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A few weeks ago Amigobulls reported that the much rumored Apple (NASDAQ:AAPLApple (NASDAQ: self-driving electric car is ready for road testing and could be sold to consumers by the end of the decade. Now, The Wall Street Journal reveals that Apple cars could start shipping to consumers as early as 2019.

The self-driving car project, codenamed “Project Titan,” has been designated internally as a “committed project,” the number of staff working on the project has tripled, and the target ship date has been set for 2019, according to people familiar with the matter. As usual, Apple continues to keep the project under wraps and doesn’t comment officially. “We look at a number of things along the way, and we decide to really put our energies in a few of them,” Apple Chief Executive Tim Cook said on Stephen Colbert’s talk show in reply to Colbert’s question about the project.

Apple has an agreement for road testing with GoMentum Station, a former naval base near San Francisco, now a high-security testing ground for autonomous vehicles, and had meetings with California’s Department of Motor Vehicles focused on the autonomous-vehicle testing regulations that went into effect in September of 2014.

People familiar with the project said there is skepticism within the team that the 2019 target is achievable, and experts estimate Apple’s chances of shipping a car by 2019 at between 50 and 60 percent. However, the term “shipping date” is ambiguous and may refer to the date that engineers sign off on the product’s main features.