Is Apple Secretly Working on an Electric Car?

Might a Google self-driving car someday slam into an Apple electric car on the highway? It seems so: The Wall Street Journal reports that Apple has "several hundred" employees working on a secret project to build an electric car. The story makes clear that the so-called "Project Titan" might well fizzle into nothing, but for now the team is working on something that resembles a minivan. If all goes well, it could challenge Tesla in the electric market several years down the road.

Tim Cook reportedly signed off on the project a year ago and has put design VP Steve Zadesky, a former Ford engineer, in charge. So why would Apple even consider such a mammoth shift in focus? "There might be a simple explanation," writes Chris Ziegler at the Verge. "The company's explosive growth will eventually peter out unless it expands to new markets, and there's no question that transportation would fall into that category." (More Apple stories.)