7 ms·

I believe the goal here is an electric car with autonomous features, branded similar to the S-Class or the new E-Class (instead of going all the way like Tesla'

by arjunrc 10y ago

I believe the goal here is an electric car with autonomous features, branded similar to the S-Class or the new E-Class (instead of going all the way like Tesla's AutoPilot).

pgodzin 10y ago
What's the point of that? Why would Apple want to make such a huge bet on an industry they have never been in just to create an incremental improvement on cars already billed as luxury items? If they proceed with the Apple Car, I would imagine it would be a disrupting concept that Apple would be uniquely prepared to handle.
- nostromo 10y ago
  > No wireless. Less space than a nomad. Lame. Apple could release a car that has fewer features than a Tesla or Mercedes, and if it was designed very well, with seamless integration with the iPhone, lots of people would buy it.
  - tammer 10y ago
    The real evidence of this is the news today of Ford (as far as I know last of the major car companies with presence in the US) incorporating CarPlay into their console software. I've heard the reason for the swift industry-wide uptake of the platform is very high consumer demand - even to the point of driving the purchasing choice for a number of customers.
    - atonse 10y ago
      It was a non-trivial factor in my picking a Kia to lease. I'm not a car person so I mostly can't tell the difference in power, nor do I need it, from other cars. I didn't care about reliability since it was a lease. But I did care that I had to use yet another shitty car-company interface, so having CarPlay support was a huge plus. The car companies brought this on themselves by designing such bad software for their in-dash systems.
      - serge2k 10y ago
        > I'm not a car person so I mostly can't tell the difference in power Bet you could if you tried. ;) I really like my car. It's comfortable, I like driving it. I really really really really hate the fucking sync software. It's just awful. Full of the stupidest bugs. I don't even have the full nav version, I have the smaller radio system. If I could find a decent replacement console that let me keep my climate controls (physical HVAC controls are a must. no touchscreen BS) I'd upgrade to carplay.
        atonse 10y ago
        Sorry, to be clear, I couldn't tell a difference between the 3 Compact SUVs I drove. :) I drove a Tesla and it was like a dream.
      - mikestew 10y ago
        I'm not a car person so I mostly can't tell the difference in power, nor do I need it, from other cars. If you lived close, I'd take you for a ride in our 4000lb. VW camper van that cranks out a massive 68 horsepower. You'll notice the difference on the first hill we encounter. :-) (I take your point, though; I've a similar attitude: if I want to go fast, I'll get on the motorcycle and do it right, otherwise I don't care much.) But I did care that I had to use yet another shitty car-company interface, so having CarPlay support was a huge plus. Between rental cars and our Nissan Leaf with it's fucking abysmal in-dash UI, I've decided that any car we buy from here on out will have CarPlay or no deal. I'm just not going to put up with crappy car UIs anymore. Plopping a CarPlay-compatible dash unit in our old Scion xB was a revelation. Nothing earth-shattering in CarPlay, but it's familiar and non-annoying. I was driving my Mom's new '16 Corvette, and having not memorized central Florida roads, I found the UI to be annoying as usual. In fact, I can't remember if I ever found the navigation function. What I do remember is tripping across the CarPlay icon on the dash and thinking, "thank $DEITY!"
        coredog64 10y ago
        A CarPlay-compatible dash unit is what, $500 installed at the most? Don't buy floor mats and undercoating at the dealer and whatever car you buy next can have CarPlay.
  - Steko 10y ago
    Apple could sell a lot simply by offering a superior car buying experience. While others have tried/done this, the median car buying experience is still as garbage as it's ever been.
    - lastyearman 10y ago
      Buying a new car is a nightmare. You start with a baseline model and think that's not too bad, tick some reasonable boxes and whoops, your car is now twice as expensive. Usually buying something is a pleasant experience but when it comes to cars? Hell no. If they just offered one model that has everything and you pick the color, pay a monthly fee and they'd take care of the maintenance, insurance and whatnot.
