covered in stainless steel, wood and white fabric,” and that it should only come in one color: white.
Since any actual mock-ups of the car, which Gurman says was sometimes referred to as the “Bread Loaf,” are presumably locked deep inside a well-guarded Apple office, I did the next best thing and asked AI. The results are, actually, kind of cute?
