Apple Confirms 190 Layoffs From Self-Driving Car Project

[FlyBry]

Geez, imagine the way Apple would handle safety recalls on a vehicle: by failing to admit there is a problem, refusing to fix the issue and voiding all responsibility for cars you'd had serviced by anyone else, then co-incidentally fixing the problem while introducing new hazards with their next great idea and leaving owners of the older models high and dry with a vastly devalued, dangerous lemon.

"You're driving it the wrong way."
"You're (not) holding the steering wheel the right way."

 

[jerryk]

In a recent interview Elon Musk stated he has 10x as much data as all other self driving car efforts combined by having delivered shipping units already with full autonomy installed but not fully activated.

He said he doesn't use LIDAR but relies on two cameras and a few sensors. It may be Apple was going down a rabbit hole from 1st gen tech inertia.

Tesla currently uses 8 cameras. 3 in front, 4 on sides, and one in rear. Also there are 8-10 ultrasonic sensors depending on model for close ranging, and RADAR for longer ranging. This is what I have on my 2018 Model X which has the 10 sensors because of Falcon Wing doors.

There is talk that to reach full self-drive additional sensors will be added and a new GPU accelerator package will be required. But I doubt the sensor will LIDAR because of the cost ($5,000 per sensor). Likely more cameras with different filters and RADAR.

 

[cmichaelb]

FYI to turn the X off you have to press vol up, then vol down, then hold the power button for a few seconds before you get the power off slider.

Also apparently it isn't actually called the power button any more, it's the "side button".

https://www.apple.com/uk/iphone-xs/specs/

Wow, had no idea.

 

[CordovaLark]

Instead of wasting billions of dollars. Acquire Tesla will be a better idea.

Would wipe out their cash pillow, not to mention there is is no reason Tesla would want Apple to buy them as they are ahead of everybody and 10 years ahead of any of the competitors. Hell in the not so distant future they might be worth more than Apple.

 

[darkslide29]

FYI to turn the X off you have to press vol up, then vol down, then hold the power button for a few seconds before you get the power off slider.

Also apparently it isn't actually called the power button any more, it's the "side button".

https://www.apple.com/uk/iphone-xs/specs/

Wow, had no idea.

Well technically the volume up, volume down, side button is how to do a 'hard reset'. That's why it's a combo of buttons, so you don't accidentally do it. To power it off normally, it is much simpler. You press and hold the volume up+side button at the same time for a couple of seconds until the power off slider appears.

You might be thinking that volume up+side button is how to do a screen shot, and that's true. But if you keep holding it, instead of a screen shot, the power off slider appears.

 

[MarkB786]

But but but but but but but but but... TC's pipeline!!

Out of ideas.

 

[nikaru]

It was obvious in the first place that Apple is not developing a car. Look at Tesla. They had to build the biggest factory in the world just to ramp up production for the batteries they need and took them years. Apple may have the money but what they cant do is hide a huge factory and developing facilities that a car project requires. What Apple had to do a few years ago was to set up a consortium or a joint venture with Tesla so that both companies could exchange experties on autonomous driving and car software, battery technologies, energy efficiency and so on. It is sad that Cook and Musk did not found common grounds to put something together but instead Apple decided to compete for the sake of compiting.
[doublepost=1551383657][/doublepost]

Do you know if all he did with 100% of his time was Project Titan, or did he have other duties? According to the news articles at the time, he also stayed on as an advisor to Cook. So I don't think all of his compensation can be attributed to Project Titan.

It's all relative too. Apple spent $14.2 billion on R&D in 2018. That's insanely huge R&D expenditure. Apple's 10-K does not break out how much they spend on employee compensation, but they say $16.7 billion was spent on "Selling, general and administrative." Accounts Payable was $9 billion. Basically, what I'm getting at is that hundreds of millions of dollars on a project for Apple is "low budget."

If you are spending huge amounts of money on something as big as a car, you just cant hide it from the world. The bigest part of the R&D item as disclosed in the financial statments includes many many things, most of which have very little to do with actual R&D activity. Apple basically includes all expenses that are not classified as general and administrative costs in the R&D expenditure account.

 

[9081094]

If I had one request, I would really like to hear Bob Mansfield’s take on the whole Apple car spectrum.

The latest good Macs were developed under Bob Mansfield. I regret he’s not involved in Mac hardware anymore.

 

[oneMadRssn]

It was obvious in the first place that Apple is not developing a car. Look at Tesla. They had to build the biggest factory in the world just to ramp up production for the batteries they need and took them years. Apple may have the money but what they cant do is hide a huge factory and developing facilities that a car project requires. What Apple had to do a few years ago was to set up a consortium or a joint venture with Tesla so that both companies could exchange experties on autonomous driving and car software, battery technologies, energy efficiency and so on. It is sad that Cook and Musk did not found common grounds to put something together but instead Apple decided to compete for the sake of compiting.
[doublepost=1551383657][/doublepost]
If you are spending huge amounts of money on something as big as a car, you just cant hide it from the world. The bigest part of the R&D item as disclosed in the financial statments includes many many things, most of which have very little to do with actual R&D activity. Apple basically includes all expenses that are not classified as general and administrative costs in the R&D expenditure account.

I think that's generally right, through they list other expenses as separate line items so I don't think R&D is the catch-all you say it is. Also, I don't think Apple was hiding anything with the car project. Quite the opposite, I think they wanted the world to know they were working on autonomous driving tech.

I don't think Apple will ever sell a while car as a product, but I can imagine one day seeing a car made by another OEM using an Apple CoreML chip or licensing the Apple CoreML for cars (or however it will be called). It could be even less visible than that, and Apple just joins an autonomous car SSO as a founder and uses their IP as leverage to help steer (pun intended) the direction of the industry.

