Sources: Apple is accelerating the development of a fully autonomous electric car, after hitting a car processor milestone, with plans to debut it by 2025
with no steering wheel or pedals Rohail Saleem / Wccftech : Morgan Stanley's Adam Jonas Believes That the Fully Autonomous Apple Car Will Only Be Available as a Subscription-based, Shared Service Ronan Glon / Digital Trends : Apple's car-building division reportedly focusing on autonomous driving Ibukun Ogundare / Coinspeaker : Apple Fully Autonomous Electric Car on Way, AAPL Stock Up 2.85% Yesterday Sanuj Bhatia / Pocketnow : Apple reportedly aiming to debut its self-driving steering wheel-less EV as soon as 2025 Rida Imran / iThinkDifferent : Level 5 autonomous Apple Car might launch in 2025 - Report Nivedita Balu / The Economic Times : Apple's electric car could debut as soon as 2025: Report DSLreports : FAA Forced Delay In 5G Rollout Despite Having No Proof Of Harm To Aviation; + more notable news Sean O'Kane / The Verge : Apple reportedly wants to launch a self-driving EV in 2025 with a custom chip Nick Heer / Pixel Envy : Bloomberg: Apple Aims for Fully Autonomous Car as Early as 2025 Maggie Valenti / International Business Times : Apple Plans Debut Of Self Driving Car For 2025 Juli Clover / MacRumors : Apple Working Toward Fully Autonomous Car With No Steering Wheel or Pedals, Aiming to Launch in 2025 PYMNTS.com : Apple Speeds up Self-Driving Car Project Karandeep Oberoi / MobileSyrup : Apple reportedly wants to launch a fully self-driving car by 2025 Chris Ciaccia / Daily Mail : Apple is working on the ‘holy grail’ option for its autonomous car: Tech giant wants to build a version with full self-driving capabilities and no human intervention AT ALL by 2025 Maria Deutscher / SiliconANGLE : Report: Apple could launch self-driving electric car in 2025 Brittany A. Roston / SlashGear : Apple leak claims fully autonomous Project Titan EV may arrive in 2025 Shelby Brown / CNET : Apple ramping up work on developing self-driving car, report says Dan Milmo / The Guardian : Apple aims to launch self-driving electric car in 2025, says report Alan Friedman / PhoneArena : Apple reportedly accelerates ‘Project Titan’ as fully self-driving car could arrive by 2025 Shawn Knight / TechSpot : Apple renews interest in vehicle project, shifts focus to self-driving capabilities Will Feuer / New York Post : Apple targets 2025 to launch self-driving car without steering wheel Jason Cross / Macworld : Report: Apple accelerating plans to make a fully self-driving car Chris Smith / BGR : Bloomberg: Apple plans to launch a fully autonomous car as soon as 2025 Evan Selleck / iDownloadBlog.com : Apple Car now meant to be fully autonomous with debut planned for as early as 2025 Tweets: Gene Munster / @munster_gene : I want to caution, there is a lightyear wide gap between internal projects ambitions and a shipping product. I learned that the hard way with Apple TV. Gene Munster / @munster_gene : $AAPL up almost 3% today on rumors of Apple building a car are not new. They've been orbiting for the last 7 years. During that time, the underlying response from investors is it's hard to believe Apple will actually build a car. Gene Munster / @munster_gene : Auto stands by the AR + metaverse, as Apple's two biggest opportunities. The health care opportunity is measurable and is a distant third. @1337u53r : Here's an observation: Apple replaced Doug Field (a hardware guy) with Kevin Lynch (a software guy) to lead ‘Project Titan’. What does this tell me? Apple is no longer planning to make a personal EV but instead pivoting to autonomous vehicles. https://twitter.com/... @1337u53r : The fact that Doug Field left Apple to work for Ford says everything. Apple is no longer making the ‘Tesla Killer’ EV. Gene Munster / @munster_gene : That brings us to today. The Bloomberg report on the topic is noteworthily for two reasons: First, details about the current direction of an Apple Car, leading with autonomy, aka no steering wheel. Second, the report comes from Mark Gurman who's right 90% of the time. Gene Munster / @munster_gene : Auto is a massive TAM. If you assume Apple can capture 10% of the auto market, (they have just under 20% of the phone market today at $60k per car, equals $540B annual revenue business. That compares to Apple's 2022 expected total revenue is $380B. Gene Munster / @munster_gene : Final thought: While the eventuality of an Apple Car is far from certain, the continued talk about Apple's ambitions in the space is almost certain over the next five plus years. Gene Munster / @munster_gene : I believe there's greater than a 50% chance Apple eventually comes out with a car, and it's likely more than 5 years away. Brendan Nyhan / @brendannyhan : No steering wheels or pedals in 2025??? https://twitter.com/... https://twitter.com/... Brian Tong / @briantong : Courage...Real Courage. #AppleCar https://twitter.com/... @hypervisible : It's only gonna recognize pedestrians who carry Apple brand beacons. https://twitter.com/... Benedict Evans / @benedictevans : Modern cars Look like feature phones in 2010 - pointless features and buttons everywhere like barnacles. BMW and Mercedes have no idea how to put software in the cars. Classic disruption. BUT - it doesn't necessarily follow that that's the key point of leverage Benedict Evans / @benedictevans : Put this another way - Apple fundamentally changed the profits you could make in the phone business, but if it gets into cars and all it does is takes over BMW's market share at BMW's price range and BMW's margin, that doesn't change the profit pool. Benedict Evans / @benedictevans : It's perfectly reasonable to argue that Apple, like Tesla, could take substantial share in the car market. It's quite different to argue it could change the ASP or the margin structure. Benedict Evans / @benedictevans : When Apple entered the phone market, it persuaded a lot of people who had been buying $200 phones to buy $600 phones. But that is vastly easier than persuading people who had been in the market for a $20,000 car to buy a $60,000 car Adam / @kels_316 : Has a different charge cable to every other EV though and for mystifying reasons has no windscreen. https://twitter.com/... M.G. Siegler / @mgsiegler : Apple is accelerating plans to once again re-org car division by 2025. https://twitter.com/... Harry McCracken / @harrymccracken : Who wants a steering wheel? Apple has done tons of user testing on this. After an extended period of time, your arms want to fall off. Yeccch! https://sixcolors.com/... Drew Breunig / @dbreunig : How much does Apple's about-face on shipping a car have to do with their knowledge that the auto industry is going to be hamstrung by chip demand/supply issues for quite some time? https://www.bloomberg.com/... Eric Jhonsa / @ericjhonsa : I've been saying it for a while: $AAPL's interest in building a car is tied to how a fully driverless vehicle allows for a major rethink of what a car's interior and its computing/entertainment systems are like. They're looking 5-10 years out. https://www.bloomberg.com/... https://twitter.com/... Marques Brownlee / @mkbhd : I'll believe it when I see it But also I really want to see it https://twitter.com/... Greg Wester / @gwestr : we're going to be on FSD beta 2025 and Tim Apple is going to drop a working car which ships in 10 days and has 100,000 units on a boat https://www.bloomberg.com/... Chris Perruna / @cperruna : The no revenue EVs getting rocked today with this news from $AAPL https://twitter.com/... James O'Malley / @psythor : I'll believe it when I see it but it wouldn't be completely insane. Presumably Apple is betting its advantage in local computing power can chug through image/lidar data with greater accuracy than competitors. https://twitter.com/... Brian Roemmele / @brianroemmele : This is perhaps the most defining moment for the automobile industry. It is also a point where if successful, Apple share price is extremely undervalued as compared to Tesla. https://twitter.com/... @macrumors : Apple Working Toward Fully Autonomous Car With No Steering Wheel or Pedals, Aiming to Launch in 2025 https://www.macrumors.com/... by @julipuli Steve Moser / @stevemoser : The 2025 Apple Car's controls are inspired by the button-less iPod shuffle. /s https://twitter.com/... https://twitter.com/... Mark Gurman / @markgurman : Apple is accelerating development of the Apple Car under new leadership — seeking to launch as early as 2025 with a fully autonomous system that lacks a steering wheel and pedals. Plus, details on car's design, business model, charging, hiring and more: https://www.bloomberg.com/...
Context & Ripple Effects
Apple had previously been reported to be developing an autonomous EV on a five-to-seven-year horizon; the reported car-processor milestone makes the 2025 target a more concrete engineering ambition. The no-controls design sets a far higher bar than an EV launch alone.
Later coverage shows how demanding that bar was: Apple ultimately shifted toward a steering wheel, pedals, and highway-only autonomy, while its automotive presence also extended through next-generation CarPlay interfaces.
First-order effects
- Apple’s vehicle team is now organized around validating a custom processor and a Level 5-style cabin design rather than a conventional driver-operated EV.
- A steering-wheel-free vehicle would require Apple to solve autonomous-driving capability before it can offer the product model envisioned by the report.
Second-order effects
- Automakers and suppliers considering Apple’s vehicle effort face a more disruptive potential entrant than a dashboard-software partner, even as Apple’s CarPlay work offers a separate route into vehicle cabins.
- The reported shared-subscription model would shift Apple’s commercial challenge from selling hardware alone to operating or partnering for a transportation service.
Third-order effects
- The project illustrates the strategic divide between automakers adopting Apple software interfaces and Apple pursuing control of the full vehicle-and-driving stack.
- Apple’s later reduction in autonomy ambitions suggests that custom compute is necessary but insufficient: vehicle programs are constrained by the deployment demands of autonomous driving, not processor progress alone.
The trend: Apple’s car effort is part of a broader push to pair proprietary compute with deeper control of the end product, while autonomous-driving requirements determine how far that integration can go.