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Apple Car Autonomous Driving Scaled Down, Launch Planned for 2028

MayaUser said:
Maybe for when EU law come into place, i think its 2035
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Which EU directive are you referring to? Today, the extent to which autonomous vehicles are allowed on the roads is a matter of national legislation. Many countries have chosen to be quite literal, usually more so than most US states or other countries in the world.

It might be interesting to know that there have been level 3 cars available in the EU, Korea, and Japan. Now, Mercedes-Benz is rolling them out in the US, as well.
 
jvchappy said:
If apple had followed Google's approach with Waymo maybe they could have gotten to level 4 or level 5 by 2026/2028. They haven't focused on the AI which is hurting their ambitious plans.
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Level 4 with very limited coverage is completely different from level 5. Level 5 will take decades.
 
Just following along, I wonder if anyone can explain what aspect of the EV market does Tesla actually have a long term advantage in- what is their moat? I think traditional car makers can scale and adjust production lines and produce large quantities of parts/cars with as good and some say better precision (fit and finish). In terms of autonomy, Waymo is likely at or beyond Tesla capability and who knows what other companies in other countries are doing. Also, as others have pointed out, car lovers love to drive, so for the traditional enthusiast community, self-driving might just be a cool feature but ultimately not something to pay a premium for. Last, battery. Everyday I read about an amazing "break through" in battery technology- making them cheaper, longer lasting and not reliant on scarce metals. Will Tesla actually be able to remain in the technological lead in terms of battery in the long-term? The US and world are spending massive amounts of money on battery technology. It seems a major technological leap that would lead to a competitive advantage is more likely to come from academia or government. So if you remove that, what is left of the Tesla advantage? And then coming back around, what is Apple's advantage in any of these areas, really?
 
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The Apple Car will be my next car. I will have to hang on to my Q5 until 2028. I was hoping for a fully autonomous car, but perhaps that will be a CarOS 2.0 update.
 
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I typically buy the Apple version of a product, when available. I think that probably stops at cars though. It certainly wouldn’t replace my high horsepower toy, but maybe if their offering is decent it could replace my daily driver, which currently is a minivan.
 
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Those ‘prototypes’ were likely just a skunkworks project designed to test out features like Lidar implementation without making it obvious they were for the iPhone and the Vision Pro.

The Apple Car never existed and never will.
 
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Prices will not be adjusted even with less tech in the car. Buyers will still be paying for all the R&D. They'll have to change laws first to have full autonomous driving. If the excuse is there to make airports and federal locations or anywhere important that you have to park into human driven car free zones, once you have total control of what goes on the road, full driverless will work very well. When the laws change, you will be forced into autopilot in certain areas. It's just in order to get to that brave new world our current freedoms need to be deliberatly decimated. The population needs to see total lawlessness to accept total control and that hasn't been rolled out yet. Hopefully I'll be in my bubble with a Vision Pro on and won't be bothered by any of it.
 
truthsteve said:
lmao by then, Tesla will have put most legacy automakers in dire straits and have full self driving solved

im sure apple will totally eat Tesla's lunch, except for the fact that every apple car sold will earn Tesla profits from superchargers 🤣
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The problem with Tesla is that they are making it very difficult for themselves. The task would be much easier with sensor fusion and lidar.

Tesla tried to conquer the world by superchargers. It was a clever strategy but fell a bit short. It works quite well in many parts of the US but not in most parts of Europe, let alone in China.

The same applies to Tesla’s market position. Tesla sold approximately 280,000 EVs in Europe in 2023 with Model Y being the most popular model of any cars (including fossils). In the other hand, Volkswagen group’s sales were approximately 470,000 EVs in Europe.

So, the global car market is different from the US.
 
If the purpose of the Apple car was to reinvent how cars function in society, and they can no longer do that, then perhaps it's not worth entering the market.

We don't need nicer cars; we need a complete disruption so we don't have billions of cars sitting in parking spots the majority of the time and taking up 80% of the public realm with pedestrians and sidewalks often getting as little as 5%.

