Tim Cook and company lead Apple’s annual shareholders meeting of 2016 this morning, and as usual there were some interesting questions and answers between those in attendance. Like last year, Apple’s rumored electric vehicle project came up, only the Apple CEO didn’t automatically defer to CarPlay this go around.
It’s an open secret that Apple has been working on developing an electric car for quite some time now — even Tesla’s Elon Musk has framed the project as such — but Cook once again tried to downplay expectations at least on timing when asked about theApple Car by a shareholder today (via Business Insider):
Do you remember when you were a kid, and Christmas Eve it was so exciting, you weren’t sure what was going to be downstairs? Well, it’s going to be Christmas Eve for a while.
Whether or not Cook intended to characterize the project this way, calling the current development period ‘Christmas Eve’ doesn’t exactly deny that the Apple Car is coming eventually if the EV is ‘Christmas Day’ in this metaphor.
When asked earlier this week about the teams of people being hired to work on the car project, Cook explained generically that Apple doesn’t need to spend large amounts of money to “explore” an area, just people, further suggesting that the EV was in development stages and not near completion. Note that many of those exploratory teams were assembled through a poaching war between Apple and Tesla.
Compare Cook’s responses today, though, to his answers a year ago when shareholders asked about the Apple Car project and suggested that Apple should buy Tesla. Cook said at the time that modern cars make you “step in a time capsule and go back 20 years” and that Apple is very focused on CarPlay, adding that Apple had no relationship with Tesla which they believe should use CarPlay.
Aside from the Apple Car talk, today’s shareholders meeting included the usual business as well. Hit 9to5Mac to read more about the annual shareholders meeting at Apple HQ in Cupertino.
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