      - ghaff 10y ago
        Honestly, if you handle your own financing so that doesn't get mixed into the deal, have a hard and fast value in mind for a potential trade-in, and go to a no-haggle dealer, I'm not sure how it's a nightmare. The experience is probably better buying higher-end cars but if you know what you want, what its price is, and get a bank check for what you owe, there are a lot worse experiences. The reason a lot of people have bad experiences is that they're trying to buy something that they can't really afford, they need financing, and have a trade-in they want to be worth more than it is and the whole transaction becomes this complicated shell game.
        Steko 10y ago
        > Honestly, if you handle your own financing so that doesn't get mixed into the deal, have a hard and fast value in mind for a potential trade-in, and go to a no-haggle dealer, You just described less than 1% of car transactions.
        ghaff 10y ago
        But not 1% of transactions that involve high end buyers and high end cars. As soon as you bring ordinary people and the mass market into the mix many of the "horrible things" inevitably emerge. Sure you can and do have no haggle dealers who could offer take it or leave it finance options and trade ins. But I wonder how many mainstream car buying customers would consider that an improvement when told "that's what the car costs. Sorry if it doesn't fit your budget." ADDED: I'm sure the experience of buying a Tesla is nice. But it's nice in the context of people who are not going in with no dollars to put down who want to find a way to get themselves into a Tesla.
- jms18 10y ago
  Ballmer in a 2007 interview with USA Today: "There's no chance that the iPhone is going to get any significant market share. No chance. It's a $500 subsidized item. They may make a lot of money. But if you actually take a look at the 1.3 billion phones that get sold, I'd prefer to have our software in 60% or 70% or 80% of them, than I would to have 2% or 3%, which is what Apple might get." Palm CEO Ed Colligan in 2006: "We’ve learned and struggled for a few years here figuring out how to make a decent phone," he said. "[Apple is] not going to just figure this out. They’re not going to just walk in."
  - mikeash 10y ago
    They laughed at Einstein, but they also laughed at Bozo the Clown. A smartphone was solidly within Apple's expertise in 2007. It's a small consumer electronics device (iPod, Mac) with a graphical UI (Mac OS X). Apple had tons of experience building (or more accurately, outsourcing the building of) small electronics. What was tricky about the iPhone was the RF stuff, getting the carriers to cooperate, and cutting data usage to squeeze into the crappy data plans available. Except RF stuff is nearly off-the-shelf, and Apple cut the Gordian Knot for the other two items by partnering with an underdog carrier in exchange for unlimited data plans. A car is far outside Apple's expertise. Are they going to outsource it to Foxconn like they do with the iPhone, and ship them across the Pacific? Doesn't seem feasible. Will they buy or build their own factory? Doable, but totally new for them. What about sales, service, and support? The iPhone was able to use Apple's extensive network of existing retail stores for that, but cars need garages and mechanics. Obviously, it can be done. Tesla pulled it off with far less. But there's plenty of room for Apple to crash and burn, too. (Figuratively, one hopes.)
    - baddox 10y ago
      > Are they going to outsource it to Foxconn like they do with the iPhone, and ship them across the Pacific? Doesn't seem feasible. I have no idea, but they seem to be pretty good at outsourcing manufacturing where it makes sense to do so. I don't see that as a significant blocker to an Apple automobile.
      - 10y ago
- Roritharr 10y ago
