The whole idea of an Apple car seems ridiculous to me and I can’t help but feel they’re getting in over their head on something of this magnitude. Building cars, not to mention autonomous ones, is serious business. Actual lives are at stake. When someone inevitably dies behind the wheel of an Apple car driven by Siri or whatever are they prepared for that kind of PR? We’re not talking antennagate or a phone bending in someone’s pocket here.
And if they are smug enough to think it’ll be perfect because they’re Apple and they can’t fail, well, I guess we’ll find out if they have the stomach for it. Tesla has been doing this for a decade and still makes mistakes and has people dying in their cars while they work on the kinks.
They should be sticking to what they know which is luxury electronics.
That’s crazy. If they had followed that advice they would have never made any of the things we enjoy today. They would have gone broke in the late 1990’s. Or existed as a niche computer maker.
there is never a better time to get into the auto business than now because one needs no experience in ICE power train design and certification.
Cars are becoming much more like iPhones with wheels, glass and and seats. Instead of your iPhone riding around in your pocket, you will be riding in your iPhone.
Ford and other OEMs are trying to vertically integrate things like emotors and batteries to replace integrated production of ICE, transmissions, axles (largely to avoid rendering large numbers of Union employees redundant but also to avoid supply interruption) but, except for supply, Apple doesn’t have those concerns and can optimize component outsourcing.
No other OEM has all the pieces fully in place either. Tesla was the first mover, only real game in town, but soon the competition will nibble it to death.
VW is arguably the most prominent fast follower but that could be the smaller (than VW) Ford as well, which is going electric in its segment leading vehicles.
Apple has so much cash they can fund all of this out of a quarters profits and abandon it if it looks like a future fail. Apple can launch slow and burn cash building up and perfecting without the headaches Tesla went thru for years before turning profits. Every car maker is so highly leveraged with debt they have to hit home run successes or risk a long slide into acquisition or failure.
Some brands, within groups (think Stellantis axing Chrysler and a French and Italian marque) and possibly independent OEMs (think Jag and Mazda) will not survive the transition to electric and autonomous drive but Apple can throw gobs of cash (think 10 or 20 billion) at an experiment and walk away if they must and it won’t imperil the company.
If Apple want they can buy an OEM or two after those OEMs start the rationalization process right sizing to produce electric power trains. In rough G$ M, not counting debt, market cap Ford is 58, GM 85, VW 140.
In 2019 Apple had profits of about 60G$.
But they don’t need to buy others legacy problems and debt.
