Chinese Automakers Shocked at Apple's Decision to Cancel Car Project

[JGIGS]

I love cars but I don’t see the appeal of starting a new brand from scratch to compete in the hardest possible segment. Expensive to develop, hard to manufacture, competition is being subsidized by foreign governments. Xiaomi has a clear advantage there.

Traditionally low profit margin industry as well. Not surprised at all.

 

[Surf Monkey]

Just as Chinese cars have not been able to penetrate the American market with ICE vehicles, I don't see them having success with EVs either. I think EVs, much like 3D TVs were in the early 2000s, are ahead of their time. The infrastructure is just not there yet in the biggest developed nations, much less other parts of the world. When you factor in things like long distance travel, and EVs not being extreme weather friendly, and a general cooling of the EV market, Apple saw the writing on the wall. The future is not Hybrid, the distant future, maybe EV but it's too early to tell.

The only reason Chinese EVs haven’t completely dominated the US market is that barriers are in place to prevent them from doing so.

 

[Supercyborgninja]

Haven’t even wanted to come on this site since I learned they ended it.

Still so sad about this 😑

 

[jz0309]

The only reason Chinese EVs haven’t completely dominated the US market is that barriers are in place to prevent them from doing so.

Yes, and they know that these barriers will remain for the foreseeable future and they are shifting their growth to markets like Africa and South America…

 

[Naraxus]

They currently build cars. They are shocked that Apple can't. A company that can't put two ports on an iPad never had any business trying to build a car. Apple never had anything useful to bring to the table.

We have no idea if Apple was even building a car to begin with, much less if it was ever going to be a mass-production product. Hell for all we know it could have been a reference design for something else entirely. Like others have said it could be they were building a car for testing out CarPlay features.

Only Apple knows what they were doing/intended to do. Everything else is pure speculation and hearsay.

 

[nt5672]

The problem with EVs in general are the batteries, the charge time and the charging infrastructure. We need much better battery tech where cars can go 500+ miles on an 80% charge, charge from almost empty to 80% in 10 mins and WAYYYYYYY more charging infrastructure. For now, EVs are good for large cities, that's really about it IMO.

That and the terrible environmental and child abuse damage caused by battery material mining.

 

[Naraxus]

Lol, China sold 9 million EV last year and Apple sold 0.

Which has nothing to do with what I said but thanks for trying

 

[leiahnfeng]

Apple: Shocked how low quality Chinese "high quality" cars are and decides to cancel car project.
Chinese automakers: Shocked why Apple decided to cancel car project.

 

[nt5672]

Swapping batteries at a service station when they run down would be a better solution.

Dream on, yeah, I'd swap out my newer batteries with a 6 year life, with a set of older batteries with a 1 year life. Does not make any sense at all.

 

[deepspacecowboy]

Ive designed my two favorite computers of all time (G4 iMac and G3 clamshell iBook). And there's no doubt that from a purely design perspective he's got skill and has left an indelible mark on the industry.

But yeah, fully agree he needed to go. At some point there he decided that he could ignore the laws of physics whilst designing consumer electronics, and it became clear that he needed to move to designing something like high-end interior decor, where nobody cares about the laws of physics so long as it looks good.

Moving back toward the topic at hand, I genuinely can't imagine how bizarre an Ive designed car would have been. Or, well, actually I can. It probably would have been a lot like that LG concept from this year's CES.

100% agree that he's a very skilled designer. I love a lot of his designs. But he lost the plot a bit. Some suggest that he needed a design partnership with Jobs in order to produce great work. While I have no doubt that they had great design synergy, I also think it's unfair to Ive. He's a great designer with or without Jobs. I think he just got bored. This year it's round corners. Next year square. This year it's so much of a bezel. Next year there's hardly any bezel. Etc. Boring!!!

Many of his designs completely changed the industry, but I think he took things about as far as he could and really needed a change. Like you, I also believe that he needed to move into more creative and subjective areas of design, like high-end decor, where his creativity can flourish again.

 

[Shankarn2000]

Apple's decision to cancel its electric vehicle project has surprised ambitious new Chinese automakers like Xiaomi, the South China Morning Post reports.

Yesterday, Bloomberg's Mark Gurman revealed that after a decade of work and millions of dollars in development costs Apple has canceled its plans to bring an EV to market, moving many of the 2,000 staff working on the project to generative AI instead. The decision has come as a surprise to new tech-focused Chinese EV brands like Xiaomi, Li Auto, and Xpeng, who saw a future Apple car as one of their main rivals.

Xiaomi is one of China's biggest electronics companies and is best known for its line of smartphones. The company unveiled its first EV, the SU7, late last year and it is set to go on sale after further testing. The project required over $1.4 billion in development and over 3,400 engineers.

Founder and chairman Lei Jun today posted on Weibo that he was "very shocked" by the news of Apple's decision to cancel its EV. He added that he "knows deeply how difficult it is to make cars," but Xiaomi has made an "unshakeable strategic choice" to move into EVs. He Xiaopeng, chairman of Chinese EV maker Xpeng, expressed similar disbelief that Apple is abandoning its car plans.

