Five Ways That Apple Is Already Positioned to Be a Car Company

Tim Cook, chief executive officer of Apple Inc., center, arrives to speak with Gary Cohn, president and chief operating officer of Goldman Sachs Group Inc., right, at the Goldman Sachs Technology And Internet Conference in San Francisco, California, U.S., on Tuesday, Feb. 10, 2015.

Photographer: David Paul Morris/Bloomberg
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Apple Inc. may already be positioned to evolve into a global automaker in many ways that other Silicon Valley companies aren’t.

The Cupertino, California-based tech company has put a few hundred employees to work on a secretive project to develop an electric automobile, a person familiar with the matter has said. While Apple often tests ideas that don’t get released, the work underscores the company’s long-held desire to play a greater role in the automotive space, which is ripe for more of a merging with users’ digital lives.