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Apple Car Won't Be Ready for At Least Half a Decade

Erehy Dobon said:
This is incorrect.

Designing and testing an autonomous vehicle is not some lawless free-for-all.

Like all companies testing autonomous vehicles on public roads, Apple is required to have provisional approval from the California Department of Motor Vehicles to conduct their road tests.

There are specific requirements such as logging the number of vehicles, dates and number of hours operated, number of driver interventions, and much more. Separate detailed reports must be presented for any accident involving one of these test vehicles even if it is another party's fault.

This data is tabulated and reported on the California DMV website for the public to review. Some of these reports are downloadable (Excel spreadsheets the last time I checked).

Apple has logged small amount of time in testing autonomous vehicles over the past few years. There was a gap of about 6-8 months at one point when there was no testing being conducted by Apple on public roads; this gap seemed to coincide with some sort of project management shakeup.

Note that the aforementioned reports also indicate when a company has done zero testing for a given time period (generally monthly).

Note that one company Nuro (based in Mountain View) has already received permission from authorities to commence commercial services this month. Again this is not a free-for-all. The initial scope of operation is heavily limited: weather conditions, hours of the day, specific streets in a handful of cities, maximum vehicle speed of 35 mph, etc.

Alphabet's Waymo division has way more hours logged than Tesla. Much of their early testing was done in conventional gas-powered vehicles (they still do extensive testing in Chrysler Pacifica minivans). At one point Waymo had a fleet of their own electric vehicles, the Firefly but locally referred to as "bubble cars"; their shape resembled Volkswagen Beetles. If I recall correctly, those cars didn't have steering wheels but instead operated via a joystick. The Firefly fleet was retired in 2017.

None of this is new or surprising to anyone who has lived or worked near Cupertino for the past 5+ years. There are likely 30+ companies doing autonomous vehicle testing in the northwestern area of Santa Clara County (Palo Alto, Mountain View, Sunnyvale, Santa Clara, Los Altos, Cupertino), not just startups but many of the big auto manufacturers as well.
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Testing vs. having the real product out on the market capturing user data real-time is different. I don't disagree at all with what you mentioned.

Tesla is quite far ahead with their software and given that their FSD beta to the limited public with 0 interventions was possible through all the data collected from drivers and the cameras. I'm not saying Apple won't win, it will be tough though. I welcome the challenge and excited to see what Apple can come up with to compete.

Cheers.
 
UltimaKilo said:
Most vehicle manufacturers were doing just fine. Not every consumer is in the market for a luxury vehicle. What Tesla has done only proves there’s room for competition in the luxury automobile segment.
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All the lower-end cars were ICE and would've continued like so if Tesla hadn't proven the electric car.
 
hot-gril said:
Less than half the range. And personally I'd take the Tesla brand over the Porsche brand, if only for the charging network.
Funny thing is Porsche's first ever car was electric. https://www.history.com/news/ferdinand-porsches-first-car-was-electric
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Range is less important than the normal problems with electric vehicles. Charging them up is the problem which still is an issue with better range for any longer trips. 3 minute fill ups like gas need to happen.

And taking Tesla of Porsche? Lulz
 
Braderunner said:
I'm sure Apple is also cooking up crazy new ideas. On top of that, Apple won't have the cash problem that Tesla did when it first started. Just sayin'. :cool:
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Tesla doesn't either anymore. Musk tried to talk to Crook about buying Tesla in its dark days. Crook wasn't interested. Now Musk is the richest man in the world. Apple has a lot of catching up to do. Oh, and growing quality control issues.
 
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Baymowe335 said:
You are going to be shocked when other car manufacturers copy this and improve it versus allowing their businesses to just die. It’s just not time yet.

Remember, besides an insane speculative valuation, Tesla is still a boutique vehicle manufacturer in a pool of many more desirable, better cars being available today producing massively more cars for people who need and want better value, luxury, speed, reliability, range, etc.

If you think BMW, Porsche, Mercedes, Audi, Ford, GM, VW, and others are just going to pack up and say, WELP....you’re going to be mistaken.