  I think it has to do with the car industry being the best out of a bunch of bad options. You simply don't need the kind of liquidity Apple has on hand to run a business with the current Product Lineup Apple has on offer. Sure they could do more here and there, but compared to the insane amounts of capital Apple has, any effort in the computing/telco space is just pocketchange. If Apple ventures out of computing and into areas that need that kind of capital to be feasible, you start comparing lots of medium to low margin industries, the car industry being one of them. When you look at Apple's brand, company focus and in-house experience, there's only a few industries where diving into could make it a relatively safe bet for the capital involved. Cars make sense because they are complex technology, already very brand and UX focused in their usual sales processes, and there is a lot of money to be made in the optimization of the supply chain, all things which Apple is second to none. There were surely other options and I imagine are still being discussed in Cupertino. Large Scale Urban Development seems like a similar viable candidate, but the salescycles and product lifecycles are probably too much at odds with the rest of Apples business. But the prospect of an build to order Apple Campus must seem quite exciting to some people that are having a blast building the new spaceship. Among other industries, i could also imagine the Hotel industry being on their marks for similar reasons.
  - coredog64 10y ago
    That supply chain optimization comes at the cost of having to fight 50 pitched political battles with some very entrenched interests (dealerships).
    - csours 10y ago
      The supply chain is on the other end of the process from the dealerships. Supply chain -> Assembly (manufacturing) -> sales (Dealership)
    - Bluestrike2 10y ago
      I can't see Apple (or any other car startup, for that matter) going any where near the dealership model. There are too many problems with it and too little flexibility. If it weren't for legacy agreements that effectively hamstring manufacturers, it's likely that there would have been some significant changes made years ago. Anyhow, Tesla has already done the hard work of confronting it and making consumers aware of an alternative. The biggest problem will be dealing with their influence over state legislatures. Tesla already upset dealerships; the idea of someone like Apple (with their capital on hand, experience, and influence at the federal level) following in Tesla's footsteps will be enough to terrify dealerships into some pretty heavy-handed action. As for the supply chains, there are a lot of differences between the supply chain for consumer electronics manufacturing and automobile parts, but Apple's experience is still intensely relevant. I think it's likely that they'll have a lot of successes in dealing with it, despite those differences.
- skewart 10y ago
  My guess is they will rethink what a "car" fundamentally is all about. They'll create a vehicle that has new features that play to their strengths, even if the "car-ness" isn't a big improvement on existing models in the market. Back when the iPhone first came out a lot of people dismissed it because it wasn't a very good phone - the audio quality and reception tended to be worse than a good Nokia. Who cares if it has all these extra whiz-bang features like a touch screen and a web browser if it's not a very good phone, the thinking went. A lot of people didn't appreciate that Apple was creating a communication and information retrieval device, and not just a traditional phone with some extra features. I suspect Apple will create a car that provides a great experience for people getting from point A to point B. It will probably not be a great car to drive. But it will probably be an awesome car for passengers. My guess is that they are betting that there will be more passengers relative to drivers over the next decade or two, and that passengers will, in a perhaps indirect way, become a bigger force in car buying decisions than they have been in the past. So, by the metrics traditionally used to compare cars it will probably be only an incremental improvement over existing models - or it might even be a step backwards. But by the metrics that we'll use to evaluate cars in ten or fifteen years it will be an amazing improvement.
  - pgodzin 10y ago
    > But it will probably be an awesome car for passengers. Isn't fully autonomous the goal precisely for this reason?
    - skewart 10y ago
