Can Apple pull off an electric car by 2019? (The biggest challenges may not be technical.)

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This is the juiciest of stories: Apple will have a vehicle on the market by 2019. It's great for analysts and writers, because half the time nobody knows what Apple really is up to; there's little penalty to reputation for predicting incorrectly. Everybody else is usually wrong, too. It's great for Apple fanboys because it gives them something to talk about and predict, or dispute. It's great for car buyers because Apple will probably do something great, and different.

Here's what we believe: Apple will produce a car, an EV and perhaps a plug-in hybrid. 2019 may be when Apple signs on off on the car, but not when the car ships. It will have autonomous-driving features as good or better than other cars, but it won't be truly self-driving. It will have unique aspects. Apple will either muscle the 50 states to allow direct sales or work with a thoroughly vetted new dealer network, like Lexus's, only better.

The BMW i3's frame design.

It has to be an EV

There's little reason to sell a combustion-engine car. If there's one Apple car, it will be an EV. If there are two, it be an EV and a plug-in hybrid electric vehicle (PHEV), because much of America lives where electric-only won't cut it for the driving tasks you face during all 52 weeks of the year. It will be smaller instead of larger, and will be shaped like a crossover or SUV, since that's the most efficient design. A compact crossover such as the Honda CR-V holds about as much as a midsize car such as the Toyota Camry or Nissan Altima, currently the top two sellers among midsize sedans. In fact, the compact SUV has taken over from the midsize sedan as the top-selling body style among cars today. It could be Apple starts out with something that would be called a subcompact crossover, meaning a car less than 160 inches long.

Most likely Apple will partner, at least quietly, with other automakers to license chassis and suspension technologies. The most likely donor car would be the BMW i3 (pictured at top), since it's the right size (157 inches), is well regarded, and Apple and BMW have partnered in the past. The i3 is also perfect because it comes in EV and PHEV flavors.

Apple won't go it alone

If and when Apple announces its car, it will be the work of hundreds and now thousands of Apple employees. The effort is codenamed Project Titan, notwithstanding that Nissan makes a big pickup truck called Titan. But just as Apple doesn't create every physical component on an iPhone, this will be the work of other companies, too. BMW or someone else will provide an initial level of chassis and powertrain expertise. Apple will source the component electronics for the basics of self-driving from the major players such as Harman, and then add its own tweaks and interface.

Adaptive cruise control, shown here by Volvo.

Autonomous driving (well, some) is a given

Add up all the features you can find on high-end cars now, reduce the price 50% at least to account for Moore's Law, and you'll have a car:

Stop and go adaptive cruise control

Lane keep assist that warns if you drift out of lane, nudges you back, and probably even self-centers the car in a lane

Blind spot warning

Volvo-like city braking for people and cars

High-end features such as night vision and shape recognition that locates pedestrians and deer on dark suburban or country roads

Obviously the Apple car will work with Apple devices. It will be interesting to see how well it supports Android. This could be the first car with more USB jacks than seats.

A sales experience you won't hate

Apple's greatest contribution may be the creation of its own dealer network that treats customers well. That is an amazing undertaking. The state legislatures require cars to be sold indirectly, through dealer networks. Dealers are the people who benefit the community by sponsoring youth league soccer in exchange for making the sales experience thoroughly wretched for many customers. If there's a fixed price for the sale of the car, you get whipsawed on the trade-in. If that works out okay, you get to work with a separate person on F&I – finance & insurance – which often is where the profits are made.

Apple could revolutionize the car sales experience like Tesla.

In exchange for rating the dealership 10 out of 10 on a satisfaction survey, you get a free oil change. It would be hard for Apple to do worse. Dealers do serve some good purposes for the business in general. If the automaker is too dumb to know beige doesn't sell well in the region, the dealer will clarify that.

Apple would like to sell direct, with Apple stores for cars. Tesla has had some success in direct sales, often locating showrooms in the same malls where Apple has stores. Dealer bodies will a) lobby against direct Apple sales, because it ends the world as they know it and b) individual dealers will line up to grab Apple car franchises with even stricter rules of good conduct than Lexus required in 1990 at its launch.

Will an Apple car actually happen?

With hundreds of billions of cash on hand, Apple could spend several tens of them, decide to move ahead, and then still decide the abort the project. A car remains a complex project.

In an interview with Stephen Colbert, Apple CEO Tim Cook said: "We look at a number of things along the way, and we decide to really put our energies in a few of them." For Apple, that's about par for the course, sounding appealing without saying too much.

Our belief: The Apple car is a go. Only if Apple hits impossible odds will it give up. More likely the car will happen, just not on time. In this, the computer and car industries have common ground.

Source: Can Apple pull off an electric car by 2019? (The biggest challenges may not be technical.)