Steve Jobs’ Last Dream: The Apple “iCar”

Late Apple co-founder Steve Jobs, a revolutionary inventor and an ideal for most of the youth, was considering getting into car industry through his dream project “iCar”. First one of his close friends, speaking in an interview claimed that it was Jobs’ dream before he died, and now Apple court room testimony in the ongoing legal battle with Samsung revealed that the company had considered developing a car.

In an interview a few months back at Fast Company’s Innovation Uncensored Conference, Mickey Drexler, an Apple board member and J.Crew CEO revealed revealed this his close friend Steve Jobs’ “dream before he died was to design the iCar”. The comments come after long-held rumors of the company possible crossover into the automotive market. Commenting on the car industry in America, Drexler said: “They talk about expense, they talk about this – and then you say, well ‘who’s designing the cars?’ Steve’s dream, before he died, was to design an iCar,”.
 Drexler also said that if Jobs had designed the iCar, it would have surely dominated the industry just like his other creations which include the famous iPod, iPad and iPhone.

Furthermore, Apple’s senior vice president of worldwide marketing, Phil Schiller, revealed that before the company focused on creating smartphones and tablets, it had considered developing a car.  Although specifics and details have not been elaborated upon, it is known that Steve Jobs met with Volkswagen Group head Martin Winterkorn in 2007 before it focused all of its efforts in the smartphone industry. Volkswagen has since introduced a small car aimed at the younger crowd, which is not only budget-conscious but equally stylish, that may not have been developed with Apple but does feature an iPad-inspired dash-top tablet display

It is believed that if apple was to launch a car it would have to be at the forefront of innovation and technology. Gurus believe that features such as a “photocromic” exterior that allows the driver to change the color of the exterior of the car as well as a touch-screen display that would cover the entire dashboard would be utilized. Of course, that on top of a  syncing system between the company’s other products such as the iPad, iPhone and Mac that would help track the car’s current location, information, average speed, and car health.

We may never know exactly what the iCar would look like or what technology or innovation it would have featured. Still, with recent courtroom comments from Phil Schiller, Apple’s senior vice president of worldwide marketing as well  past comments from board members like Mickey Drexler, it does appear the the Apple car would have been a possibly and less of a myth, as was previously been thought.