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New Report Says Apple Was in Talks to Use BMW i3 as Basis for Electric Car Project
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All those Apple Car rumors made me thinking how Apple would be able to sell these things. I bet they will have their own car retailer shops (just like they set up Apple Watch stores) and also offer some kind of car loan and purchase plan. Which in itself is just a step ahead of Apple turning into a bank.
So come 2020 Apple will be a car retailer, an insurance company, and a bank. Wow.
So you thinking Weyland-Yutani Or Cyberdyne Systems Corporation... Maybe Omni Consumer Products
Still find this whole car idea utterly stupid. So the only thing Apple can think of, according to rumours, to make as its next big thing is a car! Something it has no clue or experience in what so ever, a market that sells millions each year and is very well established and not new in any way, and a market with prices and technology covering all price ranges.
I personally feel if Apple do make a car, it will be out of sheer jealousy of Google's car project which is just as daft. So Apple can shout me too me too!
I personally feel if Apple do make a car, it will be out of sheer jealousy of Google's car project which is just as daft. So Apple can shout me too me too!
Replace "car" with "phone" and people had the exact same reasoning eight years ago.
WRONG! Because a consumer electronics company making a mobile smart phone for the then utterly dead American market is NOT the same. Name how many smart phones Americans could get on contract when the iPhone was launched?
So sorry, what ever you choose to believe it is totally different to building a car.
I'm saying the reasoning back then was the same (which is not WRONG). Will Apple make a car? Probably. Will it be successful? Who knows, not me. But it surely would be interesting.
You have to keep in mind that Apple was a whole different company back then. It was an electronics company with experience only in computers and portable music players. Today it is one of the largest companies in the world. Investors expect much much more from the company today and Apple will need to look beyond the comfortable walls of home electronics if it wants to keep making profits. Is a car the right answer? It's as good as any I guess.
You have to keep in mind that Apple was a whole different company back then. It was an electronics company with experience only in computers and portable music players. Today it is one of the largest companies in the world. Investors expect much much more from the company today and Apple will need to look beyond the comfortable walls of home electronics if it wants to keep making profits. Is a car the right answer? It's as good as any I guess.
Apple Car would be amazing!
100k+ for a base model, I can see customers lining up already.
I'm sold, just need to mortgage my house.
100k+ for a base model, I can see customers lining up already.
I'm sold, just need to mortgage my house.
They made a consumer electronics device for consumers, it was their business back then as they made the iPod and computers. You should have used iTunes as an example as its better because Apple knew nothing about the music business, but they changed it.
I also think investors will be very cautious about any vehicle Apple make, it certainly won't have global appeal if its electric only, in the UK we don't really have any charging infrastructure yet. Also self driving car laws are still yet to be put in place fully and finalised.
Although it's ridiculous, if Apple make a car I think it will be aimed at developing markets only first.
Apple will also have to prove the crash resistance of any car as it will crash, nothing to stop someone else hitting it, prove its safe.
Carbon fibre though is not cheap, I think BMW are the first to bring it to cheaper cars but even then the i3 is very expensive for the size of it. So unless Apple can make it cheaper to make, if they use it then any Apple car will be expensive to buy.
You can find it stupid but it seems pretty clear Apple is seriously working on something. There's too much smoke for their not to be fire. Will it ultimately lead to a car? Who knows.
Apple is a consumer product company. Whatever they work for, must lead to a consumer product, not some machinery or technology per se.
Apple Car will be produced, I guess, after Apple finishes the new Apple Home Kit and TV. They all will have Continuity and Siri.
Apple Car will be produced, I guess, after Apple finishes the new Apple Home Kit and TV. They all will have Continuity and Siri.
I think Apple has too much going on right now. New markets like Apple Pay, Home Kit are still in their infancy and this car project is probably a bigger resource hog than the watch. In my opinion they missed a few "smaller" opportunities close to their core business, because they spend too much time looking for the next big thing. Just a few thoughts: Why didn't they build an Apple TV Console with App Store in 2013? What about products to compete with Sonos? What about a NAS solution? And why not use the public Windows 8 dislike to gain more market shares (even in the "dying" desktop department)?
Some of the recent products show a lack a focus. And there are missing hardware upgrades (iPad mini 3, Thunderbolt display, mac mini downgrade, shuffle, nano, Apple TV....) and problematic services (Apple Music, Maps, iCloud Photos...). In my opinion they should sort this issues out, before expanding in so many different directions. I still question myself how i could trust Apple Pay (btw. Europe launch?) and Homekit looking at Apple's bad record of services. My home and my bank account aren't easily replaceable from a backup as a messed up music and photo library. And in five years, Apple wants people to trust their autonomous car? If they don't improve the current software and service quality, good luck with that.
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Never understood why electric cars have to look so weird, just take one of your normal cars and figure out how to get the electric motor inside it. It's not rocket science.
That said, this comment isn't directed at Citroen. The just need to stop making cars, full stop. Who ever thought up that damn 'Cactus' design needs to be put up against the wall and shot.
Oh yes my mistake. Motor would have been a better word to use, I wasn't really thinking.
The problem with this position is that if everybody were to follow your advice, we would never see a new car manufacturer again. Replace 'Apple' in the above with Japan, South Korea or Japan (or specific companies from those countries) and they would have never sprouted new car manufacturers. Or replace 'Apple' with Elon Musk and we would have never seen Tesla.
I am very ambivalent about the idea of Apple building a car, but I don't feel I can say with full conviction that this will end in failure.
For once, putting an electric motor into an existing car results in a car that is too expensive, too heavy and has too low a range. To make a successful electric car you have to lower the manufacturing costs by drastically changing the way a car is assembled, you have to significantly lower the weight to compensate for the weight of the batteries (and reduce the energy needed for driving and thus help with range), and you have to redesign the car to make space for the batteries, put them as low as possible to keep the centre of gravity low and efficiently reuse the space gained by not having a combustion engine anymore. Moreover, to successfully market electric car, giving them a distinct appearance can help a lot.
That doesn't mean you cannot have a successful electric car that looks like existing car models but that there are good reasons to try something quite different.
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Been looking at 10 year old used cars and the BMW's with about 120,000 miles plus have horrible resale. Honda's and Toyota's lose much less and are more reliable at the same mileage.
These cars are for people that want to drive something new every 3 to 5 years and don't mind losing money. Unless you repair you're own vehicles BMW's are money pits.
Not like Apple to be 30 years behind other computer companies...
Partnering up with Telsa to make an affordable full electric would have sounded better than going with BMW. Those cars are not engineered to be reliable like your typical consumer car. Guess they figure that people buying these are successful and don't mind bringing the car to the dealership for expensive repairs.
apple didn't just conquer the 'mobile smart phone' market.. apple moreorless created the smart phone market and in doing so, they changed the entire telephone industry. (or played a large role in doing so)..
i haven't had a land line for almost 10years.. nobody i know has a land line in their home anymore. (anecdotal.. but still, i'm talking hundreds of people.. not just a handful of my friends)
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scratch that.. my mom still has a land line.. but even then, she mainly calls/texts me via cel
A battery-powered car can be charged overnight using off-peak electricity - they're not suitable for everybody, but if (a) you have a garage or drive (so you can home charge), (b) your typical daily milage is within the range of the battery and (c) you run a second car (or are prepared to rent) for long journeys, then they are perfectly viable.
Hydrogen fuel cells are currently useless to any domestic user without the establishment of a massive hydrogen distribution infrastructure. Even if someone develops a home electricity-powered hydrogen converter, I'm not sure I'd want anything so tricky to handle safely in my garage (or, more importantly, next-door's garage!)