      It is. And the move towards autonomous cars is part of the reason why there will be more passengers relative to drivers on the road. But it's not the only factor, or the only way to improve the passenger experience. For example, I'd gladly forget about Lyft and Uber and use a new ride service if their drivers all had cars that offered me a better experience than what a Toyota Camry provides today. Also, in-car entertainment has become hugely popular for family cars like mini/sport-utility vans. My guess is that Apple will create an in-car infotainment system that makes current systems look like phone web browsers from 2005.
- wvenable 10y ago
  Isn't that what they did with the smartphone market? The big difference is that the iPhone is a computer running OS X -- all things Apple has huge experience with. A car is something they have no experience with.
  - martin_bech 10y ago
    I drive a Tesla daily, its basicly an iPhone on wheels.
    - wvenable 10y ago
      Would you argue the most significant part is that big tablet in the middle or the combination of the wheels, steering, axles, interior upholstery, steel frame, aluminum body panels, battery, etc? Apple hasn't manufactured anything larger than can be easily Fedex'd. It seems like calling the Tesla an iPhone on wheels misses nearly all of the significant details.
      - PhantomGremlin 10y ago
        wheels, steering, axles, interior upholstery, steel frame, aluminum body panels, battery, etc Musk has made the point that a lot of that stuff can be purchased from or outsourced to third parties. Which is what the traditional car companies now do. Which is what Tesla does. The traditional manufacturers maintained their expertise in engines, but, ironically, that's one thing that Tesla had absolutely no use for anyway. That being said, I do share your skepticism.
- simonebrunozzi 10y ago
  Why Apple went into music with the iPod? Well... The rest is history.
- jpalomaki 10y ago
  Bringing something truly disruptive to the automobile market could be impossible. There's so many companies actively working with cars that maybe there is no room for disruption. Think about the smart watch market. Many other companies are iterating their products in public. Apple couldn't really surprise the customers with their product. Maybe they build a better product than others, but it was no iPad (which took the whole market by surprise).
  - pgodzin 10y ago
    Agreed. But building a smart watch isn't that much different than building an iPhone. It's quite a jump to car manufacturer.
- kalleboo 10y ago
  > If they proceed with the Apple Car, I would imagine it would be a disrupting concept that Apple would be uniquely prepared to handle. That's what people thought about the Apple Watch as well, but it seems these days Apple is content with releasing products that simply complement their portfolio rather than create new markets
  - pgodzin 10y ago
    Evolutionary consumer electronics. The infrastructure and ecosystem they already had in place was easily adapted to manufacturing the watches. I really can't see a marginally better car ever being worth the gigantic entry cost to the market.
boznz 10y ago
Source? Only rumor and speculation on the internet at the moment
dexwiz 10y ago
Apple's goal is to make the first well polished version on the market, and then claim they invented it. Looking at MP3Players/Smartphones/TabletsWithPens.
thevibesman 10y ago
I have a feeling Apple might be working on a completely autonomous design; one that would not be legal to be tested on public roads due to current laws requiring human UI elements such as steering wheels and pedals.
scoot 10y ago
> "instead of going all the way like Tesla's AutoPilot" The name "AutoPilot" is misleading - it's anything but. An advanced lan-assist, sure, but compared to google, Tesla's technology is very far from going all the way.
ams6110 10y ago
I am guessing not a full EV but a hybrid. Full EVs still have competitive vulnerability in range and refueling time. And they likely will for the next decade at least. It's the reason that EVs are still off the table for me. Something in an innovative hybrid, like a Volt but better designed, would be much more interesting to me.
mikeryan 10y ago
I don't believe that at all. I'd guess fully autonomous and fully electric. I mean everyone here can see the writing on the wall that this kind of thing that is going to happen. If I'm Apple I skate to where the puck is going to be.

