Dubious supply chain report claims 'Apple Car' will arrive in September 2021
The often-rumored 'Apple Car' could arrive earlier than expected, a dubious report claims, with Apple apparently planning to introduce the self-designed vehicle in September 2021.
The "Apple Car" is a product that has supposedly been in the works for years, regularly surfacing in rumors, patent filings, and analyst speculation.
While it has been thought the vehicle may be years away from being introduced, a new report suggests that Apple may show off its in-development vehicle in the next year.
An element of the Apple supply chain in Taiwan alleges that Apple is making plans to release the Apple Car in September 2021, at least two years earlier than its original intended schedule. Apple is alleged to be rushing shipments through its supply chain, including from Taiwanese car part factories such as Heda, Heqin, Tomita, and BizLink-KY.
The report from the Economic Daily News, first spotted by MacRumors, also claims that other domestic auto part factories are accelerating production, which apparently signifies the "Apple Car" orders are anticipated to happen soon. Mass production by Heqin is expected to expand, with a completion of one relocation task by the end of 2020 and the opening of a fifth workshop for one plant anticipated to finish by the second quarter of 2021.
While the Economic Daily News has a decent track record in regards to what is going on within Apple's supply chain, it is quite poor at predicting release timing. It is entirely plausible that Apple is prodding its supply chain for car part production, but it seems extremely unlikely that it would be for a vehicle that will supposedly launch in 10 months time.
For a start, there is a considerable lead time required to produce vehicles, possibly on a par with iPhone development and production. The sheer number and size of parts for car production would necessitate major production facilities for assembly, which have yet to really appear in supply chain rumors so far.
Other car manufacturers have high levels of secrecy yet leaks for unreleased vehicles surface months ahead of their launch. A similar cycle would be expected for Apple's car if it were in the end-phases of shipping a vehicle.
It is more plausible that Apple's supply chain orders are an initial preparation stage to test the waters before heading into production, or for the creation of a small number of vehicles for testing purposes.
This all leads to it being highly unlikely that Apple would be ready for a September 2021 release of its vehicle. This doesn't discount the possibility of Apple offering a tease for the vehicle at that time, but a release is almost certainly going to be further away than the report claims.
By contrast, the usually more accurate analyst Ming-Chi Kuo has previously suggested that the "Apple Car" will be realised as a shipping consumer product by 2023 at the earliest.
The "Apple Car" is a product that has supposedly been in the works for years, regularly surfacing in rumors, patent filings, and analyst speculation.
While it has been thought the vehicle may be years away from being introduced, a new report suggests that Apple may show off its in-development vehicle in the next year.
An element of the Apple supply chain in Taiwan alleges that Apple is making plans to release the Apple Car in September 2021, at least two years earlier than its original intended schedule. Apple is alleged to be rushing shipments through its supply chain, including from Taiwanese car part factories such as Heda, Heqin, Tomita, and BizLink-KY.
The report from the Economic Daily News, first spotted by MacRumors, also claims that other domestic auto part factories are accelerating production, which apparently signifies the "Apple Car" orders are anticipated to happen soon. Mass production by Heqin is expected to expand, with a completion of one relocation task by the end of 2020 and the opening of a fifth workshop for one plant anticipated to finish by the second quarter of 2021.
While the Economic Daily News has a decent track record in regards to what is going on within Apple's supply chain, it is quite poor at predicting release timing. It is entirely plausible that Apple is prodding its supply chain for car part production, but it seems extremely unlikely that it would be for a vehicle that will supposedly launch in 10 months time.
For a start, there is a considerable lead time required to produce vehicles, possibly on a par with iPhone development and production. The sheer number and size of parts for car production would necessitate major production facilities for assembly, which have yet to really appear in supply chain rumors so far.
Other car manufacturers have high levels of secrecy yet leaks for unreleased vehicles surface months ahead of their launch. A similar cycle would be expected for Apple's car if it were in the end-phases of shipping a vehicle.
It is more plausible that Apple's supply chain orders are an initial preparation stage to test the waters before heading into production, or for the creation of a small number of vehicles for testing purposes.
This all leads to it being highly unlikely that Apple would be ready for a September 2021 release of its vehicle. This doesn't discount the possibility of Apple offering a tease for the vehicle at that time, but a release is almost certainly going to be further away than the report claims.
By contrast, the usually more accurate analyst Ming-Chi Kuo has previously suggested that the "Apple Car" will be realised as a shipping consumer product by 2023 at the earliest.
Comments
In a future where cars are autonomous, why not just maximize the number of people who use their now-hands-free attention to work/play on an iPad or iPhone? Apple really wants to get into a product cycle that, for most people, is 5+ years? If not that particular market, then they intend to compete in the autonomous taxi space?
The delay would in turn permit Apple to do the sort of thorough engineering it favours, especially important in developing systems it has never done before. Reliability, after all, is something important in a vehicle that operates in sometimes severe conditions and being a major expense, must function well over a long period of time. If Apple did release a car with interesting tech that gave owners all manner of problems in prolonged use, the result would not be worth the effort.
Product availability some time in 2023, seems quite doable, if the battery tech is ready for that date. What seems highly unlikely is that we’ll see an Apple car available for purchase in 2021. Teased, maybe, but on sale, no way.
For years, analysts (e.g., Gene Munster) were saying Apple *needed to* have its own, branded television. There were reams of client reports on Apple predicting such a TV, and much analysis after Apple events when no such TV was announced.
What *did* come to market, though, was AppleTV. Apple lets LG, Samsung, Vizio, etc make 3-10% of their televisions, and gets 25-30% on the AppleTV boxes.
The only difference here with “Apple Car” is the manufacturer would buy the product and build it into the car, instead of the end user adding it to the vehicle post-purchase. I envision a spec list of specific models of radar, lidar, and cameras, all connected to a proprietary brain which is analyzing the data with proprietary software. Somewhere in here is a value proposition which involves new technology or a different way of crunching the data which makes it equal or superior to systems like Tesla, but in a car from any brand other than Tesla.
A product like this has the potential to leapfrog some car brands years forward if their internal R&D is behind the competition on automation. Apple won’t get the 25-30% of margin like with AppleTV, but they’ll still do far better than the car manufacturer on the final sale.
Apple gets to keep engineering relatively small (physically) pieces of advanced technology in yearly cycles, having Foxconn (et al) manufacture them, and Apple gets to keep selling directly to a massive Customer population [who own Hondas, Fords, etc.].
What would be wild about this is that it's essentially the opposite of what Apple did with smartphones -- whereas with iPhone, Apple built their own, vertically-integrated experience and Google took the Android approach of just supplying the finishing layer (OS), in this case it would be Tesla building its own, vertically-integrated experience and Apple taking a "just supply the finishing layer" (autonomy) approach.
Not sure if I'm joking.
IF they ever decide to get into the auto industry (any more than they already are with CarPlay), it will be with the real deal. An actual car.
As far as being seen on public roads, Apple owns its own very large private testing area, bought several years ago.
As far as a business proposition, Tesla seems to be doing OK, Rivian and others seem to be making progress, and Apple doesn't even need outside funding to do it. It could be a new division entirely.
So what we have is Apple working on a project that has a high potential to yield benefits regardless of what Apple chooses to do with it over the long haul. It has the resources to contribute to this effort without a payoff for quite a few years, something most companies simply can’t afford.