Speculation about the Apple Car has kicked into high gear. The amount of news chatter, hiring trends, and investments would take someone years to read. To sift through the noise we used Quid to identify what patterns are important. Read our analysis and then make your way over to MacWorld for further coverage.

1. APPLE CAR
What do we know about changing consumer preferences and
the forces causing disruption in the automotive industry

2. Top conversations in the media about
Millennials & Cars show that…

3. Why millennials
aren’t driving
24% of conversation
Alternative transit
methods
24% of the conversation
Challenges & costs
of teens driving
20% of conversation
Technology-driven
car innovations
14% of the conversation
Car models targeting
young drivers
15% of conversation
Consumer attitudes are changing,
particularly Millennials

4. Uber / Lyft
Sharing
economy
Car buying experience
broken
New car models
for young
drivers
Costs / risks of teen
driving
Autonomous
driving
IoT/Connected
Car technology
Millennials &
money
City planning /
alternative transit
Car insurance
Millennials pass
on drivers
licenses
Sub-topics reveal that the future of transportation
won’t be as simple as traditional car ownership

5. Who then will address the concerns of buyers?
Could Apple rise above OEMs?

6. A123 lawsuit about
talent poaching
BMW / iCar
partnership rumors
Talks with
GoMentum
Station
Apple - Tesla buyout
speculation
WSJ breaks story of
‘Project Titan’
Doug Betts hired from
Chrysler
Auto execs react to Apple
Car - “not scared”
Apple meets with
California DMV
Apple building smart
windshields
Apple hires NVIDIA
machine learning expert
Apple poaches engineers from
Mission Motors, kills startup
Apple acquires
VocalIQ
WSJ reports Apple
Car to arrive in 2019
Looking at news and rumors about Apple Car
allow us to piece together what might be next

7. Apple - Tesla
buyout
speculation CarPlay
launched in
Geneva
WSJ breaks
news on
‘Project Titan’
A123 lawsuit
about talent
poaching
Apple to launch
by 2019
Momentum is building, starting with the WSJ
news break on ‘Project Titan’

8. 26% of total
speculation about
Apple Car is driven by
reports of new hires
hiring press
other press
Hiring patterns prove to be one of the strongest
signals for Apple’s intent to build a car

9. Doug Betts - Fiat Chrysler, Global Quality
Johann Jungwirth - Mercedes Benz R&D North America
Paul Furgale - Autonomous Systems Lab, computer vision engineer
Mujeeb Ijaz - A123, CTO
Jamie Carlson - Tesla senior engineer
Megan McLain, VW, engineer, autonomous driving
Mission Motors
John Ireland - Tesla powertrain test engineer
Jonathan Chen - Nvidia, machine learning
Xianqiao Tong - Nvidia, computer vision engineer
Lech Szumilas - Delphi research scientist
Stefan Weber - Bosch ADAS engineer
Sanjay Massey - Ford connected car engineer
Count of mentions
By extracting the names of key hires, we see a focus
on R&D and product talent from the auto industry

10. 2011 Oct. 2015
VocalIQ Limited builds a platform for voice interfaces for voice
enable devices and applications. Its solutions are used in various
applications, including smartphones, robots, cars, etc.
2013 Sept. 2015
Mapsense, Inc. offers mapping engine and developer tools to
build applications for streaming datasets.
2008 May 2015
Coherent Navigation Inc. develops global positioning systems
which combines mid-earth orbit satellite systems with Iridium
Corporation's satellite constellation in low-earth orbit.
2002 Dec. 2013
Novauris Technologies Ltd develops server-based and embedded
speech recognition systems to OEMs.
2004 July 2013
Hopstop.com, Inc. operates a pedestrian navigation service that
provides door-to-door walking, biking, transit, taxi, and hourly
car rental directions
2011
March 2013
(20M)
Wifislam, Inc. develops location-based applications with
microlocation ability. It offers Positioning SDK that makes
accurate indoor positioning easy
2007
July 2011
(155M)
C3 Technologies AB provides detailed 3D city visualization
solutions for the Web mapping industry.
Founded M&A
Recent M&A activity also indicates that navigation
could play a central role in the Apple Car

11. But competitors are boldly dismissing the threat and
have caught the ear of journalists

12. “I couldn’t type on it [the
iPhone] and I still can’t type
on it, and a lot my friends
can’t type on it…It’s hard to
type on a piece of glass.
”
Mike Lazardis
Former co-CEO, Research in Motion
We’ve seen this type of response to Apple before

13. …will car companies be next?
“If there were a rumor that
Mercedes or Daimler planned
to start building smartphones
then they would not be
sleepless at night. And the
same applies to me.
”
Dieter Zetsche
CEO, Mercedes-Benz

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