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Volkswagen CEO: We're 'Not Afraid' of a Potential 'Apple Car'
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VW is not one of the largest car companies in Europe.
It is by far the largest car company in Europe and usually vies as the largest car company in the world competing with Toyota and GM.
It is by far the largest car company in Europe and usually vies as the largest car company in the world competing with Toyota and GM.
The people designing cars (the mechanical portions) are mechanical engineers. The people designing blenders are mechanical engineers. Yes, its a different industry, but you can swap engineers in and out across industries. They will pick it up fairly quickly. I'm a mechanical engineer for the baby industry (strollers, car seats, highchairs, swings, etc), and I worked with lots of other engineers that left automotive and wanted something different. The skill set is very similar. Someone who is mechanically inclined for a stroller will be able to figure out a car suspension, and vice versa. Yes, it will take some time, but its not like Apple would not hire senior engineers from existing car companies. They will be running to jump ship. The other thing is most mechanical engineers for blenders in their spare time like to work on their cars. Engineers in general know cars pretty well, even if that's not their dayjob.
Well, you mentioned 3 incredibly expensive brands that don’t compete in the same market, it’s a meaningless comparison; last year Apple already outsold by 30% the entire Swiss watch industry though, that lost 12% of sales in the same year, people that used to have a watch that doesn’t cost several thousand of dolaes and now have Apple Watch, probably won’t keep buying regular watches anymore don’t you think? I am sure Ferrari and Maserati aren‘t worried about an Apple Care either, but regular car makers that sell average priced cars probably are.
often the profit share leader? Really? Besides the iPhone, in which other products is Apple the profit share leader?
Not sure how you came up with that but even if that's true, a 1% chance of your company not existing because of a threat from a larger company that can throw a few billion dollars coming after you isn't something I'd shrug off exactly.
Personally; I would rather the CEOs of the car companies be at least slightly concerned.
Because at leas then; there would be some half-decent electric (or alternative energy) options already on the market.
At the moment; with the exception of some specialist/niche track models, most seem to be either IC hybrids, or wedging an electric drivetrain into a shell based around old IC principles.
I can see why the Hyundai platform noted in the earlier rumours would be of interest to Apple, but its such a basic essential that there should have been cars built on this last year.
Likewise with the hybrids; they were a stopgap five years ago, and some manufacturers are promoting these as their big innovation!
The entire auto industry needs a big kick to their behind. Yes; including Tesla, as they’re literally just producing a single stamped-steel model for each of the three basic mass market groups, which just happen to have an electric motor and touchscreen.
Because at leas then; there would be some half-decent electric (or alternative energy) options already on the market.
At the moment; with the exception of some specialist/niche track models, most seem to be either IC hybrids, or wedging an electric drivetrain into a shell based around old IC principles.
I can see why the Hyundai platform noted in the earlier rumours would be of interest to Apple, but its such a basic essential that there should have been cars built on this last year.
Likewise with the hybrids; they were a stopgap five years ago, and some manufacturers are promoting these as their big innovation!
The entire auto industry needs a big kick to their behind. Yes; including Tesla, as they’re literally just producing a single stamped-steel model for each of the three basic mass market groups, which just happen to have an electric motor and touchscreen.
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Exactly. They ignored Tesla and Tesla has the chance to become a major player in the next decade.
Profit share it what matters to Apple’s competitors. It does not matter if they sell 1% or 50% of the cars if they take all the profit. Profit is what matters to manufacturers, not just volume.
Yup, actually it is. If Apple makes enough money on their car, they can ensure it can be serviced where ever it is.
Those phones are built by contract manufacturers. In the same way, there a many kit cars available on the market that one can assemble in one’s garage with tools one can purchase from Harbor Freight.
They didn't ignore Tesla. They had to amortize all the ICE R&D costs to keep the cash flow necessary for an orderly transition to a different paradigm. What would have been your plan, stopping the ICE production, throwing away tens of billions in research, development, machinery, plants, education, and start building a new platform and industrial plan from the scratch while everybody goes home?
When moving from ICE to electric, the entry barrier in terms of powerplants and transmissions fell, and Tesla was ready to profit from it.
Tesla still is a very minor player. Don't examine a company based on its market cap. Market cap is one thing, industrial power is another very different thing, albeit they can be related (reflexivity theory), that analysis is deceiving most of the time if taken without context.
I am afraid I do not agree.
You mention VW ID.3 and Tesla Model 3. They are not direct competitors, and Tesla has nothing to compete with ID.3 (or Leaf or low-spec Kona, or e206 or...). The least expensive Model 3 is around 46 k€ in Europe (depending on the country), whereas the least expensive ID.3 is less than 30 k€. They are in completely different segments.
A 50 k€ car is expensive, and that segment is limited. Of course, people might be able to pay a bit more for an EV than an ICE car, but also Tesla’s total cost of ownership (tyres, insurances) is considerably higher than that of middle class EVs.
Also, Tesla Y is going to face some serious competition when it arrives to Europe (Volkswagen ID.4, Skoda Enyaq, Audi Q4 e-tron, Nissan Ariya, Hyundai Ioniq 5, Polestar 2, Volvo XC40P8, Ford Mach-E, andImusthavemissedacouple).
Tesla has a lot of great technology, there is no denying that. But it does not have anything that would make it immune to competition. Even the great supercharger network is not that strong in all parts of the world.
So, while the competitive landscape in the US favours Tesla, the situation in Europe (and Asia) is more complicated with serious local competition. It should be borne in mind that more EVs are sold in the EU than in the US.
