Apple's 'Project Titan' Car Research May Be Headquartered at Leased Sunnyvale Campus

[MacRumors]

Apple's "Project Titan", its secretive and much-rumored electric car project, may involve a campus leased by Apple last year that is located in Sunnyvale, California, just a few minutes from the company's main 1 Infinite Loop campus in Cupertino, reports AppleInsider.

According to "two people with knowledge of the project", the company has been receiving shipments that may be related to the project's development at the Sunnyvale address, though it remains unclear if that location is indeed the headquarters of the car project.

According to one AppleInsider source familiar with "Titan," many of Apple's new auto-related hires, including recruits from Tesla, have been working out of the Sunnyvale campus. This person claims that some of the projects underway there have been kept "very secret" within the company.

It is said that the "Titan" development building itself is codenamed "SG5."

Apple's presence at the campus is not a secret, but AppleInsider believes Apple is linked to another company quietly operating at the site, likely as a front for Apple's more secretive efforts. That company, SixtyEight Research, claims to be a market research firm, but there is little public evidence of any actual operations in that field. Instead, the building where SixtyEight Research is listed as a tenant has seen city permits issued for construction of an "auto work area" and a "repair garage".

Photo of SixtyEight Research's offices (Source: AppleInsider)​

SixtyEight's affiliation with Apple could not be confirmed, but Apple does have a long history of using shell corporations and deceptive methods to hide its secret projects. Aside from a barren website, there is scant other information about SixtyEight -- lending more credence to its use as a front.

It wouldn't be a stretch to surmise that SixtyEight could play a role in allowing Apple to purchase and import automotive equipment and tools without drawing any suspicion. Apple, after all, is the biggest company in the world, and has been known to force engineers to use false names in the past when visiting suppliers to avoid unwelcome attention.

A visit to SixtyEight's offices by AppleInsider was met with frosted opaque glass and security cameras, with a note pointing those looking for the company offices to a three-story building in the complex leased to Apple.

Much of the evidence is circumstantial, but there definitely appear to be some curious circumstances at Apple's Sunnyvale campus. Apple's car project is reportedly still in the early stages, but the company is said to have committed to building a team of up to 1000 employees with a goal of launching a car around 2020 if the project proves promising.

Article Link: Apple's 'Project Titan' Car Research May Be Headquartered at Leased Sunnyvale Campus

 

[iBlazed]

Not so much a secret anymore. Apple needs to up their front business game. If they were drug dealers they would have been busted long ago.

 

[SpiderDude]

My hair almost turned orange

From doing this face so much:

edit note:
how do I make pictures smaller?
I feel I'm occupying way too much space.

 

[xARx2]

Wow. I wonder how leaks will be controlled for a car.

 

[OriginalMacRat]

Apple's "Project Titan", its secretive and much-rumored electric car project, may involve a campus leased by Apple

Strange comment considering that Apple is leasing most of the available office space in Cupertino and Sunnyvale in general. Has nothing to do with being secret, there are just too many employees.

 

[macduke]

AppleInsider—now there's a name I haven't heard in a long time. I'm surprised they're still a website. I stopped reading there a long time ago after all of their articles turned into copypasta and their redesign combined with more ads than ever became too much to handle.

Edit: Just checked it out, 17 ads on the homepage alone. Or at least many of them were masquerading as ads with lists of products. Most of the ads were pretty huge too. Yuck. That site is a mess.

 

[iBlazed]

Wow. I wonder how leaks will be controlled for a car.

They can't even control leaks in the infancy stage of the project and the car doesn't even exist yet! So most likely it will be very difficult. How do you test it in real world conditions?

 

[OriginalMacRat]

AppleInsider—now there's a name I haven't heard in a long time. I'm surprised they're still a website. I stopped reading there a long time ago after all of their articles turned into copypasta and their redesign combined with more ads than ever became too much to handle.

Remember in 2008 and 2009 they kept posting all these articles about how Apple was discontinuing the Mac mini because an update hadn't been released yet?

They've lost a lot of credibility.

 

[LordQ]

So wait, Jony Ive used to wear an Omega before the Apple Watch and in 2020 he will have to ditch his Aston Martin in favour of the Apple Car? First World Problems.

 

[Popeye206]

Wow. I wonder how leaks will be controlled for a car.

