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Apple Working On Project That Will 'Give Tesla a Run for its Money' Says Employee

Interesting. Super easy UI's, something no car company seems to get right, including Tesla; an area where Apple excels.

Steve Jobs had already said autos interested him and we know Jony Ive and his newest hire Marc Newson are big fans as well. And Eddie Cue sits on Ferrari's board so Apple getting into the auto industry (in whatever form) wouldn't surprise me one bit.
 
Anti Tesla

I don't understand people who frame this as Apple Vs Tesla (or Musk)...

If Apple entered the transportation game, I would be freaking excited. Not just for the product itself, but for the competition and innovation it would bring.

Would samsung join the ranks of electrical auto makers? Anyways, I highly doubt this rumour, but still fun to fantasize....cars becoming entertainment hubs for us corporate slaves who spend hours in traffic...

ps. Don't be anti Tesla, there is no reason to start a measuring contest between Apple and Tesla
 
MacRumors said:
Following last week's news of a mysterious Apple-leased vehicle roaming the streets of Northern California, an Apple employee has given some details to Business Insider, suggesting Apple is working on a project that will "give Tesla a run for its money."According to the site's source, who was verified to be an Apple employee, Tesla employees are "jumping ship" and choosing to work at Apple because of this unidentified project.
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They can't possibly be that tone deaf in Cupertino, can they? There would have to be such a huge effort to fix maps, they'd need a separate campus to house a team of that size. And Apple just doesn't have a track record for the kind of spending/staffing that would take. What "features" would they cut (Final Cut Pro, Aperture, etc.) to get the product out the door with a self-driving car? SMH
 
Rogifan said:
I'm confused. I thought Tesla was poaching Apple employees and Apple was struggling to get them back. At least that was the rumor last week.

Anyway I don't see any evidence that Elon Musk wants to sell Tesla. And I'm not sure why Apple would want to get into the automobile manufacturing business. It's a highly regulated industry and one that Apple knows little about.
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More incentive for Tesla. Apple buys them, and Tesla is able to utilize the full extent of Apple's manpower. Win-win.
 
So the new UFO headquarters is gonna take off, hover over the Golden Gate, and blow it up with the iDeathray laser weapon?

Top that Elon.

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MICHAELSD said:
More incentive for Tesla. Apple buys them, and Tesla is able to utilize the full extent of Apple's manpower. Win-win.
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Manpower heck... It's Apple's capital that would finance a buildout to the scale and efficiencies where Teala could sell $30,000 cars.
 
Maybe...but the car isn't part of it

The cars that have been captured roaming the streets are a classic example of a mobile mapper. Look it up. Companies like Trimble, Optec, Reigel, Leica, etc.. All make these types of sensors. These sensors make 3D point clouds of everything within a few hundred feet of the road and overlay it with digital imagery. Imagine if you could take a street view from Google and be able to apply real world measurements to those images. I would know where the sidewalk is, how far it is to the door from the corner, if the bus stop is covered... The possibilities are endless.

Another thing to keep in mind with self driving cars, is that the environment changes every few minutes or hours or days. Cars move, streets are built... Utilizing this mapping data wouldn't do much good because it would be obsolete at some unknown point. Self driving cars need active sensors.

Lastly, if this was for a car, they would have a controlled environment. It wouldn't do much good to be wondering the streets all over the country.
 
CFreymarc said:
Automotive design and manufacturing is way out of Apple's skill set and league.
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People said the same thing when Apple entered the CE industry with iPod and when they entered the mobile phone industry with iPhone and that turned out pretty ok for them.

And what did Elon Musk, someone best known for founding PayPal at the time, know about cars?

I don't know why people keep underestimating Apple. With more money than all the auto manufacturers combined, I'm pretty certain they can build a lust-worthy, best of breed car if they put their minds to it.
 
Perhaps they were referring to Nikola Tesla and not the car company; an Apple death ray perhaps?
 
tommyboy21 said:
Don't get me wrong, I love Apple. But moving into the car business seems crazy. Let's focus on computer, tablet, and smartphone hardware and software that runs flawlessly...then we can branch out...to watches. :)
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I agree 100%. They're having a hard enough time keeping the quality up on their computer/phone/tablet products, adding a car to the mix is inviting disaster. Even expanding and add more products, even if they are household consumer products like a TV or set top box could be stretching them too thin. The quality of Apple products has certainly gone down in the past few years. Software included. They aren't even addressing and fixing problems that are plaguing many Apple users. Stop adding more products until you fix what you are making now.

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Karma*Police said:
People said the same thing when Apple entered the CE industry with iPod and when they entered the mobile phone industry with iPhone and that turned out pretty ok for them.

And what did Elon Musk, someone best known for founding PayPal at the time, know about cars?

I don't know why people keep underestimating Apple. With more money than all the auto manufacturers combined, I'm pretty certain they can build a lust-worthy, best of breed car if they put their minds to it.
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And who would the market be for an Apple car? It would be a very, very small market, much smaller than iPhone buyers or even prospective iWatch buyers. $100,000 and up cars sell in the low tens of thousands of units or less, and those are established companies. It would likely cost billions of dollars just to set up an infrastructure to sell and repair the cars. It makes no sense.

