Tim Cook drops mysterious Apple Car references, doesn’t confirm or disprove anything

Last night, Tim Cook participated in the WSJD Live event in California and while he was one of the most popular speakers at the event, he spent surprisingly little time focusing on Apple’s popular products and chose instead to talk about the future and about novelty. The Apple Car might not have been his idea of small talk, but he did however drop a few lines of information about what the company is plannin – or rather, appeared to do so. He didn’t really reveal anything useful per se, unfortunately.

At the event, Tim Cook focused on emphasizing that Apple wants to grow and develop, which is why entering the wearable market last Spring was a crucial move. The Apple Watch might not have been the craze Tim Cook wanted it to be, but it still sold a lot of units (about 3 million), which is rather acceptable for a first generation device. The Apple CEO also focused on the company’s new Apple Music service and Apple TV, but we were more interested in what he had to say about Apple Car.

As usual with Tim Cook, he didn’t clearly state whether or not his company was making a self-driving, autonomous, electric Apple Car. However, his tone and mysterious predictions for the industry do lead us to believe that the Apple Car is in the works and has been so for the past few years. Tim Cook said “It would seem like that there will be a massive change in that industry. When I look at the automobile, I see that software is becoming an increasingly important part of the car of the future”.

We can deduce quite a few things from those statements. Previously, Tim Cook and executives within the company confirmed that in no way would the company be the one to manufacture the Apple Car. Employee poaching as well as meeting with automakers across the world confirmed that Apple was interested in providing the processing power and the software for the Apple Car, but the company does not have the resources necessary to manufacture something like this.

Tim Cook’s statements about the importance of software do lead us to believe that  the company is already working on designing a new OS made especially for the Apple Car and its autonomous endeavors. Tim’s ecological ideals of development tie into what the future holds for transportation and he did emphasize at the event that electric cars represent the future of green tech.

He went on to explain that Apple CarPlay is the company’s current push into automotive solutions, but he didn’t say whether it’s the only push they’re thinking of.  While he spoke of privacy, Apple TV and the future of Apple Music, Tim Cook gave out surprisingly little actual information at the conference, aside from the Apple TV release date next week. With the highly interpretable statements from Tim Cook, we’re not sure what to believe. The Apple Car might just be a blown out of proportion CarPlay rumor that went bad, but based on all the meetings and employee poaching from Tesla and Chrysler, the Apple Car has to be real. It’s not going to be made by Apple, but it’s going to work on Apple.