Apple Car

Apple is building a car, and it’s going to revolutionize the automotive world. Or it’s not building anything, in which case: Move along, folks, there’s nothing to see here.

The rumors surrounding Apple’s alleged expansion into the auto industry with its own car, codenamed Project Titan, have been percolating for years. And with a recent report that Apple will have its car ready by 2019, those rumors are gaining more steam than ever.

Of course, given that this is Apple, we won’t know for certain the company’s doing a car until said vehicle actually rolls onto a stage in Cupertino. But, still, we have clues. Here are the latest and most credible rumors, reports, whispers, and tidbits.

Apple to deliver car by 2019

The most recent rumor about a potential Apple Car comes by way of the venerable (if not 100% reliable) Wall Street Journal, which reports that Apple wants to ship its own car by 2019. That’s just four years from now, and that timeframe sounds incredibly ambitious.

Still, it could be doable, as The Journal says that Apple has tripled the number of people working on its automotive initiative from 600 to a whopping 1,800.

Apple’s car will be electric

Of course, to build a car from the ground up in less than five years requires experience and expertise. So Apple has reportedly been poaching employees from a variety of automotive technology companies to fill its ranks.

One company Apple is alleged to have hired away employees from is Massachusetts-based battery maker A123 Systems. According to a lawsuit filed by the company against Apple, the tech giant ran an “aggressive campaign to poach” A123 Systems’ employees, Bloomberg Business reported.

Bloomberg adds that Apple has also hired experts from companies including Samsung, LG Chem, and Panasonic.

It will be self-driving

In addition to hiring away employees from battery makers, Apple has reportedly been busy luring autonomous driving experts from a variety of companies.

The Daily Mail reports that Apple has hired people from Tesla’s self-driving program, as well as from Ford, Volkswagen and BMW.

Further fueling the rumors that Apple’s car will be autonomous is a report from The Guardian, which says that Apple’s senior legal counsel, Mike Maletic, met with several officials with the California Department of Motor Vehicle including the department’s self-driving car experts. (We can only assume Apple got to skip the line.)

Looking for a secret testing site

In addition to speaking with the DMV, Apple executives reportedly metwith officials from GoMentum Station, a secretive California-based proving ground for everything from self-driving cars to mapping technologies.

Located on the site of a former World War II naval base, the GoMentum Station offers some 2,100 acres of drivable pavement ranging from highways to back roads. Best of all (for Apple at least): The site has its own armed guards to keep out nosy intruders.

Meeting with automakers

Various reports over the past several months have indicated that Apple has met with the heads of at least three automakers.

According to the San Francisco Chronicle, Apple’s head of mergers and acquisitions, Adrian Percia, met with Tesla CEO Elon Musk in the spring of 2013. That coincides with the time at which investors were calling for Apple to buy the electric carmaker.

The Guardian reports that Apple’s CEO Tim Cook has also met with the head of Fiat-Chrysler and tour’s BMW’s electric car assembly line.

Working near its headquarters

If Apple is going to develop a car, it can’t exactly do so at its main campus: That would raise too much suspicion. Instead, according to AppleInsider, the company is working on key components for Project Titan at an office building in Sunnyvale, California, just a few minutes from Apple’s headquarters in Cupertino.

AppleInsider says the site is registered to a shell company masquerading as a market research firm called SixtyEight Research. The firm’s website is incredibly sparse on information, and doesn’t even include am office location or phone number.

According to AppleInsider, guests to SixtyEight Research’s offices are given badges that look similar to those Apple hands out at its headquarters. Still, proof that Apple owns or is using the building — which, significantly, contains facilities for automotive repair — is fairly thin.

But when a reporter from AppleInsider visited the building, a note taped to the door said the company had moved its lobby to another building — one that is entirely owned by Apple.

How it all adds up

Apple may brush off the rumors that it is working on a car as nothing more than mere fantasy, but there is simply too much information out there that points to the company working on, or at the very least exploring the idea of building, a car of its own.

How long will it take until we can find out for sure? Well, 2019 isn’t thatfar away.

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