It's still hard for me to believe that this is actually true. I guess it would be kind of cool, but I'm still not buying the stories.
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Apple Car Development Speeds Up, 2019 Launch Date Targeted
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tevion5
macrumors 68000
They do not have MORE of a carbon footprint than goddamn gasoline engines. That is preposterous. The larger the scale of the conversion the more efficient it is. Lots of little small engines will always waste far more energy (in heat) than one large one. I hope you aren't a climate change denier or something. I find it incredible how it's still a debated issue in the USA. It's only because of fossil fuel companies investing in loud politicians that there is still discussion. In the EU the only question is what is the best way to tackle climate change. If some Republican came to an EU Parliament meeting with nonsense about "unsettled science" he'd be laughed out of the chamber.
Elon can help you out:
Maybe little bit of history of Samsung conglomerate won't hurt anybody.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Renault_Samsung_Motors
Tesla has found a way to make money, haven't they?
I'm more interested in how Apple intends to manufacture and distribute these things. It's not like they can just have Foxconn magically decide to assemble cars instead of iPhones. Will they be built here in the US? Through their own factory or contracted through others? And how will they go about selling these things? Will they go the Tesla route and utilize their existing mall stores to sell a limited number of cars? It just seems like a monumentally huge task to do.
The other route would be to do a car that has the innards from a current manufacturer. Not sure how viable that is.
AppleScruff1
macrumors G4
People will buy them site unseen, no test drives. After all, it's an Apple product and undoubtedly it will be better than any auto ever produced.
DancingTiger01
macrumors newbie
It would make sense that Apple would choose a Luxury brand as a base, however there's several issues (mostly specific to North America)
1) Not fully electric - the i3 has a model with and without the gas engine, I'd assume the Apple vehicle would be without the gas engine. I could see Apple trying to address the battery range/charging speed issue much in the way they've tried to address it in the iPhone/iPad.
2) Likely unusable in North America outside of LA/SF/NYC/SEA - If you've ever tried to use Onstar or GPS systems, or "cloud driven" maps like Nokia, Google Maps or Apple Maps 20 miles outside of a major city, you'd find them to be useless due to the lack of usable cellular service. The situation is far worse in the Pacific Northwest parts of Canada and the US, but the prairie areas (Montana, North and South Dakota, Saskatchewan, etc) tend to have complete dead zones.
3) If it's autonomous, it will only be available in select cities that have 100% LTE coverage, including inside parking garages of shopping/hotel/convention facilities. So far batting zero.
4) Plastic cars = death trap. The increase in fuel economies in cars over the last 4 decades has come from switching from Steel to lighter materials. The end result is that a collision with just about anything is fatal, especially commercial trucks and trains. And cities keep building non-automated light rail systems with level crossings, which only increases the danger.
I remember 20 years ago that two sticking points that dealers kept mentioning in the area I was in was:
1) Never buy the Asian cars - They can't deal with road salt, so you'll be junking it in 5 years, they need specific coatings to deal with Canadian climates*.
2) Never buy the two smallest(also cheapest) car models - As they are not solid vehicles (made of a lot of plastic and paper-thin metal) and if you are in an accident with one, they will bury you in it.
* Which is strange considering that Japan/Korea and southern BC/Washington's climate is pretty much equal. Any car designed and built for California would actually not have appropriate winter materials for the same climates, which is a concern for battery-electric cars.
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They'd probably remove the steering wheel and replace it with a touch-screen that just alternates between "manual controls" touch-screen joystick, semi-autonomous guided mode where you just tell it when on the screen or by voice, and fully autonomous mode that listens for "STOP" to jump back to manual mode.
Like I could see Apple literately making a car respond entirely to voice commands. "Turn right here", "Turn left here", "turn left at Broadway", "Turn right at the next exit", though I think the attention problem might raise it's ugly head then.
As a vision impaired individual, I'm very interested in the thought of a self-driving car. But such a thing coming from Apple would surely have a hefty price tag which I doubt I could justify.
Since this is an as-yet un-announced product, only time will tell.
Since this is an as-yet un-announced product, only time will tell.
Firelock
macrumors member
Sure, Aperture they kill but THIS is something they think they should pursue.
josephkrishna
macrumors member
Why is this a thing that's happening? It's such a stupid idea for them to make a car. Integrating with the dashboard I understand, but having a whole apple branded car is just stupid and doesn't fit in with Apple at all. They need to focus more on software for iOS to make it the best they can, rather than stupid projects like this. 😡
lincolntran
macrumors 6502a
Another thing that is clear is that they'll have some sort of production issue that will constraint the quantity
k1121j
macrumors 68020
Not so much.
http://www.bloomberg.com/news/artic...p-for-suv-investors-ask-where-the-profits-are
http://fortune.com/2015/05/06/tesla-revenue-losses/
http://www.wsj.com/articles/tesla-china-sales-declined-significantly-ceo-says-1421186754
https://finance.yahoo.com/q/is?s=tsla
And this is with all the carbon offsets and tax credits they get. Where will they be when Apple and other companies move into the market and those credits get divided amongst all the players?
Rogifan
macrumors Penryn
Why would this elevate the stock price if it's such a stupid idea?
McGiord
macrumors 601
I believe that you are being excessive with the quantity of computers a car have. Can you please name them? I'm really curious.
ArtOfWarfare
macrumors G3
It's also capable of reading and obeying road signs.
Lane switching can be fully automated - they said they chose to make it require you to physically hit the switch to allow it to move to ensure that you're actually paying attention to the road.
My 45 mile drive to work consists of .2 miles of driving down my driveway (which they say will be automated next year), 1.1 miles of driving to the high way (which they say will be automated in 2 years), 43 miles of driving along the highway (which is fully automated this year), and then .7 miles of driving to my office (2 years)
That's 43/45 miles automated this year 95.6% - beats their ballpark number of 90%. 43.2/45 next year makes 96% - a little shy of their ballpark number 99%. 45/45 in two years - 100% right when they said it.
Obviously it varies from person to person based on how much highway driving vs surface street driving you do. Most of my commute is on the high way, so most of it will be automated this year.
Well, except for the fact I'm driving a beater right now, and that I'm not in a fiscal position to buy anything new (cash) right now. The bank would finance it if I asked them to, but I've already got credit card debt and a mortgage to deal with - I don't want to also have to deal with financing a car.
Recognition
macrumors 6502a
As long as they can make it do 200+ miles on a single charge I'll be happy.
Having hired a Nissan Leaf for the evening and running out of electric 30 miles from home as it only has a range of 70 miles on a full charge (I mistakenly assumed it would be at least 100 miles) is very annoying! And the desperate but frugal drive to the nearest charging station at 2:00am was not fun!
Unfortunately with Apple and batteries they don't seem to be all about the capacity...
Having hired a Nissan Leaf for the evening and running out of electric 30 miles from home as it only has a range of 70 miles on a full charge (I mistakenly assumed it would be at least 100 miles) is very annoying! And the desperate but frugal drive to the nearest charging station at 2:00am was not fun!
Unfortunately with Apple and batteries they don't seem to be all about the capacity...
Even Longer
macrumors 6502
It's more like: all car models come with 10 hour base battery life for listening to music or browsing the web, but it depends on mileage...