Li Xiang, CEO of Beijing-based EV maker Li Auto, remarked on Weibo that Apple's decision to shift emphasis from EVs to AI was "absolutely right." "AI will become the top-level entrance for all devices, services, applications and transactions, in which Apple should stay on top," he added.

Chinese brands possess a rapidly growing proportion of global EV sales. Last year, China's BYD overtook Tesla as the world's top EV manufacturer.

Article Link: Chinese Automakers Shocked at Apple's Decision to Cancel Car Project

customers are lucky, definitely Apple will ask the customers to replace the car and say they don't repair. Earth is safe from another e-waste, Apple pls do focus on more colours rather than Technology...

 

[GUNSTAR1]

I think people got the impression that apple was building a car. What i think was going on was more integrations similarly to Carplay but without needing your separate apple device. I bet a few automakers said "nope" to the concept because apple wanted royalties and even subscriptions. If it was a car, apple probably looked at the EV market and saw how many established automakers are struggling and even pulling back from manufacturing and decided not to get involved.

 

[nt5672]

Electric Vehicle is the future. It’s the reason why new companies can enter the market now. I’ve been a car fanatic for decades — I’ve rebuilt engines and done all the other standard car repair stuff — and I‘m certain that EV is the future. I had a plug-in hybrid and, wow, plugging in at home is way better than going to the gas station. You really won’t miss going to the gas station, that’s for sure. And I think the “infrastructure” issues will sort themselves out. I rented a Tesla in Florida, drove it to a Target, and it charged from 20 to 80 percent in 20 minutes. It takes a long time to charge from 80 to 100 percent, but they charge up to 80 percent very fast. It’s not the problem you think, and the tech will only get better, like faster charging, cars being able to charge other cars, affordable batteries that can charge a stranded car, stuff like that.

You know that Ford's first vehicle was an EV, right. Car companies and government have salivating for EVs for years. The energy profile just does not work and never has.

 

[TracerAnalog]

My take: Apple management was getting frustrated with the glacial car developments. Inspired (and scared) by the fast progress in AI development, they decided to pivot and go all in on AI.

🤞🏼I’m just hoping for a good and useful Siri this year🤞🏼

 

[Naraxus]

Having worked at NeXT and Apple, Jony Ives was a nobody making product demo ideas that went nowhere at Apple. Every single design that made an impact came with the meticulous eye for detail and aesthetics that made Steve, Steve. Contrary to the history of the early 80s Steve Jobs was a very approachable boss from the early 90s onward.

He was beloved by everyone at NeXT. When we took over Apple most of us couldn't stand the candy a$$ attitudes of Apple Engineers and general staff. So when the 5k layoffs were announced and they all ranted on the internal web site about losing 12 weeks paid leave sabbaticals being the only reason they were sticking around, we all felt relief that the dead weight was leaving the company. Within three months under Steve's vision Ives became a wünderkind (wonder child) and the iMac was revealed to the public at De Anza College, May 6 1998.

It was a great day to watch live. We were all very proud and Steve set the tone of focus like he did at NeXT where we always undersold and over delivered, with very few, if any, deadlines missed. Hardware of course relying on supply chain third parties tend to make deadlines slip, but software was something NeXT now Apple could control, so the only time he was really PO'd was the initial time schedule adjustments for OS X. The teams were slower than he expected to bring up the port from x86 NeXTSTEP to OS X. The main reason was convincing very talented engineers who may or may not have once worked at NeXT [a lot from NeXT came back to work on hardware and OS; others from Sun Microsystems, SGI and more] had to spend more time educating current Apple engineers how to do the tasks.

NeXT was Quad FAT meaning the OS was optimized for 4 CPU architectures. (Motorola, SPARC, HP PA-RISC and x86) and most at Apple only new Motorola. It was education on the fly.

Tim arrived May 1998 because Steve needed an ace in supply chain who understood industrial engineering requirements and no one was more highly recognized in the industry than Tim Cook of Compaq.

Jony Ives without Steve's direction gave us products users routinely began to criticize and his retiring from Apple has been welcomed over and over again.

I worked around Scott Forestall and had some blunt verbal banters back and forth. We mutually respected each other. He's brilliant as a Software Architect as I was just a systems person with an SQA background and Mechanical Engineer. He barked at me once and I told him to F-off breaking the tension and explained our situation at hand: I was in charge of making an IBM Thinkpad work with a custom build of NeXTSTEP never released dropped on my desk at 6 pm needing it running by 8 AM next morning. This was the infamous demo of NeXTSTEP to Gil Amelia by Steve directly. I discovered quickly the OS build was broken and needed more expertise. SO, I had to bring in two people, Mark Bessey and Ali Ozer and by around 12 midnight or 1 AM we got it all done. After Mark also failed we dragged in Ali who recognized he probably should have contacted us to get it to work in the first place and had to patch in custom Kits from Foundation to AppKit for it to even install. Once installed, it ran better than NeXTSTEP ever did. We should have released that version along with a Display Postscript update for an official last release of NeXSTEP/OpenStep but never did. Too bad, because Peter Graffagnino and Andrew Barnes changes for Display Postscript ended up laying the foundation for DisplayPDF.

