As the fallout from the Volkswagen emission scandal continues, The Wall Street Journal has published an exclusive story today, saying that Apple has prioritised development work on its electric car - and it has set 2019 as a target date for first shipments

Leaders of the project, code-named Titan, have been given permission to treble the current number of 600 people working on its development.

This comes after Apple spent more than a full year investigating the feasibility of developing an Apple-branded car. This involved meetings with two groups of US government officials in California.

The company has joined the race to make commercially available driverless cars a reality - according to the report this is still part of the its longterm ambitions, but its first vehicles are not expected to be fully autonomous.

Apple declined to offer a comment on the WSJ story - it remains unclear if it will work with another company to develop its cars.

It hopes that technological breakthroughs made in developing batteries, sensors and other hardware and software advances for its iPhones will help the company to get ahead in the motor industry.