 

[fathergll]

Tesla is not as far ahead as you think, in my opinion.

Tesla is a poor car manufacturer with an old Toyota facility and a limited market, for a car relying a lot on expiring subsidies. They struggle to make cars with consistent quality and fit and finish.

The company is burning cash and loses more as they produce more cars. I realize they have made a small profit the last 2 quarters, but they have vaporized billions overall and still lost over $1B in 2018.

Once competition cares enough about EVs to make them, you’ll see the lead evaporate quickly because there are highly competent competitors with much stronger brands and far better production ability. Watch a BMW being assembled.

BMW shipped over 100,000 cars with some electric component and something like 50,000 all electric vehicles. You think they are just going to die when the electric car gets big? And BMW is a stronger brand.

Electric vehicles are still a ways off and have many drawbacks to gas powered cars as of today, mainly cost, range, electric stations, needs for special home equipment, and ease of fill up.

The competition is definitely eyeing EV market hard. Granted this is hearsay but a 'friend of a friend' who works for Porsche was over in Germany at their corp office not too long ago and the sentiment from the Germans was that they think Tesla has no shot long term to compete. I know they are gearing up now for the market

https://www.cnn.com/2019/02/26/business/porsche-macan-electric-car/index.html
https://electrek.co/2019/01/21/porsche-taycan-production-40000-electric-cars/

 

[9081094]

We've been hearing each quarter how bad Tesla is doing, how much money they are burning, how they are in the red. But yet, they are making a profit these days. Quite how anyone thought you could go from building <1000 cars a year to 10,000 cars a week without spending huge amounts of money, I'll never know.

I bet if you asked GM or Ford to start from fresh and build 10,000 electric cars a week, their finance sheets would look a lot worse than Tesla's! You mention BMW being a stronger brand, they have been selling millions of cars for the last 70 years or something. If they weren't a strong brand, there would be questions asked. But even the might of BMW can't come up with a car that has the range and performance of a 7 year old Tesla Model S!

Whether you like Musk or not doesn't matter. Tesla have advanced electric cars more than all the big players have combined. They still give the best range and best performance. When the Roadster 2 comes out it will re-write the rule book on what we thought was possible with cars.

I like Tesla and the whole philosophy behind it. Their goal has never been becoming the biggest but to transform the polluting car industry to more modern and environmentally friendly solutions. They even open sourced their know how to get more traction. They also keep investing in a very high percentage in R&D and that’s hurting their profits in the short term and they’re taking high risk long term. They’ve transformed the car industry like Apple did with the iPhone in the phone industry. Every carmaker is following Tesla these days. That’s making Tesla the hero in the car industry for me. I hope they’ll be able to compete with the Chinese copycats and the other car Korean, German manufacturers who will launch an assault on Tesla the coming years.

Can’t understand why there aren’t more Americans proud of Tesla here. Because in my opinion Tesla is the only American brand left making innovative cars popular all over the world.

 

[Baymowe335]

The competition is definitely eyeing EV market hard. Granted this is hearsay but a 'friend of a friend' who works for Porsche was over in Germany at their corp office not too long ago and the sentiment from the Germans was that they think Tesla has no shot long term to compete. I know they are gearing up now for the market

https://www.cnn.com/2019/02/26/business/porsche-macan-electric-car/index.html
https://electrek.co/2019/01/21/porsche-taycan-production-40000-electric-cars/

I would be very scared of the Germans in anything, but especially car manufacturing.

They have at least 4 top brands and incredible manufacturing ability.

 

[jeremiah256]

I think that's generally right, through they list other expenses as separate line items so I don't think R&D is the catch-all you say it is. Also, I don't think Apple was hiding anything with the car project. Quite the opposite, I think they wanted the world to know they were working on autonomous driving tech.

I don't think Apple will ever sell a while car as a product, but I can imagine one day seeing a car made by another OEM using an Apple CoreML chip or licensing the Apple CoreML for cars (or however it will be called). It could be even less visible than that, and Apple just joins an autonomous car SSO as a founder and uses their IP as leverage to help steer (pun intended) the direction of the industry.

I agree. With self-driving vehicles poised to transform the world, it would have been almost negligence for Apple not to invested in creating their own technology and establish some patents.

 

[Vanilla35]

Geez, imagine the way Apple would handle safety recalls on a vehicle: by failing to admit there is a problem, refusing to fix the issue and voiding all responsibility for cars you'd had serviced by anyone else, then co-incidentally fixing the problem while introducing new hazards with their next great idea and leaving owners of the older models high and dry with a vastly devalued, dangerous lemon.

Holy **** this is so accurate hahaha. I hate it, naturally, but it's so true.

 

[Gogeta-Blue]

the only person that really need to be replace, layoff or moved to another deparment is Mr Cook himself

 

[Delgibbons]

Sinclair C5? Great concept.... too low to the ground, difficult to see these on the road amongst its other flaws

The battery life was awful too

Other than that and... Everything you've mentioned....

It was the perfect mode of transportation

Good old Sir Clive

 

[Billberryjuice]

Well technically the volume up, volume down, side button is how to do a 'hard reset'. That's why it's a combo of buttons, so you don't accidentally do it. To power it off normally, it is much simpler. You press and hold the volume up+side button at the same time for a couple of seconds until the power off slider appears.

You might be thinking that volume up+side button is how to do a screen shot, and that's true. But if you keep holding it, instead of a screen shot, the power off slider appears.

Ah I didn't realise that! Nice one.