Steve Jobs apparently discussed the idea of an Apple car, or iCar, with his friend and iPod co-creator Tony Fadell in 2008, Bloomberg reported.
Fadell, who now works at Alphabet, told the publication in an interview that he and Jobs went on a “couple of walks” during which they discussed the vehicle’s potential. “If we were to build a car, what would we build? What would a dashboard be?” he recalled talking about at the time. “And what would this be? What would seats be? How would you fuel it or power it?”
But the timing wasn’t right, and Jobs ultimately tabled the idea, according to Fadell. “The Detroit auto industry was almost dead,” he said in the interview, which will air in full on Bloomberg TV Wednesday at 7 p.m. ET. “It was fun to kick those ideas around.”
While nothing came to fruition in 2008, there is an Apple car currently in the works that could be shipped beginning in 2019.
“A car has batteries; it has a computer; it has a motor, and it has mechanical structure. If you look at an iPhone, it has all the same things. It even has a motor in it,” said Fadell. “But the hard stuff is really on the connectivity and how cars could be self-driving.”