Apples electric car, code-named Titan, is a committed project with the company aiming for a target shipping date of 2019 and tripling the size of the team currently working on the project to 1,800.

According to The Wall Street Journal, the company spent more than a year investigating the feasibility of an Apple-branded car, meeting with government officials at the projects home in California.

Apple has been hiring automotive industry experts for the past year including Megan McClain, a former Volkswagen engineer with expertise in automated driving, and Vinay Palakkode, a graduate researcher at Carnegie Mellon University, which has been a centre of automated driving research.

Despite these hires, Apple doesnt currently plan to make its first electric vehicle fully autonomous, instead focusing on internet connectivity and integrating the car with the rest of its technology ecosystem.

At a conference in May, Jeff Williams, Apples senior vice president of operations, called cars “the ultimate mobile device”, signally the companys firm interest in exploring the automotive market.

While 2019 is being cited as a ship date, this refers to the date that engineers sign off on the products main features rather than when customers might actually be driving an Apple-designed car.