This also has a lot to do with the possible Apple car. Car market is very fragmented, and different geographic areas vary a lot. For example, Europeans like estate cars, and sedans are not common (bad for Tesla model 3). Southern Europeans buy small cars, whereas Northern Europeans drive larger but older cars. And so on. Look at VW or Toyota and count the different models; they have dozens and dozens.
You understand that modern cars are complex electronics right? Especially models at the level that Apple intends to compete with.
Again, far more complex than you give any credit to.
We disagree.
The id3 is a Tesla model 3 competitor. It's less powerful, but it's better made and looks better (subjective). The price range overlaps to a certain extent, but has a more premium positioning given that it's much less powerful, yet the price ticket is still over 40k for many versions.
They are not 1:1 but share an important target segment.
The model 3 performance will probably have a "GTI" fighter in the future.
The Etron and Taycan are also more expensive than the Model S, however the target audience is the same.
"You are driving it wrong". With Apple's track record of reluctantly admitting mistakes and problems and the time they take to correct them I don't think ever will have enough trust in them to buy their car.
Because before year 2015 they were living in another world and keeping the window shutters tightly closed. Once they got the Dieselgate cleaned, they knew something should be done. And the gut reaction was to build the software themselves.
It is quite easy to see that did not work out, and it has cost them billions to fix. At one point VW had tens of thousands of perfectly good EVs in the backyard just waiting for the software to be finished.
VW has already for a long time used subcontractors to make parts of their UX software, and that has actually worked well. For some reason they did not team up with Google to use the Automotive OS (as VolvoPolestar very successfully did) but insisted on building their own. Not as easy as they thought.
IMHO, VW should have taken a much easier road. VW has some rather decent cars, e.g. Passat, and using the same software structures and cockpit designs would have been faster and less expensive. The eGolf was designed this way, and its only shortcomings were small battery (24 kWh) and awful aerodynamics.
But I do acknowledge my hindsight is 20/20. It may still turn out that VW is able to create useful vehicle system software. At least it is improving fast with OTA update capabilities (the first ID.3s shipped to customers rivaled Tesla’s worst days’ software in terms of bug density).
When looking at the Model 3’s base price in the US, it should translate to ~37.300 Euro (incl. 19% German VAT, idk about other EU countries).
Surly there’s a bunch of costs associated with importing the cars into Europe but almost 9k Euro? Maybe Tesla wanted to position the Model 3 in a higher segment?
Similar from Blockbuster from Netflix, Sony Walkman with iPod, and other examples. Do not despise the competition. No one is all powerful.
Apple is widely rumored to be working on a self-driving car, internally codenamed "Project Titan." Apple reportedly began work on the project in 2014, and years later, the rumor mill is in full swing speculating when Apple will debut its self-driving technology. Speculation has become so rampant that potential competitors to an Apple Car are already weighing down its potential threat to the overall car industry.
As reported by Reuters today, Volkswagen Group CEO Herbert Diess said that he's "not afraid" of an Apple Car and that Apple will not be able to overtake the $2 trillion automobile industry overnight. In typical Apple fashion, the company has not confirmed it's working on a self-driving car, but Diess believes that the rumors and reports are "logical." Apple has expertise in battery technology, software, and design, and it can easily utilize all of its proficiency in those areas to create an automobile, the CEO was quoted as saying.
Similar remarks can be traced back to 2006, one year prior to the launch of the iPhone, when the CEO of Palm, which at the time was one of the leading smartphone makers, stated that Apple would not "just figure this out," referring to smartphones. In the years that followed, however, the iPhone would captivate the market, eventually leading it to $65 billion in revenue for a single quarter.
Volkswagen, based in Germany, is one of the largest car manufacturers in Europe and around the world, giving it significant dominance over the industry. Diess said he is not concerned that Apple joining the market would disrupt Volkswagen's dominance, saying that despite Apple's expertise in all of the technology needed to create a car, his company is still "not afraid" and that Apple "will not manage" to disrupt the market overnight.
Until this year, very little was known about how Apple would go about building an actual self-driving car. Apple uses third-party suppliers such as TSMC and Foxconn to build current products like the iPhone and Mac, but none of its current suppliers are fully positioned to build an automobile. On that front, Apple is expected to partner with an already well-known and established car maker to fulfill its self-driving car ambitions.
In early January, reports began to surface that Apple was close to inking a deal with Hyundai, after the automaker released a statement confirming that it was in talks with the tech giant. The statement was quickly revoked and reworded to exclude mentions of Apple, and it has since been reported that talks between Hyundai and Apple have grounded to a halt.
Multiple sources have suggested different timeframes for the launch of the Apple Car, with the earliest report suggesting a release as early as 2024. Bloomberg, however, believes that the car is "nowhere near production stage" and that a release is at least five to seven years away.
Article Link: Volkswagen CEO: We're 'Not Afraid' of a Potential 'Apple Car'
The iPhone really isn't much different.
The iPhone is built by contract manufacturers too, and many of the technologies used to do so are licensed from and supplied from other corporations. They may have Apple designed silicon and circuit paths, but they rely on TSMC and other vendors manufacturing technologies to produce them at smaller sizes. The iPhones Screens are produced by LG and Samsung, many of the chips, controllers, etc, all other companies products and technologies. They then rely on FoxCon to use their technologies to assemble the final product under contract.
Apple has more control over the finished product, but it essentially is a "kit phone" too.
Like Nokia, blackberry and the others where in great positions for the smartphone age?
Apple likely will draw a lot more „must have”-attention than Volkswagen, even more than Tesla I’d say.