Apple is building a car, according to Ford CEO Mark Fields - or at least that is his company's "working assumption".
The elusive Project Titan, as the Apple Car project is believed to be codenamed, has been rumoured since 2014, and Fields told BBC News: "Our working assumption is that [Apple] are [working on a car]."
However, this is not a threat to Ford's own business model, Fields said, but an opportunity to grow in new areas, which he hopes to achieve at least in part through its newly opened technology business in Palo Alto.
This new facility will both work on autonomous cars created by Ford and also collaborate with other Silicon Valley firms to investigate the role the Internet of Things (IoT) will play in the interaction between people and vehicles.
"There are a lot of new non-traditional competitors who are looking at the automotive space," said Fields. "We are viewing that as an opportunity not as a threat and there will be some things [we can do] on our own to be able to satisfy those customer needs ... and at other times we will partner with others and that's the reason we set up a big research and innovation centre in Palo Alto because we want to collaborate with and participate in that environment."
Various automotive giants, most recently Chris Porritt, former vice president of vehicle engineering for Tesla and former chief engineer for Aston Martin, have kept the rumour mill churning on Apple's car, but no hard evidence for it has yet emerged.
Main image by lpy974 on Flickr
