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Apple Speeds Up Electric-Car Work

119 pointsby psawayaover 9 years ago

18 comments

jakobeggerover 9 years ago
The more I hear about Apple making a car, the more it seems inevitable.<p>Apple&#x27;s revenue is 180 billion dollars. If they enter a new market, it has to be big. How many high margin billion dollar industries are there? The entire watch market is just around $50 billion dollars a year. If Apple wants to continue growing like it did in the past, the watch is a distraction. They need to aim for something much bigger.<p>Besides the financial reasons, I think it&#x27;s the perfect time to break into the market. The switch to electric motors levels the playing field, giving newcomers an edge if they can move fast. But the most important part is the integration of all the systems in the car, most importantly the digital user interface. Todays cars have horrible interfaces. Manufacturers are too busy covering every possible niche with dozens of models, which makes it impossible for them to make a single great car. And even if they tried, they are too dependent on component suppliers to create a single, integrated experience of the kind Apple does.<p>There are two questions I wonder about:<p>1. How will Apple be able to make use of their experience in electronics when they move to a completely new industry?<p>2. What are the technical tricks Apple has up their sleeve? The iPod had hard drives and the click wheel, the iPhone had multitouch and a SoC that enabled a real browser, the watch had force sensitivity, haptic feedback, and a pulse meter. What will the car have?
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Tiktaalikover 9 years ago
This seems like a weird market for Apple to be pursuing because they’re such a consumer oriented company, but it seems likely that the future of transportation will be less oriented around individual car ownership.<p>Additionally there’s a good argument to be made that we hit “peak car” several years ago, so consumer oriented automobiles may not be a real growth industry.<p>I’d seriously question any business plan that assumes that the transportation mode share of cars, especially individually owned cars, will be greater than it is now.<p>Maybe I’m thinking too long term here.
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ssharpover 9 years ago
It&#x27;s interesting to see new entries into such an established and manufacturing-heavy industry. Tesla had a fairly slow and methodical strategy, that they&#x27;re still executing on before they can really hit a mass audience (I&#x27;d say the Model 3 is the next evolution in that). Apple has not, at least since Jobs took over again, really been slow and methodical in entering big markets. However, with the iPod, iPhone, and iPad, they were the first to try and align those device types with a mass audience that hadn&#x27;t really been addressed yet. With cars, that audience has been well addressed for over a century!<p>I&#x27;m curious to find out what price range Apple is coming in at, what makes the Apple car better than alternatives, and how&#x2F;where they&#x27;re going to manufacture it at a cost similar to competitors.
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davidwover 9 years ago
There&#x27;s an old thing, from Bob Young, founder of Redhat, about proprietary software being like a car with the hood welded shut. Perhaps the latter will actually become reality.
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kaoliniteover 9 years ago
Even though it&#x27;s hard to imagine Apple making a car, there is an awful lot of smoke around this. There has to be a fire somewhere. Lots of people are wondering how Apple can differentiate in the car market - I think (surprisingly) it comes down to price. Few people may remember this, but when Apple announced the iPad, people were shocked at how cheap it was. People knew the iPad was coming and were predicting it would start at $1000, easily. It cost $500.<p>Leaving out driverless car tech, which I&#x27;m not sure whether Apple will have ready for launch, I think the Apple Car will look and function like a $100,000 car - but will cost <i>significantly</i> less. Say, half the price. Ive, in a recent interview, spoke about how he hated so many cars on the road. Not because they were cheap, but because they were poorly designed and put together with such little care. I think, unless he&#x27;s gone off the deep end into the luxury market (which he very well may have!) he would want to produce a car that is really great - but still affordable enough that lots of people will be able to afford it[1].<p>All of that being said, and no matter how much Apple cares about the mass market, Apple will want to keep their high margins. They&#x27;ll need to bring down manufacturing costs considerably. However, if anyone can do it, it&#x27;s Tim Cook. He&#x27;s well known for being a wizard at managing supply chains. Perhaps it&#x27;ll be their first product assembled entirely by robots, who knows.<p>We&#x27;ll see what happens but if Apple are able to produce a very high quality car at a reasonable price, I suspect that it will be extremely disruptive. In the UK at least, pretty much every car under £30,000 is utter garbage. I&#x27;d love it if Apple could change that.<p>[1] I suspect, as with Apple Watch, there will also be a high-end version of an Apple Car. It will probably have the same functionality (i.e. it won&#x27;t just be a super-car) but will have extras, like a Hermès leather interior. I, for one, look forward to customising a car like a new Macbook - current car customisation screens are a pain (besides Tesla, actually, theirs isn&#x27;t too bad).
