For seven years, Horace Dediu has been thinking about one idea almost every day. A longtime handset industry analyst and avid Apple follower, Dediu, 54, also popularized the term “micromobility” to describe a growing array of small, non-car electric vehicles. His obsession is at the intersection of all those interests: Dediu is convinced that Apple Inc. should make an e-bike, or something like it.
“I fundamentally believe there's no better product for Apple in mobility than micromobility,” Dediu says. “It is so Apple, so Jobs-ian that it just smacks you in the face…Steve would have been all over this.”
It’s an open secret that Apple has spent nearly a decade working on a car. “Project Titan,” as it’s known internally, aims to get a self-driving EV on the market by 2025. Ostensibly, the idea makes sense. Apple sits on a pile of cash bigger than GM, Toyota and Volkswagen combined. It produces battery-powered hardware at a colossal scale and eye-popping profit margins. And it already inhabits the dashboards of millions of drivers using its CarPlay software. In September, consumer research shop Strategic Vision published a survey showing that more people would “definitely consider” buying a car from Apple than Tesla. Without so much as a rendering of a vehicle, Apple beat out all but two (Toyota and Honda) of the more than 45 brands included in the poll.
