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Apple Car Autonomous Driving Scaled Down, Launch Planned for 2028

Launching a car would be one of the biggest mistakes Apple ever makes.

Extremely capital intensive and without any truly novel features to set it apart.

Not only that, Apple is the last company I’d want to buy a car from. Can you imagine trying to get spare parts? Or trying to get repairs done?

If they actually make it to launch, it will be how the Tim Cook era ends.
 
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Pezimak said:
I was just agreeing. I can see ICE cars being banned soon, and electric cars seem to be synonymous with self driving tech. The feeling of driving a Porsche down a twisty road will be gone for ever.
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Nah. It’ll just be an electric one. Having driven one of BMW’s electric 5ers it will be a thrill in an electric Bimmer or Porsche.
 
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GeneralChang said:
Turns out that despite the amount of money you throw at it, autonomous driving is just a really, really difficult egg to crack. Like honestly even the best systems we can field today are barely any better than the projects DARPA was reviewing back in, what, 2004? The computers and sensors are small enough to be hidden away in a passenger car now, I guess. So that's progress.
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Yeah I think the reality is that there's too many different roads and circumstances (including roadworks, garbage roads, ad-hoc municipal differences, unmarked country roads, people's driveways / private roads, markings that are 'correct' but still confusing even to humans...etc) for it to work flawlessly. This is even in small, highly-developed countries with pristine infrastructure.

My perspective is that some safety features are good (e.g. ones that stop people running off the road and stuff if they fall asleep). However 'AI' does NOT exist (computers can't think) and there's too many little discretionary decisions going on for a machine to fully automate.

Musk got a lot of nerds excited by rushing a LOT of tech to the market with a cavalier approach. Now that things have settled down and we've all realised he's a nutcase, the excitement is starting to go away.
 
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QuantumEraser said:
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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1. Manufacturing innovation
2. Vertical integration
3. Software
4. Safety
5. AI
6. Dry process battery manufacturing (currently scaling).

Battery breakthrough reports are to be taken with a huge grain of salt. Improvements are incremental year in year but add up.
 
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Apple should make it really an Apple Car. If I want an iPad-large display I just connect my 12.9” M2 iPad Pro on the dash. Use my iPhone for the speedometer readout. Use my Apple Pencil to pick my nose.
 
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GeneralChang said:
I'm well aware of the progress Tesla has made. Their main contribution to the space is speed and packaging. They've got a much more compact system working at about double the maximum speeds that were reliable ten years ago. Part of that is their optimizations, part of that is the general forward march of technology. Back in the DARPA days you had to have a server rack to process the same amount of information you can run through an iPad these days.

But speaking from the perspective of someone who has worked in vehicle autonomy (and had self-driving cars try to do me in more than once) the chasm between very advanced driver assist features like what Tesla calls FSD and actual autonomous vehicles is far wider than you're giving it credit for.

Like, don't get me wrong, humans are good problem solvers, and we'll get there eventually. But not in the near future.
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Early reports and unedited videos of FSD 12 paint a different picture. They’ve basically removed all hard-coded instructions. All behavior is learned from videos of human drivers. I don’t call it advanced driver assist when I see it drive across San Francisco without a single intervention. That’s FSD.
 
DrV said:
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.
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this is false.

sensor fusion with lidar introduces major latency issues and noise issues.

what happens if lidar sees something that can't be confirmed by vision? which sensor do you trust?

how will sensor fusion solve photon to vehicle control latency for 65MPH driving?
 
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statler said:
I wish Apple would really "think different" when it comes to its EV design. Like, how about a truly "personal" small-sized smart vehicle priced so that a household could buy 2 of them instead of one gigantic SUV.
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A car with an Apple logo on it priced so that a household could buy 2 of them? Maybe if you’re a 1 percenter!
 
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Mac Fly (film) said:
What's the big deal about driving a car?
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Being stuck in a traffic jam
Harsh icy, snowy, slippery, dangerous, unpredictable winter (I live in the North)
Not being able to drive while drunk
Not being able to drive if you're blind
Not being able to check your cell-phone while driving
Losing your driving license if you're too old
Avoiding potholes every 30 seconds
Finding a parking spot downtown (it got on my nerves so much I actually made an app for it in my city 😁)
Other humans doing stupid stuff
More accidents
It's actually your fault if you're arrested
It's actually your fault if you have a speed ticket
Etc. Etc.

Honestly the list of reasons is long. Not many of these things happened to me in my 12 years of driving experience, but still. Honestly I cannot wait until self-driving cars exist and I finally own one. I do not think Teslas should be considered as self-driving cars... yet.
 
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This was a major strategic failure. Apple should’ve just targeted ev with Apple interface and software and launched it in 2022 or so. How da hell will they be able to compete with Tesla and other auto companies with their version 1 in 2028?
 
gk_brown said:
Agreed - I have no interest in a self-driving vehicle, nor am I interested in any sort of Apple-branded car. An Apple-based in-car OS, absolutely.
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I mean, idiot American car marketers have basically eliminated the manual transmission. Personally, I won’t buy an automatic so a full on self driving car? Zero interest.
 
Apple has released carOS 1.0.1!

It's unclear what's new in the software update, as Apple has yet to start publicly sharing carOS release notes, but the version number suggests that it's likely a minor update with bug fixes.

carOS should be available on those cars as an immediate update out of the showroom when the Apple Car is released in 2028.
 
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PsykX said:
Being stuck in a traffic jam
Harsh icy, snowy, slippery, dangerous, unpredictable winter (I live in the North)
Not being able to drive while drunk
Not being able to drive if you're blind
Not being able to check your cell-phone while driving
Losing your driving license if you're too old
Avoiding potholes every 30 seconds
Finding a parking spot downtown (it got on my nerves so much I actually made an app for it in my city 😁)
Other humans doing stupid stuff
More accidents
It's actually your fault if you're arrested
It's actually your fault if you have a speed ticket
Etc. Etc.

Honestly the list of reasons is long. Not many of these things happened to me in my 12 years of driving experience, but still. Honestly I cannot wait until self-driving cars exist and I finally own one. I do not think Teslas should be considered as self-driving cars... yet.
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Doing activities in the real world requires a level of responsibility. It appears from your list that you’re unwilling to take the responsibility required to own and operate a motor vehicle. Luckily for you there are public transport options and ride shares. And let’s not mince words. If you’re in an autonomous vehicle that gets in an accident and kills someone do you suppose you won’t be held liable? Because you will be.
 
I am not sure that this is a good move … Apple car in every car makes more sense to me AirPod car audio system also … Steve Jobs was questioning the car design industry, Jonny after his death pushed the concept too far with a driverless car with no car wheel which is not going to happen for a long time …
 
I am hoping lit motors is successful in bringing their self-stabilizing fully enclosed electric motorcycle to market. I've been following the company since 2014 or so. Might be a good acquisition target for apple!
 
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lovehateapple said:
I am hoping lit motors is successful in bringing their self-stabilizing fully enclosed electric motorcycle to market. I've been following the company since 2014 or so. Might be a good acquisition target for apple!
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I suspect the last thing Apple wants on their ledger is a growing list of serious injuries and deaths that happened on their product.
 
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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LMAO... Have you not been paying attention to Elmo the last handful of years? He said self driving was basically a solved problem in 2016. 2016!
 
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