BMW Denies Report of Electric Car Discussions With Apple

[kdarling]

The upside of buttons in a car is that they provide tactile feedback, so you can find your way around by fiddling in the center section, and keep your eyes on the road. A touch screen needs you to look at it in order to navigate it.

This times a million.

It's like how there are touchscreen remote controls for TVs, but anyone who does more than a little channel surfing prefers a remote with buttons that they can use by feel and memory, no looking, even in the dark.

It's why aircraft cockpits have differently shaped controls, too, and in a common arrangement.

A good vehicle has knobs and switches that you can tell apart by feel, and that are easy to find by touch or location alone, so you don't have to take your eyes off the road. Steering wheel controls are nice too.

OTOH, some of the worst cars were older Jaguars. Almost every button and switch was a visual duplicate of the others. Lucas hell.

 

[macUser2007]

German car manufacturers' research about electric and/or self-driving vehicles goes as far back as the 90s. I seriously doubt that Apple without some serious assistance could develop a car from scratch in the suggested timeframe.
...

And they still suck....

Why would Apple team up with BMW, which is rather behind the curve on this one?

Certainly not for the tech, although manufacturing, dealership network and brand name certainly may be of value. But then Cook paid $3BN for Beats, so who knows....

We do know that Apple is poaching Tesla employees.

 

[wideEyedPupil]

Uhg look at that dashboard, I don't understand why car dashboards still have to look like 80's stereo towers. Although car designers are capable of designing nice clean dashboards, they're only used in concept cars.

Then again Marc Newson's for Ford isn't that amazing either. Note Marc is now on Apple's The Secret Team but based in London.

 

[H2SO4]

Oh my, you seem rather angry. I've been nothing but happy with all the BMWs I've driven, as have my colleagues - my company has almost a dozen BMWs across 3 countries here in Europe that do on average 40,000km per year, and no-one has had any issues, apart from the odd speeding ticket. But we did have quite a few issues with vehicles from the VW (including Skoda/Audi), let alone the issues my colleagues across the pond in the US had with their US and Japanese cars (which kept being recalled).

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Or 240km/h here on the Autobahn - don't hate us, come visit and join us

Oh I don’t hate you. I miss the route 31 outside of Bottrop…..

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And they still suck....

Why would Apple team up with BMW, which is rather behind the curve on this one?

Certainly not for the tech, although manufacturing, dealership network and brand name certainly may be of value. But then Cook paid $3BN for Beats, so who knows....

We do know that Apple is poaching Tesla employees.

So what. We still know that these major manufacturers have been building cars for years. In any other walk of life we’d say that you need experience for large undertakings but in Apple case they don’t need it?

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Apparently your conjecture is full of good common knowledge making perfect sense ? And your knowledge of international trade relations is a pool of wisdom. If money was the only consideration then why did the mighty US auto industry require bailouts to survive, while US consumers happily bought teutonic cars, more than the teutons themselves.

Before you insult others for your blind faith in Apple's infallibility, check your rearview mirror.



Ya think ?! You just contradicted yourself.
The aspects of building a new car from scratch without prior experience in the auto industry is at least a 10 year project and then still far from perfect, just ask Elon Musk.


All I said was that Apple is unlikely to have a production car of its own in 5 years without a partnership and you think that's nonsense ?

I think you’ve completely missed my point. There was an enormous amount of of obviously very subtle sarcasm in it.