From Apple Watch to Electric Buggies: Meet the Designer Rethinking Urban Mobility
When Julian Hoenig left Apple — where he had spent years leading the design of one of the most iconic wearable devices ever created, the Apple Watch — most people might have expected him to land at another big tech company or launch a sleek consumer gadget. Instead, a casual conversation with a friend sent him down a completely different road: the world of electric vehicles. More specifically, a corner of that world that has been surprisingly neglected for decades — the humble neighborhood vehicle.
The result is Amble, a newly launched EV startup that Hoenig cofounded with three others, and its debut product, the Amble One, a compact electric buggy designed to fill a gap that neither the auto industry nor the golf cart market has adequately addressed. With a retro-futuristic aesthetic inspired by the 1960s lunar rover and a philosophy built around simplicity and function, Amble is making a quiet but compelling case that the future of short-distance transportation looks nothing like what we currently drive.
The Problem With Golf Carts (And Why Nobody Fixed It)
The story of Amble begins with a resort owner who had a problem. Hoenig's friend needed a reliable, attractive way to transport guests around the property — and the default solution, the golf cart, simply wasn't cutting it. Golf carts were engineered for one purpose: moving golfers and their gear around a fairway. They were not designed with comfort, aesthetics, or versatile urban use in mind. They look utilitarian, feel flimsy, and offer little in the way of user experience refinement.
That conversation planted a seed. Hoenig, whose entire career had been built around the idea that everyday objects deserve thoughtful, human-centered design, recognized that no one had ever truly reinvented this category. The golf cart had remained largely unchanged for generations, even as electric vehicles revolutionized the broader automotive world. Here was a real design problem waiting to be solved — and a legitimate market opportunity hiding in plain sight.
What Is the Amble One?
The Amble One is the startup's first vehicle, and it carries Hoenig's design DNA throughout. Drawing aesthetic inspiration from the Apollo-era lunar rover — one of the most purely functional, stripped-down vehicles ever built — the Amble One aims to be what Hoenig describes as "simple, but recognizable." It is a design philosophy that will feel familiar to anyone who has ever held an Apple product: remove everything unnecessary, elevate everything that remains.
While detailed technical specifications have not been fully disclosed at launch, the vehicle is positioned as a low-speed electric buggy suited for environments where full-sized cars are overkill and golf carts fall short. Think resort campuses, gated communities, college campuses, large hospitality properties, and — critically — urban neighborhoods where short-distance travel is the norm and sustainability is a growing priority.
The Amble One is expected to reach market in 2026, with resorts serving as the initial commercial launch environment. This makes strategic sense: resorts offer a controlled ecosystem where the vehicle's range limitations are a non-issue, guest experience is paramount, and the visual appeal of a well-designed electric buggy can itself become a brand asset for the property.
The Bigger Vision: Neighborhood Vehicles for City Living
What makes Amble's story particularly interesting is the longer-term vision that extends well beyond resort shuttles. Hoenig and his cofounders see the Amble One as a genuine neighborhood vehicle — the kind of low-speed, short-range electric transport that could meaningfully reduce car dependency in urban and suburban settings.
In many cities around the world, a significant percentage of daily car trips cover distances of three miles or less. These are trips to a local grocery store, a nearby school, a community center, or a neighbor's home. A full-sized automobile is an expensive, resource-intensive, and spatially demanding solution for these short journeys. Neighborhood electric vehicles (NEVs), if designed well, could serve these use cases far more efficiently.
The challenge has always been that existing NEVs and low-speed electric vehicles have failed to inspire consumer confidence or desire. They look like compromises. Amble's proposition is that great design can change the calculus — that a vehicle people actually want to be seen in, one that carries the aesthetic credibility of someone who shaped Apple's most personal product, could finally make the neighborhood EV a mainstream choice rather than a niche workaround.
Why Hoenig's Background Matters
In the EV space, engineering pedigree tends to dominate the conversation. But Amble's founding story is a reminder that design thinking can be just as disruptive as battery chemistry. Hoenig's years at Apple instilled a particular approach to product development: start with the human experience, let form follow genuine function, and never mistake complexity for quality.
That sensibility is evident in how Amble has framed its mission. Rather than competing with Tesla or Rivian on performance metrics, the company is staking out territory defined by usability, visual identity, and contextual fit. The Amble One does not need to go 300 miles on a charge. It needs to feel right — at a resort, in a neighborhood, on a campus — in a way that existing options have never managed.
A New Chapter in the Electric Vehicle Story
The electric vehicle market has matured rapidly over the past decade, but most of that innovation has clustered around the high end of the market or around direct replacements for conventional automobiles. The micro-mobility and neighborhood vehicle segment remains underdeveloped relative to its potential, particularly as cities grapple with congestion, emissions targets, and the true cost of car-centric infrastructure.
Amble's launch is a small but meaningful signal that this segment is beginning to attract serious design talent and entrepreneurial ambition. If the Amble One can deliver on its promise — a vehicle that is genuinely pleasant to use, visually distinctive, and purpose-built for the environments where it will actually operate — it could help define what the next generation of neighborhood transportation looks like.
Julian Hoenig left Apple without a plan to build an EV company. A single conversation changed that. Sometimes the most significant design problems are the ones everyone else stopped noticing precisely because they had been around so long. The golf cart has been good enough for decades. Amble is betting that good enough is no longer enough.