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Hyundai Executives Said to Be 'Divided' Over Prospect of Apple Car Partnership
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Apple can certainly throw money at any project they desire, and hire the talent needed to bring it to fruition. The question for Apple is how long are they willing to take losses chasing a smaller margin than they are used to (Auto gross margins are ~16%, Operating around 4% and net profit 2.5%; hardly Apple numbers); Tesla has never made money as a car manufacturer on car sales alone.
However, it's a very different type of computer. An EV's motive source is certainly simpler than an ICE, but also presents some design challenges as well. Suspensions and drivetrains need to handle all that torque; battery systems need to trade off range for power (wait tell users find out Apple limited the total power output when the battery gets low to keep the range higher*), charging systems, etc. In some ways it is simpler, in others just as complex.
* Tesla's Model S (IIRC) 0-60 time diminished significantly as battery capacity lessened.
Hyundai only owns part of Kia; and having a separate luxury brand lets a manufacturer move upscale and differentiate the brand from its mainstream brand, while sharing costs and platforms.
I doubt Apple would do that, even though they easily could. Apple would own an asset that is hard to dump if they decide to pull the plug on the Apple Car, and requires a whole different management style. Shutting down Kia in Korea and the US would no doubt cause a lot of political fallout. Apple is a design company, not a manufacturing one; buying Kia would add aa low margin manufacturing operation and Apple is certainly not a low margin company.
Personally, I think Apple would be better off becoming a supplier of tech to the auto industry; where they can use their supply chain and design strengths, from software to chips, and keep their margins high. The Apple car could very well simply be a test bed to highlight what they offer.
While much of the change has been incremental and computers have played a big role in the latest improvements; there have been some significant changes over the last decades. Cars went from solid rear axles to IRS to turning suspensions, carbs to fuel injection, transmission design, etc. Yes, the car is still a box of sorts with 4 wheels (UsuallY) but there have been significant strides to the point where an econobox can be quicker, and handle as well or better, than a few decades old high end sports car.
While I agree that's the future, car battery tech is a lot different from computer battery tech. Apple certainly has the skills and resources to make strides there; but it's not a simple case of today iPhones, tomorrow iCars.
Hyundai is probably one of the few brands that would want to be a partner and has the needed manufacturing capability; I suspect many of the other highly regarded brands have no interest in being a contract manufacturer and letting Apple call the shots while they have to invest in capacity, that Apple may decide it doesn't need at some point, and possibly have to maintain the vehicles and create a unique Apple CarStore with their dealer networks. They take on a lot of risk for little upside.
Hyundai is a lot better quality than people on MR think; having driven them over the years a rentals they're a lot better today than 10 years ago and on par with Toyota/Nissan/etc. At any rate Apple will be defining the quality and design specs.
I agree, and given Apple's desire to do things their way could be aa big stumbling block; especially if they make demands that require large cash outlays with no promise of returns. Dealers are big and politically connected and won't like Apple trying to tell them what to do.
BMW, Porsche, et. al. can demand dealers build new buildings because dealers know they will make money, but a new car company called Apple? I doubt many will want to make a large bet on its ability to make the dealer a profit.
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I'm not seeing how a car mfg is gonna see an upside to being Apple's manufacturing bitch.
Huh? AT&T was the only carrier that was willing to be "just the carrier" and let Apple do their phone the way they wanted to.
That's what I said. Decades ago.
Regarding suspension, everything has six degrees of freedom initially. Three translational (x, y, z) and three rotational (around the respective x, y, z axis). For non-steering wheels, you want to reduce that to one translational degree of freedom (up/down - suspension). Steering wheels obviously need two degrees of freedom (up/down translational for suspension, and side to side rotational for steering). This problem has been solved decades ago (e.g. the 1982 W201 rear axle).
The change from carburetors to fuel injection started with the 1967 VW 1600 TL (Bosch D-Jetronic).
The last major development in gearboxes was the dual clutch automated gearbox (DSG, 2002 VW Golf IV R32). For an EV gearboxes aren't terribly relevant though (not at all).
Over 70 what? Potatoes? Years of age?
They can be useful, but they're not strictly necessary, as opposed to ICE cars.