Tesla made $600M in profit the last 12 months and is trading at $750B today. Do you know how insane that is from a fundamental perspective?

I LOVE Elon and believe Tesla makes a great product, for now, but the company is valued at Disney and Walmart combined. Disney and Walmart made over $40B in the last 12 months.

I understand growth and excitement, but Tesla is on a different planet and completely speculative as an investment today. It’s niche still and when it’s not, other car companies are going to compete. Monopolies don’t exist in a free market, particularly on cars.
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Yes, Tesla has a massive PE ratio compared to Apple. Why? Because Tesla have a living genius visionary in Elon Musk, whereas Apple are still trading on a dead one.
 
ArtOfWarfare said:
Ford began selling the Ford Ranger EV in 1998, five years before Tesla formed and a decade before Tesla sold their first vehicle.

They started selling their second electric vehicle, the Ford C Max Energy a year before Tesla introduced the Model S.

So if having done this for longer is a benefit, that’d be Ford’s, not Tesla’s. Ford is behind Tesla because the company is inferior, not because they’re new to the game.
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True, but to be fair, Ford didn't take electric cars all that seriously, and realistically only got in the game to meet the Californian laws. Whereas Tesla have been 100% gung ho on electric since day one. They are head and shoulders ahead of everyone, and are led by a genius visionary.
 
sideshowuniqueuser said:
Tesla doesn't either anymore. Musk tried to talk to Crook about buying Tesla in its dark days. Crook wasn't interested. Now Musk is the richest man in the world. Apple has a lot of catching up to do. Oh, and growing quality control issues.
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Everybody has their own opinion. I greatly admire Tesla. I also admire Apple. As much as there is always a group claiming Apple is doomed...that has been said a lot more about Tesla. My point was...NOBODY will come out with a car five years from now...that's no more advanced than cars today.
Also, I don't think...for one second...Apple's car tech will be a Tesla killer. Elon Musk knows EXACTLY what he's doing!
 
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sideshowuniqueuser said:
Yes, Tesla has a massive PE ratio compared to Apple. Why? Because Tesla have a living genius visionary in Elon Musk, whereas Apple are still trading on a dead one.
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Elon Musk is a genius but they will have to deliver some day. Maybe they will. I certainly wouldn’t bet against Elon Musk. But the stock is utter speculation which means there is no limit to how high it can go in the short term.
 
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sideshowuniqueuser said:
Tesla doesn't either anymore. Musk tried to talk to Crook about buying Tesla in its dark days. Crook wasn't interested. Now Musk is the richest man in the world. Apple has a lot of catching up to do. Oh, and growing quality control issues.
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Elon was going to sell his company for pre split $420/share, so even he didn’t believe it would get to this level of speculation.

FYI, Apple is still almost 3X the value of Tesla and produces nearly $60B in profit annually. Tesla made $600M in profit in the last 12 months, or 1/100th of Apple.

I think Elon Musk is a pimp, love him. I even admire Tesla, but they are completely valued on speculation today. No reasonable person can make the argument Tesla is worth as much as Walmart and Disney combined. Nothing except a belief that Musk will take over the world supports this valuation.

Again, car manufacturers make great cars and will not allow Tesla to just be the only car manufacturer. Consumers don’t even want that. Teslas, for me, are on the verge of ugly, too big, and have quality issues. Give me a BMW M5 over a Model S. I do drive a 2020 M5, so maybe biased.
 
I'll need a half a decade to save up the cash to buy one - maybe $100K with no charger included?
 
Braderunner said:
Everybody has their own opinion. I greatly admire Tesla. I also admire Apple. As much as there is always a group claiming Apple is doomed...that has been said a lot more about Tesla. My point was...NOBODY will come out with a car five years from now...that's no more advanced than cars today.
Also, I don't think...for one second...Apple's car tech will be a Tesla killer. Elon Musk knows EXACTLY what he's doing!
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Well we can only speculate. Apple hired plenty from Tesla and it’s perfectly possible they have something cooking up secretly.
 
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