Don't expect the Apple Car any time soon, says Ming-Chi Kuo

AppleInsider

A second remark from Ming-Chi Kuo on Wednesday suggests that he has lost visibility on the Apple Car, and isn't clear when the vehicle might go into production.

Next-gen CarPlay is all that might emerge from 'Project Titan'

The Apple Car saga has stretched for about a decade at this point. There's never been any doubt that Apple has been working on vehicle technology, but the state of it has waxed and waned throughout the years.

In a post on X on Wednesday, Kuo appears to have "lost all visibility" on the project.

"If Apple doesn't adopt an acquisition strategy to enter the automotive market, I doubt that the Apple Car can go into mass production within the next years," he adds.

This isn't the first time Kuo has poured water on an Apple Car. In March, Kuo said that the Apple Car team had been dissolved, and a 2025 launch was in danger.

The team behind what's reportedly known internally as "Project Titan" have reportedly been disbanded and/or reorganized before. In 2016, Apple placed a hiring freeze on the team following unspecified executives being unhappy with progress.

After Kuo's March prediction of a dissolved Apple Car team, Wedbush analyst Daniel Ives asserted that it was a matter of "when, not if" the product would arrive, and he expected it by 2026.

It's not clear whose predictions about the product are right. For the last decade, the Apple Car is a project that always seems to be three years away -- yet inevitable at the same time.

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ravnorodom

Like Elon Musk said, designing an EV car is easy. Going on mass production is hard.

tht

My fringe speculation is that Apple is just waiting on Foxconn to be able to mass assemble cars after they struck out with an existing auto brand. Foxconn has not made much progress on this, and therefore Apple waits. If some other manufacturer wants to do it for Apple, they will get serious with them.

As long as Tim Cook is CEO, Apple will never own manufacturing plants. Strategic manufacturing equipment, perhaps, but even then, I think it some sort of strange contract where the assembler actually takes care of the equipment and everything.

mistertrick

Apple should have gone and acquired Lucid some years back if they wanted that quick in to the EV market

they still can, but it would be much more expensive and difficult now

eriamjh

My sources say that many suppliers have all laughed at… err, I mean… no-quoted Apple  because they wanted top dollar product at craptastic volumes and dollar store prices.  

The best chance Apple has at making a car is using a company like Magna to build the car (like they do for Fisker), but it still has to be designed and tooled for everything a car needs.  Take designing an iPhone and increase the effort, expertise, and people needed by 100x or more.   

I have zero confidence there will ever be an Apple Car. 

13485

eriamjh said:

My sources say that many suppliers have all laughed at… err, I mean… no-quoted Apple  because they wanted top dollar product at craptastic volumes and dollar store prices.  

The best chance Apple has at making a car is using a company like Magna to build the car (like they do for Fisker), but it still has to be designed and tooled for everything a car needs.  Take designing an iPhone and increase the effort, expertise, and people needed by 100x or more.   

I have zero confidence there will ever be an Apple Car. 

Apple could very well use Magna if they have the capacity, or they could buy Lucid, which has a manufacturing facility in Arizona and is burning through their capital at prodigious rates, sinking their stock to bargain prices. 

As far as how long it takes to bring a car to market, Lucid was founded in 2006, Fisker in 2007, Tesla in 2003. Apple Car began in 2008 under Jobs, and has been designing since then. Tooling doesn't have to take long with various elements of modern manufacturing technology, and many parts are off-the-shelf like everyone else does. I don't think that's the issue.

The real issue is that they never stop re-designing, so no design is final.

eriamjh

Buying lucid is like buying a Porsche, when you want to sell it for the profit margin of a Civic.   You’d have to start over,    

And Lucid isn’t a bargain.   It’s no better than buying a fixer upper, except no one will sell you supplies.   They’d have no better luck renegotiating contacts than Apple could get to begin with.    I could easily be wrong about this, though.   

FileMakerFeller

Given the forecast lack of demand for Vision Pro and all the moaning about how it won't be popular, I'm surprised that we don't hear that same talk about an Apple Car these days. It was one of the things that cropped up with the original Project Titan rumours, but people seem to have dropped it in favour of claiming that the whole project is kaput.

Maybe Apple has decided that once Spatial Computing is widely available the demand for physical travel will be reduced and making a car is no longer the sort of industry it wants/needs to be part of. Possibly the insistence that staff will need to be in the office as much as possible will also be reduced, once the technology improves to the point where group FaceTime chats sufficiently mimic physical presence.

ravnorodom

Another thing about Apple Car is that it will be price at close to $100,000 from looking their own product history. Where as Tesla is trying to go as low as it can. EV ain't cheap comparing to gas.

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eriamjh said:

Buying lucid is like buying a Porsche, when you want to sell it for the profit margin of a Civic.   

That's exactly my point. Lucid already has a modern manufacturing facility already, in the US, and they can be bought for pennies on the dollar for what was initially invested. The Lucid Air car itself is supposed to be quite nice, but production lags far behind pre-purchaser demand. But that car itself may be an afterthought once Apple starts building their own, and takes over existing supply contracts.

And Lucid isn’t a bargain.   It’s no better than buying a fixer upper, except no one will sell you supplies.   They’d have no better luck renegotiating contacts than Apple could get to begin with.    I could easily be wrong about this, though.   

Why will no one sell you supplies? 

Industry wide, there needs to be an economical EV, and that really isn't being met right now, except maybe in China. I'm pretty sure that's not in Apple's DNA, so this whole idea is problematic.