by arjunrc 10y ago

I believe the goal here is an electric car with autonomous features, branded similar to the S-Class or the new E-Class (instead of going all the way like Tesla's AutoPilot).

pgodzin 10y ago

What's the point of that? Why would Apple want to make such a huge bet on an industry they have never been in just to create an incremental improvement on cars already billed as luxury items? If they proceed with the Apple Car, I would imagine it would be a disrupting concept that Apple would be uniquely prepared to handle.

nostromo 10y ago
> No wireless. Less space than a nomad. Lame. Apple could release a car that has fewer features than a Tesla or Mercedes, and if it was designed very well, with seamless integration with the iPhone, lots of people would buy it.
- tammer 10y ago
  The real evidence of this is the news today of Ford (as far as I know last of the major car companies with presence in the US) incorporating CarPlay into their console software. I've heard the reason for the swift industry-wide uptake of the platform is very high consumer demand - even to the point of driving the purchasing choice for a number of customers.
  - atonse 10y ago
    It was a non-trivial factor in my picking a Kia to lease. I'm not a car person so I mostly can't tell the difference in power, nor do I need it, from other cars. I didn't care about reliability since it was a lease. But I did care that I had to use yet another shitty car-company interface, so having CarPlay support was a huge plus. The car companies brought this on themselves by designing such bad software for their in-dash systems.
    - serge2k 10y ago
      > I'm not a car person so I mostly can't tell the difference in power Bet you could if you tried. ;) I really like my car. It's comfortable, I like driving it. I really really really really hate the fucking sync software. It's just awful. Full of the stupidest bugs. I don't even have the full nav version, I have the smaller radio system. If I could find a decent replacement console that let me keep my climate controls (physical HVAC controls are a must. no touchscreen BS) I'd upgrade to carplay.
      - atonse 10y ago
        Sorry, to be clear, I couldn't tell a difference between the 3 Compact SUVs I drove. :) I drove a Tesla and it was like a dream.
    - mikestew 10y ago
      I'm not a car person so I mostly can't tell the difference in power, nor do I need it, from other cars. If you lived close, I'd take you for a ride in our 4000lb. VW camper van that cranks out a massive 68 horsepower. You'll notice the difference on the first hill we encounter. :-) (I take your point, though; I've a similar attitude: if I want to go fast, I'll get on the motorcycle and do it right, otherwise I don't care much.) But I did care that I had to use yet another shitty car-company interface, so having CarPlay support was a huge plus. Between rental cars and our Nissan Leaf with it's fucking abysmal in-dash UI, I've decided that any car we buy from here on out will have CarPlay or no deal. I'm just not going to put up with crappy car UIs anymore. Plopping a CarPlay-compatible dash unit in our old Scion xB was a revelation. Nothing earth-shattering in CarPlay, but it's familiar and non-annoying. I was driving my Mom's new '16 Corvette, and having not memorized central Florida roads, I found the UI to be annoying as usual. In fact, I can't remember if I ever found the navigation function. What I do remember is tripping across the CarPlay icon on the dash and thinking, "thank $DEITY!"
      - coredog64 10y ago
        A CarPlay-compatible dash unit is what, $500 installed at the most? Don't buy floor mats and undercoating at the dealer and whatever car you buy next can have CarPlay.
- Steko 10y ago
  Apple could sell a lot simply by offering a superior car buying experience. While others have tried/done this, the median car buying experience is still as garbage as it's ever been.
  - lastyearman 10y ago
    Buying a new car is a nightmare. You start with a baseline model and think that's not too bad, tick some reasonable boxes and whoops, your car is now twice as expensive. Usually buying something is a pleasant experience but when it comes to cars? Hell no. If they just offered one model that has everything and you pick the color, pay a monthly fee and they'd take care of the maintenance, insurance and whatnot.
    - ghaff 10y ago
      Honestly, if you handle your own financing so that doesn't get mixed into the deal, have a hard and fast value in mind for a potential trade-in, and go to a no-haggle dealer, I'm not sure how it's a nightmare. The experience is probably better buying higher-end cars but if you know what you want, what its price is, and get a bank check for what you owe, there are a lot worse experiences. The reason a lot of people have bad experiences is that they're trying to buy something that they can't really afford, they need financing, and have a trade-in they want to be worth more than it is and the whole transaction becomes this complicated shell game.
      - Steko 10y ago
        > Honestly, if you handle your own financing so that doesn't get mixed into the deal, have a hard and fast value in mind for a potential trade-in, and go to a no-haggle dealer, You just described less than 1% of car transactions.
        ghaff 10y ago
        But not 1% of transactions that involve high end buyers and high end cars. As soon as you bring ordinary people and the mass market into the mix many of the "horrible things" inevitably emerge. Sure you can and do have no haggle dealers who could offer take it or leave it finance options and trade ins. But I wonder how many mainstream car buying customers would consider that an improvement when told "that's what the car costs. Sorry if it doesn't fit your budget." ADDED: I'm sure the experience of buying a Tesla is nice. But it's nice in the context of people who are not going in with no dollars to put down who want to find a way to get themselves into a Tesla.
