Apple and Others Firms Look For New Facility to Develop Autonomous Car

It had been reported that the properties these companies are looking at are 'hot demand item.' Moreover leading real estate companies in the area have claimed that they are seeing a definitive movement. Some names from the automotive industry have also popped up among companies in the market looking for new facilities, car maker's like - Mercedes-Benz, BMW, Ford, Tesla and Toyota.

Victor Coleman, chief executive of Hudson Pacific Properties Inc., has reportedly told the Wall Street Journal that Apple and Google looking to take down some large expanse real estate. While Google's parent company Alphabet Inc. is looking out to buy a 400,000 square feet property and rival Apple Inc. has its eye on an 800,000 square feet facility for the development of autonomous cars.

Now considering the amount of space actually required to manufacture or assemble cars, the properties we mentioned above are obviously for R&D purpose only. The manufacturers will need considerably bigger facilities for production of these autonomous cars and few of these companies already have them. Tesla currently has a 5.3 million square feet car manufacturing plant, Google's headquarters are about 4.8 million square feet and Apple's new under-construction headquarters is about 2.8 million square feet.

There haven't been any official announcements or comments from the aforementioned companies regarding this new information. While in earlier cases Alphabet Inc. has been quite public about its driverless-car ambitions, Apple has maintained some secrecy about its project. Anyhow we are expecting to catch some official announcement in coming months.

Source: The Wall Street Journal