Well... they won't be leaving it in a bar!

 

[OriginalMacRat]

Well... they won't be leaving it in a bar!

Depends on how much they've had to drink!!!!

 

[SpiderDude]

Different Body?

They can't even control leaks in the infancy stage of the project and the car doesn't even exist yet! So most likely it will be very difficult. How do you test it in real world conditions?

I'd say get a bodywork from another car company that fits other the skeleton and roll with it.
Just the usual tape over the headlights and freaky patterns wouldn't do much good in this case.
And give a really greasy look to the apple engineer driving it so that anyone who notices it just thinks that it is a botched tuning attempt. ahah

 

[Bokito]

If it's right, SixtyEigth Research should refer to something. I was thinking Ive's birth year, but according to Wikipedia he is born in 67.

Focus your 'research' there guys.

An other guess 1768: First Voyage of Discovery of James Cook.

 

[MH01]

So wait, Jony Ive used to wear an Omega before the Apple Watch and in 2020 he will have to ditch his Aston Martin in favour of the Apple Car? First World Problems.

I bet he still has an Omega and a number of watches that make a $17K edition look like a cheap toy

 

[macduke]

Remember in 2008 and 2009 they kept posting all these articles about how Apple was discontinuing the Mac mini because an update hadn't been released yet?

They've lost a lot of credibility.

Yeah, the credibility loss was only the start. I remember their mobile redesign was just awful.

I remember there was this guy there that would post really insightful articles looking at the history behind what was happening at the time. I'm pretty sure he started posting less or stopped posting at some point and I no longer had any reason to visit their site, despite all of the other crap.

 

[IJ Reilly]

Apple's "Project Titan", its secretive and much-rumored electric car project, may involve a

This sentence says that the project keeps secrets, not that the project is itself a secret (which, presumably, was the intended meaning). No points for the extra syllables.

 

[atrevers]

If it's right, SixtyEigth Research should refer to something. I was thinking Ive's birth year, but according to Wikipedia he is born in 67.

Focus your 'research' there guys.

It's the year he learnt to say the word "car".

 

[Reason077]

Can anyone put me in touch with someone from the sales team at SixtyEight Research?

I've been trying to contact them, as I am in need of market research services in the Cupertino/Sunnyvale area.

Thanks!

 

[peterh988]

SixtyEight?

Someones going to get Eighty-sixed for snooping around too much if they're not careful.

 

[geoelectric]

If it's right, SixtyEigth Research should refer to something. I was thinking Ive's birth year, but according to Wikipedia he is born in 67.

Focus your 'research' there guys.

An other guess 1768: First Voyage of Discovery of James Cook.

I figured it was related to the Motorola 68000 series of CPUs--the original platform for the Mac. They were commonly called the M68K.

 

[SkippyThorson]

Project Titan??

My inner nerd saw the codename, and only one thing came to mind when referring to titan:

 

[Felix01]

Can anyone put me in touch with someone from the sales team at SixtyEight Research?

I've been trying to contact them, as I am in need of market research services in the Cupertino/Sunnyvale area.

Thanks!

From their website:

SixtyEight Inquiry

info@sixtyeightresearch.com

 

[ashdelacroix]

Can anyone put me in touch with someone from the sales team at SixtyEight Research?

I've been trying to contact them, as I am in need of market research services in the Cupertino/Sunnyvale area.

Thanks!

Sure. Here you go: tcook@apple.com

 

[budselectjr]

AppleInsider—now there's a name I haven't heard in a long time. I'm surprised they're still a website. I stopped reading there a long time ago after all of their articles turned into copypasta and their redesign combined with more ads than ever became too much to handle.

Edit: Just checked it out, 17 ads on the homepage alone. Or at least many of them were masquerading as ads with lists of products. Most of the ads were pretty huge too. Yuck. That site is a mess.

Macrumors runs stories from them all the time.

 

[2457282]

If it's right, SixtyEigth Research should refer to something. I was thinking Ive's birth year, but according to Wikipedia he is born in 67.

Focus your 'research' there guys.

An other guess 1768: First Voyage of Discovery of James Cook.

I will hazzard a guess that if you put the project name and the company name together you get something. Titan 68.

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/B-68_Titan

look like they are thinking beyond cars