Over the past few years, I’ve noticed Apple introducing several new technologies that are targeted toward the car. Some of these technologies are for people who have very modern cars and others are more stopgap technologies for people with older cars. But all of these technologies have me thinking about Project Titan, Apple’s long-rumored car project. Will we ever see Project Titan materialize into a product or has Apple given up on the project and decided to rework Project Titan into new features that can be built into their existing product line?

Based on the past few years, I think Apple is clearly moving toward the latter. Repurposing technologies and features that were being designed for their own designed car and packaging them into their existing products- mainly iPhone and Apple Watch.

Let us start with a simple one. This past year with the release of the iPhone 14/14 Pro and Apple Watch Series 8/SE (2nd generation)/Ultra, Apple introduced a new feature called Crash Detection. Crash Detection is a safety feature that is designed to detect when a driver has crashed into another car. It does this by collecting a wide variety of data. For example, it uses data from the microphone to detect sound consistent with breaking glass, accelerometer data to determine if you suddenly stop moving, GPS data to determine if you are moving along a roadway, and many more pieces of data. This is all data that could be collected by a car and would be an excellent safety feature, and by extension selling point. But instead, Apple has chosen to build this technology into all their current Apple Watch models and most recent iPhone lineup.

Another is Emergency SOS via Satellite. This is currently an iPhone 14/14 Pro-only feature but is something that could be built into a car as the feature only requires a battery and a satellite connection. When Apple demoed the feature last September, the one thing that caught my eye was the questionnaire that Apple designed to speed up the process of getting users’ assistance by identifying what kind of help is needed. On that questionnaire, one of the options is vehicle issue. This would also be an excellent safety feature for a car and also by extension, a selling feature.

Third, the introduction of Car Keys to Apple Wallet. This feature works with the U1 and NFC chip inside an iPhone and Apple Watch to lock and unlock and remote start a vehicle. The feature was introduced at WWDC 2021 and is supported in a very limited number of vehicles. Very few are added per year. But this is the kind of feature that Apple would love to have built for their own car as it’s a perfect integration of hardware and software and would be very difficult if not impossible for other car manufacturers to replicate in the same seamless way. However, a delay or cancellation of Apple’s own car very easily could force the company to reconsider making that technology available to all car manufacturers.

Finally, I want to touch on the elephant in the room; CarPlay. Originally introduced as part of iOS 7, it eventually launched alongside iOS 8 and handled the bare minimum of what people wanted out of an “iOS in the car” experience. It handled iTunes Radio music streaming, Maps navigation, and phone calls and messages. That was about it. Over the past several years Apple has been working to improve it by adding more features and apps and even support for third-party apps for ordering food and paying for parking. At last year’s WWDC conference, Apple previewed what they called “the next generation of CarPlay”. This upgraded version of CarPlay was designed to work with a wide variety of car screens, multiple of them if a car happened to have them, and display multiple different controls for not just your phone but for your car as well. When the feature was announced last year, I was confident Apple was working to release its own car. However, a year later, it seems to not be what Apple is going for. And no car manufacturer has announced or committed to supporting this next generation of CarPlay.

Apple and their car project is a nearly decade-old broken relationship. It would greatly seem Apple wants to release its own car but simply cannot justify doing so, but for some reason can justify releasing it to the industry at large which, in turn, rejects the advances. Forcing Apple to reconsider its car project but the cycle keeps going on. I do genuinely hope that Apple decides to someday launch its own car. Every feature that Apple introduces that relates to the car is from a consumer perspective, very intriguing. But they are held back by not being able to control the hardware and software. These are the kinds of problems that Apple has historically excelled at solving. Identifying where a unique integration of hardware, software, and/or services can provide a compelling user experience.