Ah, the Silicon Valley giants can’t stop competing. As you all know, Google has unveiled an electric, self-driving car that it is working on. Apple hasn’t made anything official, but even leaders in the auto industry now agree that Apple is working on its own self-driving (almost definitely electric) car.
Then, of course, there’s the new kid on the block — the hottest electric car company in the world. You all know the name, but you may not know or remember that Elon Musk said Tesla would be the first to bring an autonomous car to market.
Not our source. Just some dude with an Apple laptop.
Could Facebook stay out of the race? Of course not. However, we don’t know how far it is along with its electric self-driving car — enough to actually be in the race? Ahead? Or way behind?
A Facebook employee working on the project, codenamed “Movingbox,” spoke with CleanTechnica and revealed that there are ~200 people working on the project and Jeremy Clarkson has been consulting with the Facebook (er, Movingbox) team. There was no indication if he’s been consulting since being fired from Top Gear after punching a producer in the face, or if he came in before that. It could very well be part of his redemption effort.
The employee, who (of course) wanted to remain anonymous, also said that they were working with a Shelby Cobra for the testing. Quite a ride to play around with!
I couldn’t get any details on price or a timeline out of my source, but he said that there should be a major announcement from Facebook in exactly one year (April 1, 2016). Stay tuned… if we can’t get more out of our source before then.
In the meantime, best of luck! May the best Silicon Valley giant win!
Image: Mark Zuckerberg by Elaine Chan and Priscilla Chan (CC BY 2.5 license)
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