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Elon Musk Says Apple's Electric Car Project is an 'Open Secret'
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The Apple stores will need a redesign to make room for the car displays.
The fact that it's an open secret isn't exactly a secret. Or a headline.
Wholeheartedly agree. Even conservative climate scientists are talking about how to adapt rather than prevent, and we keep belching hydrocarbon waste into the atmosphere. With little price disincentive to stop, the current landscape of price, range, and convenience won't exactly lure people away from petroleum.
Mad Mac Maniac
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To Musk, Tesla's REAL competition are gas powered cars. He can use it as a talking point regarding saving the planet, but in strict business terms it's true. If electric cars don't take off Tesla will not be able to survive (or at least not grow beyond their niche). He wants to sell cars, yes, and if Apple releases a similarly priced Electric car I'm sure that it would steal some of his business, but it would also draw more people into checking out Tesla's. It's kind of like how a lot of the time when Apple adds a new feature/app ( for example, apple news) it doesn't kill the 3rd party apps (such as flipboard) and often will drive more traffic due to the awareness of that feature/app.
Well ok... I suppose...
My post was related to driving / living in the cities, not long distance, so your response is kind out of context.
Try in Dallas, or Houston. Some cities (especially) European cities might be public transportation friendlier, but most are not. And in most cases you will save more time by driving your car.
Ford f 250 sells at a rate of over 100 trucks per hour....I have a feeling a lot of people agree with you.Unless it comes in a Pick Up form factor, I'm out.
It isn't the current conservative climate scientist to watch. Check the oil industry. Do you know why oil is low and staying low? It is because the industry has tons of supply and they are worried that climate change will be so obvious in 20 years that there will be a prohibition on burning the stuff. They are pumping and selling the stuff while they still can. And they are hopeful that by keeping prices low they will slow the transition toward renewable energy. Their strategy is working. But they are facing a losing battle against improved technology. Electric cars will be part of it. Solar that charges those cars will be another part of it.
City I live in, its often less stressful / cheaper to take public transit than taking the car ( cost of parking etc ). By bike, depending on location, its often quicker than car. That is, for people living in the city, not for those in the 'burbs - to clarify.
YMMV.
Driverless, shared cars would improve this situation... going back to the OP point - an Uber-like shared car model.
Um... I think you might be doing your unit conversions incorrectly...
20 miles per gallon is not abnormal.
20 miles per gallon is equal to 11.76 L/100km... less than the 14 you quoted. Your SUV taking 9.5 L/100km is equal to 25 miles per gallon. Good for you.
My 2002 Ford Taurus only managed 15 miles per gallon (about 15.7 L/100km). Was it a POS? Yes. But not so much that I would say it was particularly unusual.
If the car is self-driving (autonomous) I imagine the purchaser or lessor will end up signing a EULA-like document where they're not "at fault" or liable if the vehicle is involved in a collision. The car, after all, will be driving itself and the owner/lessor merely a passenger. The need for insurance, on a car owner basis, will me moot.
Just my $0.02
Take away the federal subsidy, Tesla won't survive. Take away the tax breaks, nobody will buy Tesla. It's a bunch of baloney when people say that they would buy Tesla whether there is tax break or not. If that was true, Tesla wouldn't have gone into the brink of bankruptcy.
With gas so low fracking and electric cars are both taking a hit. I was interested but a friend that has one has to plan his life around charges. Until the next great battery breakthrough I think hybrids are the sweet spot.
So was yours.
But I understand it's much funnier when you're actually trashing Google and not your beloved Apple, right?
Musk is a visionary. His biggest passion is SpaceX. He wants to change the world by taking humans to space on a mass scale and to eventually help in colonizing Mars. When he talks about Tesla, he talks about how he feels its greatest accomplishment will be acting as an accelerant in the mass production and consumption of electric vehicles. This is a man that, while driven in part by profit, is not fully consumed by it.
This is a man who helped create Paypal (revolutionary payment platform), SpaceX (revolutionary private space exploration company), and Tesla (revolutionary mass market electric vehicle production and consumption). Solar City should also be mentioned. He deserves all the praise that he should receive, and I don't think he cares all that much about whether Apple electronics is trying to create an electric vehicle. Even in the worst case scenario where Tesla failed, and it undoubtedly will not, he is still the leader of a damn private space exploration company that is helping to develop reusable rockets that can land themselves upright after leaving the atmosphere. I don't think this man is scared, or frankly cares, about what his so called "competitors" are doing. Tesla made most, if not all, of their patents open source years ago.
I guess my overall point is that I would feel far far more comfortable in the future of Apple if someone like Elon Musk was leading the company going forward, and not a COO like Tim Cook, whom I also like. Let's be real for a second, they are in different leagues. Cook may be a good numbers guy, but I don't think he's the guy who is going to take Apple to the next level. Apple has essentially been growing on the backs of products/services that have been developed by the Apple led by Steve Jobs. Soon enough Apple will rise and fall on the products/decisions being made by current Apple leadership. The watch, the first real decision, does not really instill all that much confidence on what may happen in the future.
