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Taiwan is an awkward choice, I agree, albeit ruefully. Magna (know little about it even though am CDN) is apparently a good option to get an iCar off the ground. Taiwan? Read Singer & Cole “Ghost Fleet”. Oh it’s about silicon too. An autonomous vehicle platform is a solid basis for airborne vehicles too down the “road”.

Exactly. Finally we get our flying cars.
 
Having seen the Magna facilities myself, they definitely seem like a good fit for smaller production runs - this is their bread and butter.

Presumably Apple doesn’t plan to sell the car in the millions if they go for Magna, as they’re definitely not set up for that.
Magna has been an industry leader in car parts manufacturing for Decades.

They could do it. They already make cars for BMW, Daimler, Jaguar, Land Rover and Toyota.

they make parts for 100s of others.


Also a fantastic Canadian success story (still family owned and operated by Canadian family from Aurora)
 
I can't wait for an Apple car that has unneeded feel good features and untested code all shoehorned into the car in order to make the keynote pop.

It is sure to be a design that the media will fall in love with and make Cook the feature of magazines, but certainly not a car I will feel safe driving.

I mean what happens when the OS locks up for 5 to 10 seconds like my SE currently does. Or what happens when the car ignores my press of the brakes like it misses messages sometimes or notifications. I mean come on, Apple OS's are designed as fashion statements and just are barely acceptable in delivering core functionality. What about the 6 years it took to get iCloud working.

Nope, Apple these days is all pop, fashion, and money. For me to trust a car from Apple they will need get back to engineering basics and quality.
 
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How about open an American facility? Oh that’s right they’re also choosing Munich for the new chip facility design. Very good at exporting jobs....

yup

But there could be political reasons. Car manufacturing is a multi-national business these days. you can't just 100% produce and manufacture the entire start to end in one country.

Not to get PRSI. But the recent political climate in the US does have large international business questioning long term massive investments. When every 4 years a new leader can come in and just go "i want to re-do the trade deals", it makes safe, stable investment hard.

Countries that are seeing the manufacturing investments tend to be showing a lot more political stability, and willingness to honour the existing deals (or add to them). it makes a massive difference. when you're investiging billions of dollars into building car manufacturing plant, the last thing you want to worry about is if in 5 years you'll be unable to import/export goods you need because the political will of the president changes.
 
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That’s not always a given. They still need good leadership and a long term plan. They are just throwing things at a wall to see what sticks.

They have excellent leadership and are successful beyond believe of many. Let’s not assume that they are desperate as they clearly approach all their businesses with great care.
 
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Talk about being all over the place. I’m sure Apple executives must know at some point all that iPhone revenue may not be so lucrative. I get it, explore other avenues of revenue.

But lately, a car, VR glasses, music, movies, tv etc. etc.

Can they not just do what they do best, and still compete ?
This makes no sense. They've continued to do what they do best. They did it to the tune of a record setting year in 2020. While continuing to do the best, they explored other avenues. Are you implying their exploration of other avenues somehow negatively affected them "continuing doing what they do best"? I hope not because there's no evidence that supports that idea.
 
Magna I can see, Foxconn not so much, no experience in car manufacturing hence not a good choice for an Apple car. and computer assembly is different from car assembly ...
 
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I also can't see Apple ceding the buying experience and pricing to independent dealerships forcing them to use something like the Tesla sales model here in the States.
But perhaps they could do a store within a store model? Way back, Apple did that in CompUSA, BestBuy and other retailers. And I recently saw they are starting that back up in Target soon.

I’m not a dealer, but if I were...

Even if the Apple car somewhat competed with my product, so long as it’s driving people into my showroom and I get a commission on every Apple car sale, I think it could be a win-win.
 
Not surprising. Existing auto makers don’t want to be a contract manufacturer for an Apple branded car and Apple doesn’t want to just be a piece of tech in someone else’s branded car.
 
Stock noise to me.. too much speculation for a company currently underperforming the market.
Currently the market’s in a correction.
Talk about being all over the place. I’m sure Apple executives must know at some point all that iPhone revenue may not be so lucrative. I get it, explore other avenues of revenue.

But lately, a car, VR glasses, music, movies, tv etc. etc.

