Did Apple ever really have a "titanic plan to take on Detroit?" There's no indication that they even built a prototype chassis. This may just be mis-reporting of autonomous vehicle R&D.<p>Apple's strength in automatic driving should be the development of better, and better-looking, sensors. Apple does electronics and small hardware well. Those Velodyne LIDAR things are rotating kludges, look awful, and cost way too much.
There are better approaches known. (I'm a fan of the Advanced Scientific Concepts LIDAR, which works great but costs too much because it's made by PhD physicists in Santa Barbara.) Existing automotive radars are dumber than they could be. Those are straightforward engineering problems that Apple could solve.<p>Building cars is a low-margin business. If Apple became a successful car company, their stock would decline.
Speaking from Michigan and not Silicon Valley I've got to wonder which auto manufacturer would buy Apple's software?<p>All the major manufacturers have announced programs for self-driving cars except Fiat/Chrysler. They mention Ford which has stated they will be in production by 2019.<p>Now I would suppose if Ford, GM, Mercedes, Toyoto or any of the Chinese car makers were to have their software fail Apple might be an awfully nice fallback.<p>FYI Ford learned massively from its problems with Microsoft's Sync technology. All the engineers knew it would be a complete disaster but that news wasn't passed up to the execs. Now engineers have been brought into the process.<p><a href="http://www.detroitnews.com/story/business/autos/ford/2016/10/06/myford-touch-system-suit/91704242/" rel="nofollow">http://www.detroitnews.com/story/business/autos/ford/2016/10...</a>
Apple's move into auto seems to have been about recruiting. For a brief time some of the most talented young engineers were favoring Tesla over Apple because the mission was more interesting.
<i>By the end of 2015, the project was blighted by internal strife. Managers battled about the project’s direction, according to people with knowledge of the operations. “It was an incredible failure of leadership,” one of the people said.</i><p>This is in stark contrast to the compartmentalization of new projects that Apple under Steve Jobs was able to accomplish with the development of the Macintosh and the iPhone. Is this evidence that Apple is unable to do that now?
The sheer complexity of establishing a car brand is not what it used to be, but it's still something on the order of nation-state hard - I have a source who used to work an Hyundai back before the S. Korean economy crashed in the Asian Tigers mess ( he then emigrated to the US ) and the car-making experience in Korea was akin to war by his lights.<p>Since he was also in the Korean Marines, I trust his judgement.
Good!<p>Maybe they can get back to making some new laptops, and some desktops (Mac Pro, Mac Mini), that don't suck!<p>We shall see what October brings.
I think Detroit and other manufactures are fearful of automation. If you ask them what the future looks like its driving assist technology. Fully automated driving kills the emotional experience that is used to sell cars.
The dilemma here is this - make your own car or partner with a manufacturer.<p>Partnership means smaller profit margin in a very tight market. The Big 3 for example barely make any money when selling cars (as opposed to pickups) these days, so to get a reasonable margin the price would need to be jacked up...<p>Making your own - the barrier to entry in that industry is VERY high which the article kind of alludes to talking about how it's hard to find suppliers willing to sell small batches of parts etc. There's a reason there aren't that many auto manufacturers around, and the ones that are out there aren't exactly the kinds of revenue generating machines as apples and googles of the world.
A couple of takeaways from this article:<p>Apple has a problem with leadership. When managers aren't buying into a vision, mostly because it's murky at best, that is a big problem.<p>SV hubris believing you can go into any industry and disrupt the incompetent incumbents is laughable. FB found this out with phones and it sounds like Apple and Google are now figuring it out with cars.<p>The Netflix idea works here too: Apple and Google have to become more like GM and BMW before GM and BMW become more like Apple and Google. GM will have an awesome electric with a better range than a Tesla Model 3 this year! If they ever figure out aesthetics and software they will win.<p>Finally this article highlights what Musk has done at Tesla. They are the closest SV company to actually figure out manufacturing. It still remains to be seen but if they do it Tesla will be the market leader in cars.