This is a man who helped create Paypal (revolutionary payment platform), SpaceX (revolutionary private space exploration company), and Tesla (revolutionary mass market electric vehicle production and consumption). Solar City should also be mentioned. He deserves all the praise that he should receive, and I don't think he cares all that much about whether Apple electronics is trying to create an electric vehicle. Even in the worst case scenario where Tesla failed, and it undoubtedly will not, he is still the leader of a damn private space exploration company that is helping to develop reusable rockets that can land themselves upright after leaving the atmosphere. I don't think this man is scared, or frankly cares, about what his so called "competitors" are doing. Tesla made most, if not all, of their patents open source years ago.
I guess my overall point is that I would feel far far more comfortable in the future of Apple if someone like Elon Musk was leading the company going forward, and not a COO like Tim Cook, whom I also like. Let's be real for a second, they are in different leagues. Cook may be a good numbers guy, but I don't think he's the guy who is going to take Apple to the next level. Apple has essentially been growing on the backs of products/services that have been developed by the Apple led by Steve Jobs. Soon enough Apple will rise and fall on the products/decisions being made by current Apple leadership. The watch, the first real decision, does not really instill all that much confidence on what may happen in the future.
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Driverless cars open a whole new world of ethical issues as well. For example, your car is speeding down a mountain road. A deer runs into your path. Your car could veer off the road, with a high percentage probability of killing you, or veer to the left, hitting a car in the lane next to you that has 5 passengers with a moderate probability of killing 5 people. What does it do? Who gets to program your car's algorithm for attempting to preserve life/reduce damage/etc.?
And if it does swerve into the other car, resulting in a fatality, who is at fault? You? The programmer?
And if it does swerve into the other car, resulting in a fatality, who is at fault? You? The programmer?
Do you drive more than ~250 miles per day? If yes, then I agree. Otherwise, electric cars are from from being a novelty. Come home, plug it in, all good.
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This. I'm not particularly optimistic about an Apple Car. It will NOT be self-driving. What will differentiate it from all the other cars out there? I guess we'll have to wait and see. Truly self-driving cars won't be a reality for many, many years. The technology might be ready, more or less, but the law is not - and it will take a long time to sort out those details. I imagine we'll see more and more features like Tesla's autopilot creep into all vehicles, but a true 100% self-driving car won't be a reality anytime soon. So Apple better have another trick up its sleeve to "disrupt" the industry. I'm not holding my breath.
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I agree. Apple has a very effective executive team, but none of them is a visionary, certainly not Tim Cook. As other companies catch up, Apple is having to rely upon marketing spin more and more to sell products as their tech isn't radically better than anything offered by competitors these days. I still prefer my iPhone, but it's pretty obvious that other smart phones are just are capable.
I think the Watch is pretty big fail, not because of sales (which seem to be pretty good within the wearables category), but for middling design and a lack of any significant stand-out feature. The Apple Watch, technically speaking, is not much better than every other smart watch out there. Yes, it has a better OS, an App Store, etc. and these are all compelling features, but they are evolutionary and were totally expected. Before the Watch was released, many people (plenty on here!) swore up and down that the Apple Watch would feature some amazing, one-of-a-kind feature when it was finally released. Guess what? It didn't. And the design itself is weak. It's very tech-y looking, not "fine jewelry", and already looks dated. For all of the constant, endless ego stroking Jony gets, I expected much better. Instead of a beautiful piece of jewelry, what did we get? Essentially something that looks like a mini iPhone on the wrist. BORING. And worse, it looks cheap, especially paired with a hideous rubber sport band. Like you said, it does not instill much confidence.
I'd love to see Apple buy Tesla and replace Cook with Musk, but that will never happen. I'm afraid we're at the beginning of the next Spindler/Amelio cycle.
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Right, because the transition from consumer electronics to the automaker industry is soooo logical.
But Apple is not run by the same visionary who got into those businesses, the watch excluded (and I'm not sure the watch qualifies as a visionary move). Jobs got them into the phone business, the tablet business, the music business, the TV business, etc. Furthermore, they aren't really in the music and TV businesses in the traditional sense. They aren't a record label. They aren't producing original content. They are in the music and TV content *distribution* businesses, offering third party content as a way to add value to their high-margin hardware.
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Hubris
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Agreed on the self-driving. And these features already exist to some extent. Teslas can follow another car, changing lanes, slowing down, and accelerating based on the car in front. Perfect for long stretches of open road. That said, we're a long way from seeing 100% self-driving cars zipping around NYC.
I'm not sure what components Apple would sell, though. I think their car project is a huge risk. As a 30+ year customer, I never count Apple out, but a car seems like a stretch for many reasons. I think they'd be much wiser to double down on media, content, home automation, etc. Buy Nintendo. Buy Sonos. Offer first-party HomeKit products. Create a really cool HomeKit app for programming and managing devices. Produce original content. Etc. All of that feeds back into their "ecosystem" and is within their wheelhouse.
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Because the i3 car low weight carbon fiber exterior. Required if you want EV efficiency in a small car.