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Apple Reportedly Running Secret Car Lab in German Capital
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I don't get it....
So, in your opinion- when we are aware of hundreds of people working on this project in America, but with zero solid details; it's a secret..... but when we become aware of a few dozen workers on the exact same project in Germany, still with no solid details; it suddenly becomes no longer a secret??
Ummmmmmm.... ok.
*head explodes*
Tesla, Apple Google. Fun times ahead for the automotive industry - the kind of shake up music and phones have already experienced. Can't wait to see what the average car is like in 5-8 years.
Apple has the cash reserves to make this work at scale (something Musk said he was struggling with at the Model 3 unveil). No idea if it'll be successful for Apple - if it is hold on to them AAPL stock hats.
Apple has the cash reserves to make this work at scale (something Musk said he was struggling with at the Model 3 unveil). No idea if it'll be successful for Apple - if it is hold on to them AAPL stock hats.
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Additionally, the report alleges that Apple is investigating a vehicle-sharing model similar to BMW's Drive-Now and European car rental service Sixt, owing to the company's lack of a nationwide distribution network. Similar to previous rumors, Austrian contract manufacturer of high-end cars Magna Steyr is also cited as a partner for vehicle creation once the R&D stage is complete.
This is what stuck out for me. Perhaps, Apple will take a much slower rollout with only a handful of cars to be shared and available at some of their high end retail stores.
i would rather they concentrate on computers.
It's better not to change a winning team!
Why change something that has a solid reputation!
As if change is always better, If you ask me I would rather go back in time about 25 years, at least back then we were sure we had good healthcare, and were sure we could live well after retirement, now I am not too sure about it with all this greed and a system that's more and more a copy of the "American system" were money is king.
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You need to connect an iPhone to the car to even use it, it will be the brain of the AppleCar.
What if the Apple Car isn't a car, but a service? Apple will provide autonomous car sharing. Call an Apple Car with Siri, share your routes through Apple Maps with the Car and pay with Apple Pay. People will stay within the Apple Universe and Apple will make money, without really building an own car for mass market.
Just like Tim Cook? Missunderstanding German culture has always been a part of German culture.
Holy flame, glow,
Glow and expire not
For the fatherland!
Then we all stand
Valiant for one man
Gladly fighting and bleeding
For throne and empire!
Commerce and science
Hoist with courage and strength
Their chief aloft.
Warriors' and heroes' deeds
Find their laurel leaves
Faithfully preserved
Upon thy throne!
Forever continuing to bloom
Our flag may wave boldly
On the high seas!
Ha, how proud and majestic
Casts over land and sea
Widely the German eagle
Its flaming gaze.
Name another hymn mentioning commerce and science and globalization a.k.a. flags on the high seas!
No freaking late-born will match Prussian kings progressiveness.
It's hard to believe that a future Apple Car wouldn't have a self-driving/autopilot mode, when others already have this technology today.
The required sensor packages can be bought off the shelf these days. The rest is a software problem.
True autonomy is a harder problem, but supervised self-driving is a reality today.
The required sensor packages can be bought off the shelf these days. The rest is a software problem.
True autonomy is a harder problem, but supervised self-driving is a reality today.
If Apple were to design a car and price it out of reach for most people it won't work.
If you are in the market for a higher-end BMW, Audi, Mercedes-Benz etc, why would you look at an unproven manufacturer with absolutely no track record in the automotive industry? If an Apple car is like everything else they do, it's technology will be designed to work with paid for apps to get the 'premium' experience.
I can see it now; Apple Maps comes free, but why not go for Apple Maps Premium? (which is still 4% as useful as the absolutely free Google Maps). How about Apple Music for the car? Every album you desire just one-click away! And what about vehicle tracking? To enable this feature to track your vehicle, it will cost only $600 for 3 years! Lets not forget the optional but absolutely essential Apple Car Care Plus plan that covers you for those accidental spillages on the seats, paint protection & alloy protection.
And what about the second revision? Will you upgrade your Apple car to get a 20% thinner steering wheel and 10% thinner bezels around the windows?
You're correct. A lot of that money is going to workers. All of the workers in Cupertino who actually spent years doing R&D and making deals and managing supply chains and marketing.
A small fraction goes to the people working the assembly line. They're disposable. They don't bring any exceptional talent to the table.
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Regarding the various car rumors:
Apple will make a product you strap onto an existing car to make it self driving? I seriously doubt it. Apple likes controlling the entire customer experience. They're not going to let you upgrade your crap-mobile with their product.
Apple won't make the car self driving? Only if they don't want anyone to buy their car. The technology may not be ready today, but Tesla says that before the end of next year, they'll have fully self driving cars. If Apple doesn't launch a car until 2019, then it has to be fully self driving. Otherwise, it'll be far too little, far too late.
If Apple really wants to get into the car game though, they can.
They have over $200B in the bank. Making a car factory costs around $5B. So Apple could take that money and use it to build 40 factories around the world. Each of those factories could pump out 500k cars a year, so 20M cars total per year. That would cause Apple to have around 33% of the global car market.
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Be careful with predictions like this...
"There is no reason anyone would want a computer in their home."
Ken Olsen, founder of Digital Equipment Corporation, 1977
It's hard to predict how long it will take for someone to figure out exactly how brains generate consciousness, but we are getting close to the point where we can watch all the neutrons in a brain firing in real-time, so it is probably going to happen sooner than you think.
I bet the fundamental principle will turn out to be surprisingly simple, after all we don't need to worry about keeping cells alive etc. A simulation could achieve the same result with the right equations, a big database and something to mimic sensory input.
If you looked at a modern microprocessor under a microscope, it would seem ridiculously complicated, just like the neural connections in a brain. However, strip that complexity away and the fundamental rules behind it are relatively simple once you figure out what they are.
I think it's a pretty safe bet to say most of us will see 'Strong AI' arrive within our lifetimes... but the first Apple Car almost certainly won't have it.
When I buy a car it is based on:
How reliable it is?
How easy to repair?
How long will it last?
Now Apple does good with reliability, but fails terribly with ease of repair and length of service. So no, I don't want a car that lasts 3 years then needs to be thrown away and replaced with a new more fashionable car that has essentially the same specs, but a different curve in the body (even if it is lighter and thinner).
Dying breed? Please show me where sales of such cars are declining.
Every such manufacturer is seeing sales growing year on year. Even the absolute top-end marques like Bentley, Rolls-Royce, Ferrari, Lamborghini, McLaren, Aston Martin & Porsche can't build cars fast enough to meet the demand.
The reason for AI is that nobody in government or the big companies trusts you anymore. After all you could make a mistake and that has to be fixed at all costs in order to protect the children.
On the contrary, I bet there's only a couple of decades until it's actually illegal for people to drive cars on public roads because the human factor is considered too big of a risk.