jms18 10y ago
Ballmer in a 2007 interview with USA Today: "There's no chance that the iPhone is going to get any significant market share. No chance. It's a $500 subsidized item. They may make a lot of money. But if you actually take a look at the 1.3 billion phones that get sold, I'd prefer to have our software in 60% or 70% or 80% of them, than I would to have 2% or 3%, which is what Apple might get." Palm CEO Ed Colligan in 2006: "We’ve learned and struggled for a few years here figuring out how to make a decent phone," he said. "[Apple is] not going to just figure this out. They’re not going to just walk in."
- mikeash 10y ago
  They laughed at Einstein, but they also laughed at Bozo the Clown. A smartphone was solidly within Apple's expertise in 2007. It's a small consumer electronics device (iPod, Mac) with a graphical UI (Mac OS X). Apple had tons of experience building (or more accurately, outsourcing the building of) small electronics. What was tricky about the iPhone was the RF stuff, getting the carriers to cooperate, and cutting data usage to squeeze into the crappy data plans available. Except RF stuff is nearly off-the-shelf, and Apple cut the Gordian Knot for the other two items by partnering with an underdog carrier in exchange for unlimited data plans. A car is far outside Apple's expertise. Are they going to outsource it to Foxconn like they do with the iPhone, and ship them across the Pacific? Doesn't seem feasible. Will they buy or build their own factory? Doable, but totally new for them. What about sales, service, and support? The iPhone was able to use Apple's extensive network of existing retail stores for that, but cars need garages and mechanics. Obviously, it can be done. Tesla pulled it off with far less. But there's plenty of room for Apple to crash and burn, too. (Figuratively, one hopes.)
  - baddox 10y ago
    > Are they going to outsource it to Foxconn like they do with the iPhone, and ship them across the Pacific? Doesn't seem feasible. I have no idea, but they seem to be pretty good at outsourcing manufacturing where it makes sense to do so. I don't see that as a significant blocker to an Apple automobile.
    - 10y ago
Roritharr 10y ago
I think it has to do with the car industry being the best out of a bunch of bad options. You simply don't need the kind of liquidity Apple has on hand to run a business with the current Product Lineup Apple has on offer. Sure they could do more here and there, but compared to the insane amounts of capital Apple has, any effort in the computing/telco space is just pocketchange. If Apple ventures out of computing and into areas that need that kind of capital to be feasible, you start comparing lots of medium to low margin industries, the car industry being one of them. When you look at Apple's brand, company focus and in-house experience, there's only a few industries where diving into could make it a relatively safe bet for the capital involved. Cars make sense because they are complex technology, already very brand and UX focused in their usual sales processes, and there is a lot of money to be made in the optimization of the supply chain, all things which Apple is second to none. There were surely other options and I imagine are still being discussed in Cupertino. Large Scale Urban Development seems like a similar viable candidate, but the salescycles and product lifecycles are probably too much at odds with the rest of Apples business. But the prospect of an build to order Apple Campus must seem quite exciting to some people that are having a blast building the new spaceship. Among other industries, i could also imagine the Hotel industry being on their marks for similar reasons.
- coredog64 10y ago
  That supply chain optimization comes at the cost of having to fight 50 pitched political battles with some very entrenched interests (dealerships).
  - csours 10y ago
    The supply chain is on the other end of the process from the dealerships. Supply chain -> Assembly (manufacturing) -> sales (Dealership)
  - Bluestrike2 10y ago
    I can't see Apple (or any other car startup, for that matter) going any where near the dealership model. There are too many problems with it and too little flexibility. If it weren't for legacy agreements that effectively hamstring manufacturers, it's likely that there would have been some significant changes made years ago. Anyhow, Tesla has already done the hard work of confronting it and making consumers aware of an alternative. The biggest problem will be dealing with their influence over state legislatures. Tesla already upset dealerships; the idea of someone like Apple (with their capital on hand, experience, and influence at the federal level) following in Tesla's footsteps will be enough to terrify dealerships into some pretty heavy-handed action. As for the supply chains, there are a lot of differences between the supply chain for consumer electronics manufacturing and automobile parts, but Apple's experience is still intensely relevant. I think it's likely that they'll have a lot of successes in dealing with it, despite those differences.
skewart 10y ago
