Apple Car expected to arrive sometime before 2030

AppleInsider

The Apple Car is still far from becoming a reality, a report writes, but the vehicle is still expected to make an appearance relatively close to 2030.

Apple's automotive efforts have led to a lot of speculation over the years, prompting rumors and speculation for the vehicle proposing a launch within years. In a Sunday report, it is thought that it is still years from being introduced, but that it could still be out within the current decade.

In the "Power On" newsletter for Bloomberg, Mark Gurman declares "A car is still a ways out." More specifically, Apple is said to not expected to "ship anything until later in the decade" for the project.

Gurman's comment follow another long-way-off proclamation from Ming-Chi Kuo in late September. According to the analyst at the time, he had "lost all visibility" on the project, and had doubts "that the Apple Car can go into mass production within the next years."

In March, Kuo offered that the Apple Car team had been dissolved and that a 2025 launch was in danger.

Sunday's commentary was as part of a discussion following Apple's Q4 2023 financial results. To "truly reinvigorate the business," Apple must create one of its "next big things" for the market, with Apple Car and mixed-reality in the form of Apple Vision Pro the most likely candidates to hit it big financially.

Read on AppleInsider

tht

Uh, Gurman gave a no earlier date of “later in the decade”, basically sometime in the future, while your headline is a no later date of 2030. The two phrases have different meanings. The latter implies Apple is building a car and will ship in 2030.  The former is basically Apple could have a car sometime late this decade or later. 

Apple currently has no plans to ship a car. It’s just a bunch of people doing very low level R&D with no go-ahead to create a product. 

My speculation remains that they are just waiting on Foxconn to be able mass assembled cars built to their design, before an Apple car product can even start. 

There might be an incumbent whose fortunes have waned such they are willing to use their plants to build Apple’s cars, or perhaps a failed new entrant who have gotten to the point of mass producing cars but need more money. 

Apple might go with such a company. Foxconn just seems the most reliable course of action given their history together. 

darkvader

There is no Apple car.  There will not be an Apple car by 2030.  There will probably never be an Apple car.

Apple is not a car company.

loopless

Probably good to wait. The "heat" has gone out of the EV market. Many of the "early" adopters have bought one. Now the rest are saying, why would I pay more to put up with range anxiety and a crappy charging network that still can't charge a vehicle in anything close to the time to "gas" an ICE vehicle. A lot of EV's are sitting on lots.

eriamjh

Apple isn’t “waiting”.  They are probably developing so-called “self-driving” which, as we all know, is not as easily achieved as some have supposed.  

I know that without decent volumes, automotive suppliers of “popcorn” parts, unless they are 100% carryover with no additional costs, were not giving Apple the time of day.   Suppliers don’t work on parts seven years out.   Typical design and validation time is 18-24 months if it’s new.   

Foxconn might build such a car for Apple in Lordstown, but their history is to break promises in the USA (see Wisconsin).   I think Foxconn may built for Fisker, like Magna does.  

Time will tell.  

edited November 2023

blastdoor

Maybe they should do an Apple plane. Air travel, at least in the US, is universally despised. 

alandail

loopless said:

Probably good to wait. The "heat" has gone out of the EV market. Many of the "early" adopters have bought one. Now the rest are saying, why would I pay more to put up with range anxiety and a crappy charging network that still can't charge a vehicle in anything close to the time to "gas" an ICE vehicle. A lot of EV's are sitting on lots.

Nonense. EVs are superior to gas cars and global EV market share is growing rapidly.

Would you own a phone you had to take to a store to charge ever week instead of charging in your house nightly?

Elon and Tesla are doing what Steve Jobs and Apple would have done with an Apple car if Steve were still around. Apple car is becoming increasingly pointless. Apple isn't going to solve self driving without the real world data Tesla has.

zoetmb

loopless said:

Probably good to wait. The "heat" has gone out of the EV market. Many of the "early" adopters have bought one. Now the rest are saying, why would I pay more to put up with range anxiety and a crappy charging network that still can't charge a vehicle in anything close to the time to "gas" an ICE vehicle. A lot of EV's are sitting on lots.

Total nonsense. Q3 set a record for EV sales in the U.S. and was 50% higher than a year ago.   7.9% of U.S. new car sales are EV’s (and 25% in California).  

At a level 3 charger, it takes 18 minutes to charge a Hyundai i5 or i6 to 80%.   That’s not all that much longer than gas, especially if one stops in the store to buy something or use the bathroom. 

