I keep meaning to do a write up on the idea but I don’t think it ever existed, even as an idea.

Consider this: your trillion-dollar tech company is developing its next big idea: a mixed reality headset computing platform. There is nothing like it on the market right now and you don’t want the competition to get there first. What do you do?

Your smartwatch wasn’t first to market and as a result bad competitors appeared first. You also need a way to collect real world data from its array of sensors but can’t go out and do it in public.

So you mount the sensors to the top of production automobiles and fabricate a skunkworks team under the cover of developing a car. You leak it to the analysts and let the rumours write themselves. You even let pictures of these cars (really just a rack of sensors) onto the internet. You even build a track with the change in the CEOs sofa.

Then 3 months after you launch your new mixed reality headset you fold the skunkworks group and quietly let the rumour mill assume your car project is a write off.