My guess is they will rethink what a "car" fundamentally is all about. They'll create a vehicle that has new features that play to their strengths, even if the "car-ness" isn't a big improvement on existing models in the market. Back when the iPhone first came out a lot of people dismissed it because it wasn't a very good phone - the audio quality and reception tended to be worse than a good Nokia. Who cares if it has all these extra whiz-bang features like a touch screen and a web browser if it's not a very good phone, the thinking went. A lot of people didn't appreciate that Apple was creating a communication and information retrieval device, and not just a traditional phone with some extra features. I suspect Apple will create a car that provides a great experience for people getting from point A to point B. It will probably not be a great car to drive. But it will probably be an awesome car for passengers. My guess is that they are betting that there will be more passengers relative to drivers over the next decade or two, and that passengers will, in a perhaps indirect way, become a bigger force in car buying decisions than they have been in the past. So, by the metrics traditionally used to compare cars it will probably be only an incremental improvement over existing models - or it might even be a step backwards. But by the metrics that we'll use to evaluate cars in ten or fifteen years it will be an amazing improvement.
- pgodzin 10y ago
  > But it will probably be an awesome car for passengers. Isn't fully autonomous the goal precisely for this reason?
  - skewart 10y ago
    It is. And the move towards autonomous cars is part of the reason why there will be more passengers relative to drivers on the road. But it's not the only factor, or the only way to improve the passenger experience. For example, I'd gladly forget about Lyft and Uber and use a new ride service if their drivers all had cars that offered me a better experience than what a Toyota Camry provides today. Also, in-car entertainment has become hugely popular for family cars like mini/sport-utility vans. My guess is that Apple will create an in-car infotainment system that makes current systems look like phone web browsers from 2005.
wvenable 10y ago
Isn't that what they did with the smartphone market? The big difference is that the iPhone is a computer running OS X -- all things Apple has huge experience with. A car is something they have no experience with.
- martin_bech 10y ago
  I drive a Tesla daily, its basicly an iPhone on wheels.
  - wvenable 10y ago
    Would you argue the most significant part is that big tablet in the middle or the combination of the wheels, steering, axles, interior upholstery, steel frame, aluminum body panels, battery, etc? Apple hasn't manufactured anything larger than can be easily Fedex'd. It seems like calling the Tesla an iPhone on wheels misses nearly all of the significant details.
    - PhantomGremlin 10y ago
      wheels, steering, axles, interior upholstery, steel frame, aluminum body panels, battery, etc Musk has made the point that a lot of that stuff can be purchased from or outsourced to third parties. Which is what the traditional car companies now do. Which is what Tesla does. The traditional manufacturers maintained their expertise in engines, but, ironically, that's one thing that Tesla had absolutely no use for anyway. That being said, I do share your skepticism.
simonebrunozzi 10y ago
Why Apple went into music with the iPod? Well... The rest is history.
jpalomaki 10y ago
Bringing something truly disruptive to the automobile market could be impossible. There's so many companies actively working with cars that maybe there is no room for disruption. Think about the smart watch market. Many other companies are iterating their products in public. Apple couldn't really surprise the customers with their product. Maybe they build a better product than others, but it was no iPad (which took the whole market by surprise).
- pgodzin 10y ago
  Agreed. But building a smart watch isn't that much different than building an iPhone. It's quite a jump to car manufacturer.
kalleboo 10y ago
> If they proceed with the Apple Car, I would imagine it would be a disrupting concept that Apple would be uniquely prepared to handle. That's what people thought about the Apple Watch as well, but it seems these days Apple is content with releasing products that simply complement their portfolio rather than create new markets
- pgodzin 10y ago
  Evolutionary consumer electronics. The infrastructure and ecosystem they already had in place was easily adapted to manufacturing the watches. I really can't see a marginally better car ever being worth the gigantic entry cost to the market.

boznz 10y ago

Source? Only rumor and speculation on the internet at the moment

dexwiz 10y ago

Apple's goal is to make the first well polished version on the market, and then claim they invented it. Looking at MP3Players/Smartphones/TabletsWithPens.

thevibesman 10y ago

I have a feeling Apple might be working on a completely autonomous design; one that would not be legal to be tested on public roads due to current laws requiring human UI elements such as steering wheels and pedals.

scoot 10y ago

> "instead of going all the way like Tesla's AutoPilot" The name "AutoPilot" is misleading - it's anything but. An advanced lan-assist, sure, but compared to google, Tesla's technology is very far from going all the way.

ams6110 10y ago

I am guessing not a full EV but a hybrid. Full EVs still have competitive vulnerability in range and refueling time. And they likely will for the next decade at least. It's the reason that EVs are still off the table for me. Something in an innovative hybrid, like a Volt but better designed, would be much more interesting to me.

mikeryan 10y ago

I don't believe that at all. I'd guess fully autonomous and fully electric. I mean everyone here can see the writing on the wall that this kind of thing that is going to happen. If I'm Apple I skate to where the puck is going to be.