Infrastructure does need work.  I wouldn’t yet recommend an EV for someone who can’t charge at home unless they have a L3 charging place as close as a gas station.    But the infrastructure will catch up.  We’re starting to see gas stations add chargers with BP being the first big chain to start adding them. 

lesterkrimbaugh

Did they recycle this rumor from 10 years ago and just change the dates?

mpantone

eriamjh said:

Apple isn’t “waiting”.  They are probably developing so-called “self-driving” which, as we all know, is not as easily achieved as some have supposed.  

I know that without decent volumes, automotive suppliers of “popcorn” parts, unless they are 100% carryover with no additional costs, were not giving Apple the time of day.   Suppliers don’t work on parts seven years out.   Typical design and validation time is 18-24 months if it’s new.   

Foxconn might build such a car for Apple in Lordstown, but their history is to break promises in the USA (see Wisconsin).   I think Foxconn may built for Fisker, like Magna does.  

Time will tell.  

Why do you say "probably"? They are testing autonomous vehicles. They must be granted a permit by the California Department of Motor Vehicles to test these vehicles on public roads which they have done. The rules of the testing program require them to log miles, number of vehicles, drivers, as well as incidents. All of this can be viewed on the DMV website by John Q. Public (remember: these are public roads).

Curiously, Apple's autonomous vehicle testing program is very spartan and doesn't feature a lot of activity (number of vehicles, drivers, miles logged, etc.). There are also long gaps in their testing dates.

So the main question isn't whether or not they are testing autonomous vehicles. The big question is what do they plan on doing with this data? 

Apple has not logged anywhere near enough miles on public roads (under a wide variety of conditions) compared to other leaders like Waymo (Alphabet) and Nuro.

They would have to log tens millions of more miles to get anywhere close to being considered a candidate for a conditional permit for commercial operation of autonomous vehicles on California public roads. And that's not the same as marketing a consumer vehicle.

There is no company on the planet that can market a consumer-grade autonomous vehicle in California just by saying "Hey, we tested this on Uncle Eddie's farm. It works great. Come and get it!"

Right now, Apple's autonomous car testing program looks like a very, Very, VERY expensive "hobby". Motor vehicles are a heavily regulated industry, the margins aren't as good as Apple's consumer electronics, there's a lot of liability issues involved, and in the end, it's still just a way to get from Point A to Point B.

If you're sitting in rush hour traffic on southbound 101 in Redwood City, no car is going to make your commute any faster/better. Sure, you could let Apple's AI handle the driving stress, but Company B's autonomous car will be sitting in the same traffic just the same.

One thing that we can expect: Apple will not be the first to market. We can also count on Apple's being more expensive.

edited November 2023

anome

alandail said:

loopless said:

Probably good to wait. The "heat" has gone out of the EV market. Many of the "early" adopters have bought one. Now the rest are saying, why would I pay more to put up with range anxiety and a crappy charging network that still can't charge a vehicle in anything close to the time to "gas" an ICE vehicle. A lot of EV's are sitting on lots.

Nonense. EVs are superior to gas cars and global EV market share is growing rapidly.

Would you own a phone you had to take to a store to charge ever week instead of charging in your house nightly?

Elon and Tesla are doing what Steve Jobs and Apple would have done with an Apple car if Steve were still around. Apple car is becoming increasingly pointless. Apple isn't going to solve self driving without the real world data Tesla has.

Tesla hasn't managed to solve self-driving with the real world data they have.

Apart from that, I can see a lot of similarities between Jobs and Musk. After all, Musk is known for making design choices for vehicles that create massive engineering problems for the actual car builds. You know, like the Cybertruck, and the gull-wing doors on the Model X. While Steve had that thing one time where he insisted they repaint a machine blue, and it never worked properly again.

I don't think Apple will do a car, but I wouldn't want to claim that Tesla is the Apple of car manufacturers. For the most part, Apple seem to know what they're doing, and produce new models every year, while Tesla do a lot of announcements that never seem to quite get there, and if they do appear, are a disappointment.

radarthekat

anome said:

alandail said:

loopless said:

Probably good to wait. The "heat" has gone out of the EV market. Many of the "early" adopters have bought one. Now the rest are saying, why would I pay more to put up with range anxiety and a crappy charging network that still can't charge a vehicle in anything close to the time to "gas" an ICE vehicle. A lot of EV's are sitting on lots.

Nonense. EVs are superior to gas cars and global EV market share is growing rapidly.

Would you own a phone you had to take to a store to charge ever week instead of charging in your house nightly?

Elon and Tesla are doing what Steve Jobs and Apple would have done with an Apple car if Steve were still around. Apple car is becoming increasingly pointless. Apple isn't going to solve self driving without the real world data Tesla has.

Tesla hasn't managed to solve self-driving with the real world data they have.

