Apple's Jeff Williams has broadly hinted at the company's plans to enter the auto industry.
A few years back Pepsi told everyone to “Change the Game” and now it looks like Apple may be taking the slogan to heart with the lease of a former soft drink plant that may be the home for its oft-discussed, never-confirmed car.
Apple has leased a 96,000-square-foot industrial facility about a 10-minute drive from its current headquarters, according to the Silicon Valley Business Journal.
Apple has long been rumored to be building an autonomous or semi-autonomous electric vehicle, dubbed Project Titan. Senior executives at the Cupertino, California-based company have danced around the topic when pressed.
While Apple declined to comment on the report, some observers note that the company is in the process of building a new headquarters and the leasing of the building may simply be a way to facilitate that project.
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In the interim, Google has been adding employees with automotive backgrounds to its payroll almost as quickly as it can find them.
For the last several years, the high-tech firm has said it doesn’t want to produce its own vehicles but would rather find partners – a term used by Google X CEO John Krafcik during a visit to Detroit last month. But among the dozens of jobs being advertised, at least some put a focus on manufacturing skills.
That includes one for a manufacturing process engineer who would be responsible for “designing factory assembly stations, optimizing production floor layout, automating critical manufacturing processes and approving fixture designs used in the assembly of electronic modules for the self-driving car.”
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Chris Urmson, Krafcik’s second-in-command, had repeatedly indicated Google would not want to enter automotive manufacturing itself. Krafcik himself seemed to bolster that view during and after a speech he gave in Detroit in January.
“We understand no one goes this alone,” said Krafcik, a former CEO of Hyundai Motor America and, in an earlier incarnation, a senior engineer at Ford. “In the next stage of our project, we’ll be partnering more and more and more. We have to figure out the right set of partnerships to unlock.”
But that position might be evolving, at least if the 36 jobs Google wants to fill come as any indication. Among the other openings, it wants those with experience in robotics, sensors and controls, as well as a global supply chain manager, and a manufacturing supplier quality engineer who will oversees processes, equipment, tools gauges and fixtures for raw material, mechanical components and mechanical assemblies.”
It is, of course, possible, that those manufacturing posts would be filled while working with a partner who would actually handle the production job. As the year began, rumors widely circulated suggesting Google was ready to partner with Ford Motor Co.
(Google wants partners, but Krafcik won’t saw if Ford will be one. Click Here for more.)
Ford is considered a relative latecomer in autonomous research and is racing to catch up to competitors including not only Google but General Motors, Nissan and Daimler AG. Neither Ford nor Google will discuss a possible relationship.