Is Apple Entering the Electric Car Market?
Apple Made Headway in China and Saw PC Market Growth in 2015
Apple’s electric car an “open secret” according to Musk
According to Tesla (TSLA) founder Elon Musk, Apple (AAPL) is currently working toward entering the electric car space. However, he does not consider this to be a threat to Tesla’s growing sales. Musk stated that Apple’s electric car is now an “open secret,” stating, “Well it’s pretty hard to hide something if you hire over a thousand engineers to do it.”
Apple has reportedly hired a number of engineers, software programmers, and other big names from the automobile segment over the last year. However, not much is known about Apple’s foray into the electric car business segment.
According to AppleInsider, Apple was running a project known as Project Titan, which was run out of a secret facility in Sunnyvale, California. Last week, it was revealed that Apple owns domain names such as “apple.car,” “apple.cars,” and “apple.auto,” suggesting a product offering in the automobile space.
Tesla leads the electric car space
As shown in the above chart, Apple will have to compete with established players and automobile giants in the hybrid-electric car business segment. Tesla leads the electric car market with a share of 32.7%, followed by Nissan at 26.9%, BMW at 16.9%, Daimler at 9.7%, Volkswagen at 4.6%, and Chrysler at 3%.
American automobile companies such as General Motors (GM) and Ford (F) have market shares of 2.2% and 2.1%, respectively, whereas Korea’s (EWY) Hyundai constitutes 1.7% of this market. Japan’s Toyota and Mitsubishi have market shares of 0.18% and 0.08%, respectively.
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