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jbob2000over 9 years ago
I am very interested in what this car will look and behave like. Until Tesla, automobile interface design was pretty stagnant; Knobs and switches for everything!<p>Apple has been very focused on virtual interfaces lately, I wonder what their return to physical will look like.
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gnivover 9 years ago
This is fantastic news. I wish more companies would get into this. Google, Facebook, Microsoft. Every company that has a ton of cash should consider doing it. Tesla proved that it&#x27;s viable, so the hard work has been done. And building an electric car from scratch is not nearly as daunting as an ICE car. The car companies are heavily incentivized to not do it, so to me it&#x27;s a great opportunity to get in early in a high-growth industry.
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mellingover 9 years ago
Some sites are reporting that 600 people are working on the project and they will be tripling that number to 1800 people:<p><a href="http:&#x2F;&#x2F;appleinsider.com&#x2F;articles&#x2F;15&#x2F;09&#x2F;21&#x2F;apple-has-target-ship-date-of-2019-for-electric-car-project-but-it-wont-be-self-driving---report" rel="nofollow">http:&#x2F;&#x2F;appleinsider.com&#x2F;articles&#x2F;15&#x2F;09&#x2F;21&#x2F;apple-has-target-s...</a><p>[Update]<p>Actually, the WSJ also reported. Guess other sites are reprinting.
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127001brewerover 9 years ago
I have a hard time believing that Apple would manufacture an electric car, especially one, according to the article, that had an initial design resembling a minivan.<p>It&#x27;s well known that Jonathan Ive and Marc Newson are &quot;car guys&quot;[1], so perhaps it will be a vehicle similar to the Cube[2] - meaning it will have a very low production run - while the underlying technologies, such the batteries, are sold to other manufacturers.<p>1: <a href="http:&#x2F;&#x2F;www.newyorker.com&#x2F;magazine&#x2F;2015&#x2F;02&#x2F;23&#x2F;shape-things-come" rel="nofollow">http:&#x2F;&#x2F;www.newyorker.com&#x2F;magazine&#x2F;2015&#x2F;02&#x2F;23&#x2F;shape-things-co...</a> 2: <a href="http:&#x2F;&#x2F;www.macworld.com&#x2F;article&#x2F;1153341&#x2F;cube_10thanniversary.html" rel="nofollow">http:&#x2F;&#x2F;www.macworld.com&#x2F;article&#x2F;1153341&#x2F;cube_10thanniversary...</a>
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mortenjorckover 9 years ago
The more real this becomes, the more it starts to feel like the R&amp;D sprawl of the Michael Spindler years. Yet it&#x27;s not: This categorically isn&#x27;t sprawl because it&#x27;s focused on one hugely ambitious thing, and unlike the Apple of the early 90s, even if Apple literally puts ten billion dollars into this project and it fails, they come out with 190 billion left to continue running a successful consumer electronics business. And if it succeeds, of course, Apple becomes a major player in a socio-technological revolution for the third time.
jreed91over 9 years ago
I&#x27;d recommend listening to this podcast from Horace Dediu about how apple can differentiate themselves.<p><a href="http:&#x2F;&#x2F;www.asymco.com&#x2F;2015&#x2F;03&#x2F;11&#x2F;the-critical-path-143-moving-parts&#x2F;#disqus_thread" rel="nofollow">http:&#x2F;&#x2F;www.asymco.com&#x2F;2015&#x2F;03&#x2F;11&#x2F;the-critical-path-143-movin...</a>
sixQuarksover 9 years ago
I think Apple has jumped the shark. They&#x27;re venturing into areas where they are going to get swamped down, lose tons of money, lose focus.<p>Without the vision of Steve Jobs, I&#x27;m afraid they don&#x27;t have what it takes to pull this off.
leeleeleeover 9 years ago
The old Apple would set out to create a paradigm shift in how humans travel and view transportation (instead of just jumping on the EV bandwagon).
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inmyunixover 9 years ago
surely there are people here who personally know someone on the project...
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6d6b73over 9 years ago
Will it have Retina Windshield?
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worikover 9 years ago
Paywalled
pragoneover 9 years ago
Wanna give a non-paywalled synopsis for those of us without a WSJ subscription?<p>Edit: Mass-reply: Thanks all! Learn something new every day.<p>For those looking for the same thing, go here, click first link. Should bypass the paywall: <a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;www.google.com&#x2F;search?q=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.wsj.com%2Farticles%2Fapple-speeds-up-electric-car-work-1442857105" rel="nofollow">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;www.google.com&#x2F;search?q=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.wsj.com%2Fa...</a>
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ShakataGaNaiover 9 years ago
Colbert just had Tim Cook on his show (this past Tuesday) and put him on the spot about this very topic. Maybe related?
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