Can they not just do what they do best, and still compete ?
By that logic, Apple would only make computers for 45 years
 
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But perhaps they could do a store within a store model? Way back, Apple did that in CompUSA, BestBuy and other retailers. And I recently saw they are starting that back up in Target soon.

I’m not a dealer, but if I were...

Even if the Apple car somewhat competed with my product, so long as it’s driving people into my showroom and I get a commission on every Apple car sale, I think it could be a win-win.
If Apple allows franchised dealers to sell their vehicles, by law (in most states) they can't pull out and do it themselves. To be fair I am still thinking Apple is going to pull a Waymo/Cruise than do a Lucid/Faraday Future.
 
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Having seen the Magna facilities myself, they definitely seem like a good fit for smaller production runs - this is their bread and butter.

Presumably Apple doesn’t plan to sell the car in the millions if they go for Magna, as they’re definitely not set up for that.

THIS report SHOULD'VE been done first ... not these half assed reports working with existing ICE car companies. Too much buracracy, legacy and internal plans ... working with them Apple would be facing another 'Android' type steal to competition. no.
 
Not surprising. Existing auto makers don’t want to be a contract manufacturer for an Apple branded car and Apple doesn’t want to just be a piece of tech in someone else’s branded car.
It still isn't even clear if Apple is targeting S-Class market (Lucid Air) or the Camry market (ID.3).
 
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But perhaps they could do a store within a store model? Way back, Apple did that in CompUSA, BestBuy and other retailers. And I recently saw they are starting that back up in Target soon.

I’m not a dealer, but if I were...

Even if the Apple car somewhat competed with my product, so long as it’s driving people into my showroom and I get a commission on every Apple car sale, I think it could be a win-win.
The dealer really wouldn't care as long as they got their commissions. Dealerships aren't owned by the car companies so there's no real loyalty there. Ford dealership would just as quickly sell you a used Honda Accord from their trade in lot as they would a new Ford Edge. Plenty of dealers already sell multiple brands from different OEM's. A car from Apple would just be another in the inventory. One they'd happily sell at great markup to the overeager first adopter.
 
Lol, double up the suicide nets. I imagine car manufacturing in China would be very similar to car manufacturing in the US in the early 1900s.
 
They are competing and searching for areas to grow as they are responsible for growth for their shareholders.

A company with more than 100000 employees can easily focus on multiple fields at once.

And yet it took them 6 years to design a new motherboard for well established chips from Intel to get a Mac Pro out the door in a reasonable amount of time. If any other tech company took 6 years to replace an old motherboard design that proved to be a dead end they'd be out of business. We've seen this before with iOS and MacOS. Borrow one team to finish the other teams work, which then delays the work of the first team. I honestly don't think Apple can do a lot at the same time, they seem to borrow people from other teams all the time indicating to me that while profits were high they just don't staff up to cover all their product lines.
 
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But perhaps they could do a store within a store model? Way back, Apple did that in CompUSA, BestBuy and other retailers. And I recently saw they are starting that back up in Target soon.

I’m not a dealer, but if I were...

Even if the Apple car somewhat competed with my product, so long as it’s driving people into my showroom and I get a commission on every Apple car sale, I think it could be a win-win.
I don’t think Apple will provide a dealer commission to anyone when it comes to the Apple (Autonomous) Car sales. They may not even sell cars, but rent to ride in cities.
 
This article says nothing I didn't say in another thread when Hyundai was being discussed. I brought up Magna since they build the Z4 for BMW and the Supra for Toyota (same car).
They have built specialty cars for BMW and others.

Nothing new.
 
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Magna has been an industry leader in car parts manufacturing for Decades.

They could do it. They already make cars for BMW, Daimler, Jaguar, Land Rover and Toyota.

they make parts for 100s of others.


Also a fantastic Canadian success story (still family owned and operated by Canadian family from Aurora)
Their car production facilities are in Graz, Austria since that is where Steyer is located; whom they acquired in 2001. Still a great success story. I wonder if they will open a plant in Canada to make cars as well, such as the rumored Apple car.
 
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What sticks in my mind. Apple gets a request from Samsung requesting Apple build their new yet-to-be-built phone. Why would Apple help Samsung build a phone? The same applies to why would any established car manufacture help Apple build a car? Parts maybe but the complete product. No real upside to doing so.
 
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