Forestall assumed much and got humbled by me as I informed him this the laptop vital for Steve's presentation. He backed off and suggested Ali would need to be in on it and I contacted Mark to be in as well. sMark was in charge of the hardware/OS test harness department and Ali was one of the top guys in the OS team overseeing AppKit, Foundation., etc both of whom stayed till we got it done.

Steve's presentation went off without a hitch and no one was the wiser. Those types of stories were par for the course at NeXT because I was surrounded by professionals in all departments who wore several hats and we worked to solve problems. I have never seen a more professional, sociable, amicably great group of people to be around in all my years than I did working at NeXT. They all taught me so much and I hoped something I learned rubbed off on them as well.

Bringing Apple back from being 3 months away from bankruptcy is something Steve pulled off with the team he put in place, along with the head of the board at Apple that should be looked at as a miracle by all standards.

Apple became the juggernaut it is today, mainly because of all the failures Steve experienced and he was sure to emphasize that in many presentations on what one should embrace in life: failure and overcoming those experiences more often than not lead to great results and experiences for life. Tim being Steve's protegé embraced his philosophies on running Apple and it is true to this day. He's made mistakes but more often than not he's made great successes along the way.

The one project Steve would have personally overseen from start to finish and even changed on the fly, would be the Car project. Whatever becomes of all the IP patents and research one thing is for certain, he'd have either cancelled it five years ago or already demo'd a few years ago. You can not replace Steve Jobs, period. He's a one off.

Man I would love to pick your brain for a while. The stories you must have!

 

[nt5672]

Consumers simply don’t have the appetite for overpriced electric cars that have limited charging infrastructure and range.

The early adopters have adopted and the EV gold rush is pretty much over. The mass market will be focused on ICE vehicles for the foreseeable future.

Between inflation and car loan interest rates, fewer and fewer can afford to go the EV route given the current trade offs to be made having one.

Apple was smart to cancel this project. It’s good money chasing a bad investment in an overcrowded field of competitors. Not to mention the level of complexity the auto business brings with it.

Plus the fact that all electricity comes from some form of gas or coal, making electricity more expensive coupled with the fact that the batteries have to be replaced every 6 years at a cost of $10,000 to $20,000. EVs make no sense if you study the facts.

 

[AlbinoPigeon]

The base line cost to upgrade to a 200 Amp Panel, required for an EV home charging station, includes a line pull from the pole to the home upgrade and that'll set you back, on average, between $10k-$15k on top of the price of the EV.

Most EVs are already cost prohibitive. The panel upgrade is a DOA for most American homes until the Govt steps in and helps regulate that cost.

This is overkill for most people. A NEMA (dryer) plug, minor wiring upgrades, and some hardware is all that's usually needed. Where I live you can do this for around $1500 thanks to rebates that are also quite common across most of North America.

 

[DTphonehome]

I bet they were hoping Apple would choose them as an OEM. No way Apple was going to spin up an assembly line to produce cars... they would contract the manufacturing out as they do with everything else they make.

 

[threesixty360]

i think someone pointed out to Tim, why make all the messy metal stuff when you can essentially be the brains of all vehicles?

We are heading to a place where the car is just the shell and the important thing will be the OS of car. I think CarPlay is already on its way there.

Ultimately there’s more value in being in a 1000 cars as an iOS compatible device (CarPlay) then selling a handful of Apple cars.

 

[Biro]

Hang on… do you think there are no EVs under $100k?

$100K…$75K… $50K… even $35K. It doesn’t matter. I can’t afford it. About $30K is where I top out. If there aren’t any EVs in that price range with enough range and flexibility for one to be the only vehicle in my household, then I simply won’t buy. And that’s before we get to infrastructure. It doesn’t make any difference how much the government or anyone else wants me to purchase one. And Apple wanted to build not only an EV but a self-driving one. It never would have been on my shopping list anyway. And I am not alone.

 

[k1121j]

EV’s are garbage that’s why. Give it a few years of cars being worthless due to the battery health. Alternative fuels will win in the end.

 

[SactoGuy18]

EV’s are garbage that’s why. Give it a few years of cars being totaled after a few years or worthless due to the battery. Alternative fuels will win in the end.

I disagree. The technology is still not yet completely mature for EV's. Ask this question against in 2027 when (very likely) solid-state batteries are found on new EV's.

 

[leiahnfeng]

I disagree. The technology is still not yet completely mature for EV's. Ask this question against in 2027 when (very likely) solid-state batteries are found on new EV's.

That doesn't change the reality with EVs. They are useless in very hot and very cold areas.
They pollute much more than regular cars. They are fire hazards. They are not sustainable, etc.

 

[3rdiguy]

Standalone CarPlay app please. iPhone and iPad.

 

[Kevin2055]

Which has nothing to do with what I said but thanks for trying

it does make what you said completely non-sense.