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Apple Continues Hiring Automotive Experts, Possibly for Rumored 'Titan' Car Project
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Sadly, you cannot drive the car unless you have an iPhone nearby.....just like the Watch
Apple loves products with a very high profit margin. Automakers survive on much smaller profit margins (negative margins with regards to certain economy and hybrid models) and experience losses from time to time. If Apple wants to burn through their cash quickly this would be a good way. Engineering is only a small part of the expense. Building a factory (unless they will import the car from China which is possible) building a dealer network, supplier contracts, marketing, safety standards and testing, etc...
It would take billions getting into this business and then they still have to compete against GM, Ford, Toyota, Fiat-Chrysler, Nissan-Renault, etc. who have been established in this business for many years. For example Ford is 112 years old. It is a very saturated market and at least in the United States if you want to actually make profit you better be ready to release some luxury cars, trucks and SUVs.
If they want to do as a hobby to blow through some cash I guess that is their decision, but if they think everyone will line up to fork over some outrageous price for an Apple car like an iPhone I think they will be severely disappointed.
It would take billions getting into this business and then they still have to compete against GM, Ford, Toyota, Fiat-Chrysler, Nissan-Renault, etc. who have been established in this business for many years. For example Ford is 112 years old. It is a very saturated market and at least in the United States if you want to actually make profit you better be ready to release some luxury cars, trucks and SUVs.
If they want to do as a hobby to blow through some cash I guess that is their decision, but if they think everyone will line up to fork over some outrageous price for an Apple car like an iPhone I think they will be severely disappointed.
Well, all the AA Haters should be happy with another Male Hire. 
Seriously, Betts knows his stuff. Give him what he needs, and results will follow. Don't forget, Fiat owns Chrysler.
Seriously, Betts knows his stuff. Give him what he needs, and results will follow. Don't forget, Fiat owns Chrysler.
I think they are going into just one segment of the car industry: the self driving car. They see what Google is doing and don't want to let them get too far ahead.
True, at least any TV hires was not advertised. Maybe because it was a similar industry to some degree.
I have hard time envisioning Apple creating a car and all that is associated with. Dealer or stores like Tesla have, maintenance, distributions, etc. It is a massive undertaking.
If Apple can create something greater/cooler than Tesla I would be one in line to buy it. But if comes with the Apple premium that probably would make the car only affordable for the wealthy crowd.
You forgot to mention Tesla. They are a newcomer to this market in comparison to the other carmakers. No economy cars, no dealers, wildly successful. There's no reason that Apple can't follow the same roadmap and get the same results. They've already proven that people will pay a premium price for computers, tablets, watches, phones and music players.
Apple has billions to get in the car business. They also have the people in place to revolutionize the industry. Karl Benz made the first automobile with an internal combustion engine in the late 1880's. Yet we are still using that basic technology today. Still relying on fossil fuels. Still slaves to oil rich nations. Apple has the power to change all that. Some people believed we'd have flying cars by now. Yet we are still chained the gas pump.
I do not see Apple with cars. People need walkable places, no more boxes. You are in your office (a box), get in to your car (a box) and go to your house (a box). People need to walk to the grocery store, to walk to the laundry, to the restaurant downstairs, to the doctor in the block, to the school. To develop relationships, to get to know and be part of your community. To knock the people across the hall to ask for sugar (actually I need sugar!). Cars were the solution of a problem but that solution became a problem.
A few things to note:
- It will have a non-removable battery.
- It will use a plug that isn't standard as the rest of the industry.
- The battery will only last 400 cycles before it starts to quickly be rendered useless.
- Warranty will conveniently be 12 months, just shy of a drivers 400 cycle period (1 cycle per day).
- It will only drive on only one type of road.
- It will use one of the fastest motor on the market, but because of form over function mentality, it will be throttled by 20%
- Fixing absolutely anything in the card will force you to buy a new car.
- Planned obsolescence will be employed for the first time by an automaker.
- It will cost double the price of any other car
- Nothing will be upgradeable.
- Nothing in the car will be optional, it will feel like 1984 all over again (irony).
Nobody is going to pay a premium for an apple car. This isn't a small few hundred or couple thousand dollar investment like an iPad or a MacBook. Knowing Apple, prices will be artificially inflated. Most people have a hard time getting by on a monthly basis, how would they be able to afford an overpriced Apple car that costs TENS of thousands of dollars?
My money is staying with Honda.
Has Apple ever priced their products below everyone else?
Also, for anyone to mass produce an electric car, they'll need the amount of batteries that are being produced for everything else just for the car. That's why Tesla is building the gigafactory, which they claim will singlehandedly double the total volume of batteries produced in the world. If Apple doesn't build a plant themselves (and such a plant would be massive - there's no way they could hide it), they'll have to buy from Tesla.
And Tesla will happily sell to them, possibly even pivoting themselves out of the car market. Tesla isn't a car company - it's a battery company. Multiple people in the industry have said that the car industry is going to have a big boom for a year when fully automatic cars come out, and then a massive contraction immediately after when most people stop owning cars and instead opt for an Uber or Lyft like service in which the car is fully automatic.
This is CarPlay, obviously! No one is giving much traction, and where it does exist integration sucks and isn't on many models! Getting an ability to keep using navigation while *also* changing temperature in your car is something that simply doesn't exist in vehicles today due to manufacturers not wanting to allow a single coherent interface that does *everything* yet also be updatable without needing to buy a new car in the process.
Ding Ding Ding... we have a winner... You're most likely right. I think apple is working on the hardware and software to sell a smart "brain" for cars that they can then market to all the main auto makers. Let the car guys make the cars... let Apple make the computer that powers all the electronics in it / the brain that powers a self driving car.
The TV rumor died because the project was killed because the TV market has changed - for the worse. It's not worth the effort to enter a highly commoditized market with a high end luxe device such as Apple would be offering. More and more people don't watch TVs they watch other screens.
Cars on the other hand, are still profitable and there is a huge amount of room for innovation and new players. Tesla has proved that perfectly. Besides it's not really a rumor when there is hard evidence of the hiring of people from the automotive industry. What more do you need?
They've cracked mobile payments with a fair number of financial institutions and a small number of retailers in a very small number of countries. When they start expanding the last of those then I'll say they cracked it.
I'd be interested to know what percentage of people with an NFC-enabled iDevice actually live in a place they can use it. There's vast amounts more untapped revenue for Apple with little incremental cost if they can get a worldwide rollout going properly. Doing that may also drive extra watch sales, without Apple Pay the watch is a little less useful.
And where is Marc Newson right about now I wonder? He proved he can work with the Apple team with his work on the watch. He, like Ive, is known to be a car guy and has actually designed cars. The two of them apparently are in sync on cars and best buds.
Curiouser.
I can see it now. It will be like a Chevy Volt but with much better styling, great range, glued in batteries, hermetically sealed motor and brushes, pentalobe lug nuts and a USB-C charging port that doubles as a cigarette lighter with a base price $25k higher than a fully loaded Volt. AppleCare will be $15,000.
And yet every day many people spend many TENS of thousands of dollars on upscale brands like Lexus, Mercedes, Tesla, Audi, BMW, Acura, etc.
And if you don't buy Apple Care you only get 90 days of telephone support.
I will say this. A old school friend of mine who built an all electric powered car while working for IBM was recently hired by Apple to, as he put it, "work on their next big thing." I joked with him about electric powered cars and he just smiled. Hum....
I bet we see something similar to the BMW i3 and google's little autonomous cars
and it will be at an Apple Store near you in 2037
And cost more than a Lamborghini.