Battery cars are too soon. We need the next step in batteries, then with the improvements in solar, internal combustion will be over for commuters (but not long haul trucks, planes, work trucks, etc). That is when the real change will happen. Right now the technology just is not there, but hopefully soon. That is when Apple should make a car.
Got a tip for us?
Let us know
Become a MacRumors Supporter for $50/year with no ads, ability to filter front page stories, and private forums.
Kuo: Apple to Launch Apple Car in 2023 to 2025
- Thread starter MacRumors
- Start date
- Sort by reaction score
Pretty neat but I’m still on the fence about these new cars especially when they can be hackable and turned into a death machine.
[doublepost=1534430141][/doublepost]
[doublepost=1534430141][/doublepost]
With that attitude, we will be waiting decades.
Price always sets demand.
[doublepost=1534431056][/doublepost]
Actually, long haul trucks, buses and local distribution trucks make sense for batteries since they operate on known routes and distances and thus yo can factor in charge times and range.
It’s a device that is objectively better than literally everything else in the market. And it’s not like it’s $400. It’s $150. About twice the price of the Mophie charger I bought and AirPower charges 3 devices including my watch
Hmm... Voice control...
Me: Hey Siri... Navigate to the nearest Meijer.
Siri: Now deflating the left tire
Me. Hey Siri... stop deflating the tire!
Siri. Now turning the volume higher
Me. Aaaaaaaaaahhhhh!
What could go wrong?
A flying castle that nasa couldn’t even make?
or cars that can beat lambos in drag races?
Elon Musk has always been this way. He is not much different now than before. The only possible difference is he is the same person, and everyone else is changing causing him to stand out a little more
Meanwhile, Tesla has yet to turn a profit and it seems that investors are starting to get impatient.
People seemed pretty quick back then to herald him as the next Steve Jobs, and I remember all the comparisons between Tesla and Apple and how this is evidence that Apple was falling behind.
How quickly the tables have turned.
If anything, Apple Car might be some add-on to the TV. Back when Apple TV rumors were around, people kept thinking Apple was actually going to release a TV, which they never did... Apple TV was just a set top box that plugs into a TV.
It doesn't make sense for Apple to come out with their own vehicle and risk manufacturers cutting off Apple Carplay as a feature just to cut into Apple's profit margins when Apple is trying to take marketshare away from auto companies. That, or companies could charge more for Apple to put Carplay into their vehicles.
It doesn't make sense for Apple to come out with their own vehicle and risk manufacturers cutting off Apple Carplay as a feature just to cut into Apple's profit margins when Apple is trying to take marketshare away from auto companies. That, or companies could charge more for Apple to put Carplay into their vehicles.
This. Apple will continue to expand CarPlay and car related services but will not likely to build a vehicle
If it's something I have observed, the people working in a particular industry are often the last ones to acknowledge when a disruptive change is upon them, especially when the change comes from outside the industry. This is because the people within that industry often has the least incentive to change, while the ones outside have the most to gain from upending the status quo.
Nokia didn't see Apple coming.
Taxis couldn't stop the rise of Uber.
Smart speakers came from tech companies who had the resources to engineer their own digital assistants, not speaker companies themselves.
Amazon didn't start out as a retail store outlet.
Self-driving cars are most certainly not going to come from the auto industry, who have never been known for good software.
There’s a difference between the top leadership vs workers being blindsided.
I was in a meeting about a decade ago, set up by a middle manager who was trying to give top leadership a heads up on how social media was going to affect us. Leadership ignored her presentation and the professor she brought in.
Your comparisons don't make sense to me:
Nokia (electronics) vs Apple (electronics)
Taxis (cars) vs Uber (cars)
Smart Speakers vs Speaker... what? Why would I set a bunch of Smarts Speakers for my home cinema???
"[...] auto industry [...] never been known for good software [...]": True but I am not questioning that but the complexity to design and manufacture a car.
How many people do you think is necessary to develop a car?
Nokia - phone company who excelled in making cheap dumb phones
Apple - computer company who was able to shrink a Mac down to a phone form factor
Uber - not a transportation company but a tech company using an app to literally solve the pain points many commuters had with conventional taxis because the taxi company was too complacent to improve on their own.
Speakers - dumb hardware manufacturers
It’s telling that even Sonos has to bundle Alexa and Spotify with their products because they lack the resources and the expertise to design their own smart assistance or run their own music streaming service.
This is essentially the whole android fiasco all over again. Phone companies embracing android thinking that it would give them an ice cube in hell’s chance of competing against Apple, only to later realise it was one giant Faustian bargain.
And incidentally, Apple has both their own smart assistant and music streaming service, so they don’t have to be beholden to anyone.
It will be far easier for a tech company to figure out how to manufacture a car, then it is for a car company to figure out software.