They obviously have not learned anything from watching Samsung and Sony over reach and make too many products.

Apple is now the most valuable company in the history of the world. As soon as I heard that I thought, 'the only place they can go from here is down'.
 
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MikePLP said:
Taking bets on how long before Samsung comes out with their own car?

Samsung CEO: I just heard Apple is working on a car, let's get it out before Apple does and we'll say Apple copied us!
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I know you were making a funny but try 1998. Samsung has been selling cars for 17 years through a partnership with Renault. They sell a small, mid-size, and large sedan along with a small and mid-size crossover.

Not for nothing, they also make batteries for EV's, Plug-in hybrids, and regenerative hybrids. So when Apple does debut it's car (I seriously doubt Apple will do something like that) we can... dammit I forgot the joke I was going to make.:mad:

Screw it. Knock-Knock?
 
Karma*Police said:
People said the same thing when Apple entered the CE industry with iPod and when they entered the mobile phone industry with iPhone and that turned out pretty ok for them.

And what did Elon Musk, someone best known for founding PayPal at the time, know about cars?

I don't know why people keep underestimating Apple. With more money than all the auto manufacturers combined, I'm pretty certain they can build a lust-worthy, best of breed car if they put their minds to it.
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Why would Apple want to get into such a heavily regulated industry? What could Apple offer that no one else does? It makes zero sense to me.
 
Im calling this BS!!! Just somebody trying to spread a rumor to distract from something else...

Keep the fanboys busy...
 
cocacolakid said:
And who would the market be for an Apple car? It would be a very, very small market, much smaller than iPhone buyers or even prospective iWatch buyers. $100,000 and up cars sell in the low tens of thousands of units or less, and those are established companies. It would likely cost billions of dollars just to set up an infrastructure to sell and repair the cars. It makes no sense.

They obviously have not learned anything from watching Samsung and Sony over reach and make too many products.

Apple is now the largest company in the history of the world. As soon as I heard that I thought, 'the only place they can go from here is down'.
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As soon as you heard what? One who knows of this rumor is even true, and two nowhere does it say Apple is getting in the business of building cars. For all we know it could be about battery technology or something completely different like 3-D mapping. I think the likelihood of Apple getting in the car business is less than 0%.
 
69Mustang said:
Most valuable. Apple is the most valuable company in the world. They are far from the largest. For what it's worth, I would take being the most valuable over being the largest any day of the week.:D
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You're right, my mistake. Still, the only way they can go is down. Especially if they keep expanding to new markets when they aren't spending time fixing their problems with current products. It's depressing seeing the nonsense they are pulling.

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Rogifan said:
As soon as you heard what? One who knows of this rumor is even true, and two nowhere does it say Apple is getting in the business of building cars. For all we know it could be about battery technology or something completely different like 3-D mapping. I think the likelihood of Apple getting in the car business is less than 0%.
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That they are the most valuable company in history. It's not a secret or word on the street or something on a blog. It's Wall Street's numbers.
 
69Mustang said:
Most valuable. Apple is the most valuable company in the world. They are far from the largest. For what it's worth, I would take being the most valuable over being the largest any day of the week.:D
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Far from the largest...not sure what you're basing that on but based on FY 2014 revenues they've got to be near the top 5 if not in the top 5.
 
Oh dear... Is this the next "Google's building something on a barge" frenzy? There's a mobile mapping van leased with Apple's credit card, an anonymous tip to some business rag, and Tesla denying what you would fully expect Tesla to deny regardless of facts.

There really isn't much of a story here.

Looks like cameras on the 4 corners. Two high accuracy GPS antennas for position and heading. Front and rear lidar. Probably an inertial navigation system under that white shroud in the middle.

The lidar seems like a bit much for a street-view system, but a van seems like a really clumsy vehicle to start out in autonomous vehicles. You use a van to get those cameras above traffic. This looks like a data collection system. And those down pointing lidar are probably finding road edges, or if the fov is wide enough, finding where building facades are.
 
i wouldn't be caught dead driving round in one of these vehicles...


Just give me the controls... I do not need some machine to go haywire on a public road..
 
Yes, it's a car that you have to jailbreak if you want to go to the sex shop.
 
I forgot about Apple's 3D map view... The lidar data would go a long way toward supporting that so you could get 3D from the ground view rather than birds eye.
 
Tech198 said:
i wouldn't be caught dead driving round in one of these vehicles...


Just give me the controls... I do not need some machine to go haywire on a public road..
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Machines are less likely to haywire than people.
 
cocacolakid said:
You're right, my mistake. Still, the only way they can go is down. Especially if they keep expanding to new markets when they aren't spending time fixing their problems with current products. It's depressing seeing the nonsense they are pulling.

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That they are the most valuable company in history. It's not a secret or word on the street or something on a blog. It's Wall Street's numbers.
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I think Apple would disagree with you that they aren't spending time fixing current problems. iOS 9 I supposed to be all about stability and bug fixes. iOS 8.2 and 8.3 appear to have performance enhancements as well. One can complain that Apple isn't fixing things fast enough but to argue they aren't spending time on it the real nonsense.
 
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