We predicted yesterday that the Apple Car piece teased by Motor Trend was likely to be nothing more than a speculative piece or design exercise rather than anything based on solid information – and we were right. Despite the ‘Apple Car exclusive’ headline, the entire lengthy piece is nothing more than a bunch of people brainstorming ideas for the car and then producing sketches and renders from them.
Bad sketches and renders, as it turns out. They’ve effectively just taken design cues from the iPhone, slapped some wheels on it and called it a car. Seriously – it even has an antenna cutout …
@cwarzel @BecketAdams It looks like the Superdome slept with a Prius.
— Chris Carter (@ChrisPC24) April 14, 2016
Little is yet known about the Apple Car, Tim Cook telling shareholders that ‘it’ll be Christmas Eve for a while,’ but we can be very confident it won’t look anything like the above.
The words are mostly no better than the images.
It’s not all bad. They do, for example, suggest that the Apple Car will be like a “really great family chauffeur who knows the family, knows your schedules.” I think that’s spot-on. The round-table discussion alone could have been interesting were it not seeking to pretend to be anything more than a bunch of guys chewing the breeze. As it is, though, it feels a long way short of what was teased.
“It could be more of a tiny, mono-shaped minivan.” Minivan? “No, we’re talking about a premium mono-volume.”
It’s a shame. Even a purely speculative piece like this could have been interesting if done well. I’d love to know what some real car designers expect Apple to produce. But this isn’t that.
Check out the video below and, if you can bear it, the full set of sketches over at Motor Trend.