Even the Swiss Watch market is starting to feel the heat from the Apple Watch.
Different players in each industry, but the way I see it, the outcome will still be the same.
It would seem that Apple would outsource the actual manufacturing, since that’s what they do for all their other products.
re: design resources, I’m sure it would take thousands to design a car but really I have no idea. With your industry knowledge, do you think the 5,000 employees Apple currently has on the car project will be sufficient? Will they have to continue hiring?
Note that I didn't say anything about manufacturing, just only development (Styling, Design, Simulation, Test... all the steps necessary before you start the production of the tools and assembly lines before you start building the very first car which will be sold), that is a huge effort not comparable to electronics.
According to wikipedia, Tesla has 35k employees total, for example, so 5k is not that big number. Only to develop the Software and Hardware (Sensors, Cams, etc) of an autonomous car? Probably yes, but for a full car? No, I don't think so.
Take any car as example (don't forget it still must comply safety standards as any other car). Add Autonomous capabilities. Add Apple superlative Styling, Materials and Quality/Value perception (Prototyping, Testing, Manufacturing and Assembly tolerances that don't resemble electronics ones)...
I can't explain how complex it is. Safety alone as a non-autonomous car is already very difficult.
Yes, you can buy experienced people with expertise on developing cars, but each of them would have experience under different quality standards and I am sure Apple wouldn't make just another car but a disruptive one. One that looks and feels from the year 2050 and seems its driven by magic...
I love Apple products and I would love to see it happening, but I am not sure it will be in 5 years time.
Apple's philosophy, in words of Jobs, was not to be the first but to do it right (IIRC)
The scale of building a car from scratch is no where as easy as you are assuming. Look at all the problems Tesla is having, and they have some of the brightest engineers. In addition, the scale of autonomous automotive is much larger than a phone or a computer. People's lives are at stake here, and so there are much more stringent concerns.
If Apple doesn't want to get into FDA approval process of serious glucose device monitoring in the foreseeable future, I can't possibly imagine Apple going through government automotive safety standards within the next 5 to 7 years.
An interesting data point is that in December 2012, six months after the release of the model S, Tesla had only 3,000 employees. Also, don’t forget Tesla includes SolarCity, which had over 15,000 employees as of 2016.
I think it’s interesting to look at Apple’s R&D spending. In 2007, the year of the iPhone release, R&D spending was less than $1 billion/year. In 2010, the year they released iPad, it was under $2 billion. However, that had more than tripled by 2014 and has continued to pretty much explode:
(in billions)
2014: $6
2015: $8
2016: $10
2017: $11.6
2018: $14 (est; $10.5 actual as of Q3)
For comparison, in the eight years from 2010-2017, in total Tesla spent just $4.2 billion on R&D, with this year’s spend bringing its last nine years cumulative total to maybe $6 billion. Apple spent more than that over the last six months, though obviously not all of that goes to project Titan!
Assuming they want to build a car, I think they’re more than capable of developing one over a seven to ten-year time period. They’ve got all the necessary resources at their disposal.
Will it be a complete car? Apple has never been a manufacturer of sub-assemblies to be sold to other companies, and there’s no reason to think they’ll change course with autonomous driving tech. But the cars may only be for Apple’s use in transportation as a service applications, and might not be for retail sale.
I think it’s interesting to look at Apple’s R&D spending. In 2007, the year of the iPhone release, R&D spending was less than $1 billion/year. In 2010, the year they released iPad, it was under $2 billion. However, that had more than tripled by 2014 and has continued to pretty much explode:
(in billions)
2014: $6
2015: $8
2016: $10
2017: $11.6
2018: $14 (est; $10.5 actual as of Q3)
For comparison, in the eight years from 2010-2017, in total Tesla spent just $4.2 billion on R&D, with this year’s spend bringing its last nine years cumulative total to maybe $6 billion. Apple spent more than that over the last six months, though obviously not all of that goes to project Titan!
Assuming they want to build a car, I think they’re more than capable of developing one over a seven to ten-year time period. They’ve got all the necessary resources at their disposal.
Will it be a complete car? Apple has never been a manufacturer of sub-assemblies to be sold to other companies, and there’s no reason to think they’ll change course with autonomous driving tech. But the cars may only be for Apple’s use in transportation as a service applications, and might not be for retail sale.
Last edited:
It'd be interesting to see where Apple is spending their R&D and what that entails. Here are some of the current public areas that I think we all know Apple is doing R&D in:
- AR/VR
- iPhone
- Streaming video including 4K/8K
- Medical device monitoring
- Siri
- Audio technologies
- New campuses and stores
- Rumored 1st party sub component(s) including CPUs
- FaceID
- Apple Maps
- Mac (I'd put this pretty low on the list given current velocity)
- and of course... Project Titan.