Having an "Apple Pod" come to you when you need one, by tapping on an app on your Apple Watch, taking you to where you need to go, then going off and picking someone else up. Having these cars communicate with one another in a cross brand standard that enables all cars to function as a train when on a highway, work without traffic lights because they're all aware of other cars coming into an intersection, all interweaving seamlessly, completely ending gridlock.

This would be worth reinventing the car. Another electric car that people add to their garages and sit idle all day and that adds to traffic and gridlock when on the road, is not worthwhile.
 
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Timo_Existencia said:
Well, there are several big name automakers still on it. Porsche, for one. They are working on green hydrogen production.

But to me the distribution networks should be easier to fall into place. Big Oil could take this over and simply start replacing gas pumps.

The benefit, of course, is quick refueling. It fits right into the gas station model much better than charging stations.
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The cost of a hydrogen station is way higher than a couple of gas pumps.

Filling is a bit faster, but the difference between fast charges (300+ kW) and hydrogen is not that big. Hydrogen needs to be pressurized to 700 bar which complicates things a lot. The capacity of a hydrogen filling station is not enormous.

There are a lot of carmakers toying with FCVs but the field has not progressed much since the introduction of Mirai almost a decade ago.

The main challenge is still the availability of green hydrogen. It is very difficult to see it emerge in the near future.
 
truthsteve said:
lmao by then, Tesla will have put most legacy automakers in dire straits and have full self driving solved

im sure apple will totally eat Tesla's lunch, except for the fact that every apple car sold will earn Tesla profits from superchargers 🤣
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Wheels for Apple Car will likely start around $40,000 considering the MacPro wheels were 600 for a set.

Charger cable adapters will likely be $4,000 or more given how expensive Apple likes to price cables/adapters.

I just don’t see how Apple Car will be remotely affordable. Even millionaires will likely avoid it unless they have a net worth over 200mil.
 
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Really?

At this rate the Apple car is going to be a kids toy.

Isn’t it already the size of a micro machine??

Scale it down any more and it will be marketed at the quantum realm.
 
DrV said:
Plus, our traffic infrastructure is not ready for fully autonomous vehicles.

Even if we had the tech, a car driving like a human driver would not be acceptable. The risk level and number of violations would be far too high to be acceptable.

Level 4 within limited and very well mapped areas in good weather conditions is doable. Waymo & al. are doing it. Add some construction works with poor signs, a number of pedestrians and cyclists everywhere and possibly dark, ice, snow, and slush — then the task is far more complicated. (And that is where I drive.)

Look at almost any traffic code. They tend to start by saying that drivers should exercise caution, or something on those lines. How do you define “careful” to a computer? There are a lot of situations where there is a courtroom packed with highly educated lawyers trying to find out the correct interpretation of rules after something has happened.

Making the traffic environment unambiguous is an enormous task.
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This is, bar none, the highest hurdle for full autonomy. The limitations you've spelled out to Waymo's functionality is precisely why I question the validity of the "level 4" claim (from the perspective of the ranking system itself being pointless, not necessarily Waymo hitting level 4). The simple truth is that if you had a completely ubiquitous road network with nothing but autonomous vehicles on it, we could have had fully autonomous cities in, well... about 2004 when DARPA was first messing around with the idea.

That being said, in some parts of the world they call those "trains", and it's impossible to have a full conversation on the topic without pointing out that if we're going to dedicate the effort to making the road system good enough for full autonomy using the technology we have today, we may be better off just spending the same amount of money and effort on greatly expanding the reach of things like trains.
 
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The Apple Car Ultra will cost $333,333.
The Apple Car Pro will cost $222,222.
The Apple Car will cost $111,111.

Which one are you planning on buying?
 
Apple can’t even make Siri good enough to work practically every time, lol. Just buy out Lucid. They go hand in hand everything proprietary and lucid tech is superior to everything else on the market.
 
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