Mph. Tesla’s fall flat over that speed, while the Taycan still pulls like a train.
I'd be scared with an Apple car. Imagine it uses autopilot with apple maps. Dear lord, weeeeeez gonna die
Is it even legally possible to go significantly faster than 70mph on public roads in the US? Honest question, as I really don't know.
Some states allow up to 85.
If you want to race one, things like top speed and torque become an issue, as well as the programming; such as when Tesla reduced performance dramatically after a few runs, and Porsche didn't till much later.
Actually, you said:
"The general concept of a car hasn't changed much over the last decades. Frame & bodywork only improves in the materials used (crash optimization, lightweight but still strong) and aerodynamics (where improvement is quite limited as long as you expect the car to look familiar to what people are used to). Chassis/suspension won't see any major breakthrough on the mechanical side either. That's as good as it gets. It's just tuning to the desired characteristics"
My point was over the last decades there have been significant improvements in auto engineering, even if the basic idea is the same. As another example, turbocharging went from a speed thing to mainstream. Lighting has taken leaps as well from the sealed beam to today's lights. Infrared detection is coming online as well. Sure, primitive versions of today's technology may have existed decades ago, but they've been refined from that to what we have today. Hell, the convertible hardtop first came out in the late fifties.
While the 190 had a new suspension design, it didn't exactly have rear wheel steering as seen in some cars today and, IIRC which was first introduced just a decade ago. MB improved the design in the 2021 S Class. We've also gone from mechanical to electronically adjustable suspension as well.
And L Jetronic and M Jetronic improved on those designs up to the more advanced ones today, although I believe the E version of the Type 3 was introduced in 1968.
Although the concept was patented in 1935; my point is that we continue to see strides in automotive engineering beyond adding CarPlay.
Depends on the use case.
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So, 85 mph translates to (roughly) 140 km/h (SI user here, I have to convert to get an idea ¯\_(ツ)_/¯). I wouldn't think it's difficult in any way to get acceptable performance above 70 mph (~110 km/h). Even my 30 year old VW Passat has decent performance at that speed (at least for public roads). 70 mph is nothing.
Sure, 70 is nothing. Most cars will easily do 70; the performance issue is how fast can you get from 70 to 85 or a 100? Decent perfroamnce is all relative; things like how fast can you transition from fast to slow to fast all count when talking performance.
Of course it's relative, but also mostly moot, because you don't really need it in real life situations. Even on the Autobahn, while you theoretically are allowed to go as fast as you want, you more often than not actually can't - be it because of traffic, speed limit or roadworks. Also, my experience is that the vast majority of drivers is just not fit for speeds above 130 km/h.
Yup they only do trivial products like smartphones that have to work with a couple hundred carriers and in a couple hundred countries. Peanuts.
There actually are Samsung cars (now a subsidiary of Renault). No idea about catching fire though.
Audi can be fun to watch. Some winters ago, roads full of snow, and I spotted an Audi R8 that had gone off the road, hit a lamp post, and hit it from the wrong side! I'm sure that Audi was fun to drive. Until the driver found out that he couldn't actually driveMade me smile.
BTW. Kia hired the designer that built the Audi TT series.
Here’s hoping they design something that comes close to taste. Fingers crossed!
No one dies when your phone doesn’t find a signal, or suddenly reboots.
And “you’re stepping on it wrong” won’t cut it as a response, if consumers accuse you of making a vehicle that’s doesn’t accelerate or brake when you press on the pedal. A coupon for 5% of iCar92 won’t cut it either.
What Apple’s likely doing is they are seeking an automaker to firewall their brand and their giant pot of money from consumer liability, and offering generously to take lions share of profits from the venture. By seeking an automaker who is desperate i.e. has huge facilities running under capacity. What a sweet deal indeed....
It’s a sucker move...
Exactly. China cannot cope with all the tourism going to Foxconn to complain about their iPhone issues. Same thing will happen all over again.
Stating the obvious. Hence they’ll likely have a production company as usual.
The rest is your personal flavouring.
I bet the main lesson learned for Apple in that case was to never do co-branding on a crappy product again.