Apart from that, I can see a lot of similarities between Jobs and Musk. After all, Musk is known for making design choices for vehicles that create massive engineering problems for the actual car builds. You know, like the Cybertruck, and the gull-wing doors on the Model X. While Steve had that thing one time where he insisted they repaint a machine blue, and it never worked properly again.

I don't think Apple will do a car, but I wouldn't want to claim that Tesla is the Apple of car manufacturers. For the most part, Apple seem to know what they're doing, and produce new models every year, while Tesla do a lot of announcements that never seem to quite get there, and if they do appear, are a disappointment.

To be fair, Tesla is still in raid growth mode.  Apple has had more than a decade under super-supply-chain genius Cook.  I don’t think it’s rational to expect annual model refreshes from Tesla at this point.  Also, there’s a lot of not so visible innovation going on under the skin of Tesla’s products on an ongoing basis.  

xed

darkvader said:

There is no Apple car.  There will not be an Apple car by 2030.  There will probably never be an Apple car.

Apple is not a car company.

“PC guys are not going to just figure this out. They’re not going to just walk in.”

hmlongco

loopless said:

Probably good to wait. The "heat" has gone out of the EV market. Many of the "early" adopters have bought one. Now the rest are saying, why would I pay more to put up with range anxiety and a crappy charging network that still can't charge a vehicle in anything close to the time to "gas" an ICE vehicle. A lot of EV's are sitting on lots.

In 2020 1 in 25 automobile sales was an EV. This year I think we're on track for that number to hit 1 in 5. The S-curve is accelerating.

What's happened in the EV market, particularly in the US, is that Tesla shutdown production in order to ramp up changes to the 3 and Y. Other automakers still have vehicles that are overly pricy and they've Osborned themselves by announcing support for NACS. If you're in the market why would you buy a new car with a soon to be obsolete charging plug?

chasm

Darkvader is right, there is no Apple Car and won't be (except perhaps one for demonstration purposes).

Apple is building an experience, an enhancement to CarPlay, that they will license to car makers. We've already seen a little taste of it already. The testing of autonomous driving and test cars are all about learning how to integrate that on a very deep level. Not building their own car.

If Apple were actually building a car, they would have had to have applied for factory licenses and dealership licenses and so on about 7 years ago now. They didn't.

If Apple were partnering with an established car maker, we'd have had a leak or a paper trail about that by now. We haven't.

If you're waiting to buy an "Apple Car," you'll die of old age first -- so don't bother.

hammeroftruth

With the automobile industry in turmoil now over gouging customers and making regular vehicles most Americans can’t afford, it doesn’t make sense for Apple to do anything but hedge their bets on a platform that will be abundant to use to power whatever car they make, hybrid, electric, or hydrogen. 

Right now a piece of shit, new vehicle, costs around $40k when in reality it should only be 20-30. Car manufacturers are seeing new cars pile up on their lots and the used market is killing companies like Carmax and Carvana. 

Apple is going to learn about market timing with the Vision Pro if they do release it in first half of 24 with a price tag starting at $3500. Unless they have a big stake in buy now,
pay later, those units are not going to sell. 

What happens to the Vision Pro will dictate what happens to the Apple Car, as I believe the interface will be used in the car. Maybe not as a visor, but possibly a heads up display. 

Btw self driving cars are still not there as I have ridden in a Waymo many times, and it’s like your 87 year old grandparent giving you a ride. No freeways, very few left turns, and it brakes hard way too often. A 30 minute drive ends up taking almost an hour. Plus their competitor just yanked their self driving cars after one ran over a pedestrian after he was hit by another human driven car. 

danox

blastdoor said:

Maybe they should do an Apple plane. Air travel, at least in the US, is universally despised. 

Getting the real ID is universally despised…….

xed

danox said:

blastdoor said:

Maybe they should do an Apple plane. Air travel, at least in the US, is universally despised. 

Getting the real ID is universally despised…….

Is it? I'm part of the universe and I love it.

anome

radarthekat said:

anome said:

alandail said:

loopless said:

Probably good to wait. The "heat" has gone out of the EV market. Many of the "early" adopters have bought one. Now the rest are saying, why would I pay more to put up with range anxiety and a crappy charging network that still can't charge a vehicle in anything close to the time to "gas" an ICE vehicle. A lot of EV's are sitting on lots.

Nonense. EVs are superior to gas cars and global EV market share is growing rapidly.

Would you own a phone you had to take to a store to charge ever week instead of charging in your house nightly?

Elon and Tesla are doing what Steve Jobs and Apple would have done with an Apple car if Steve were still around. Apple car is becoming increasingly pointless. Apple isn't going to solve self driving without the real world data Tesla has.

Tesla hasn't managed to solve self-driving with the real world data they have.

Apart from that, I can see a lot of similarities between Jobs and Musk. After all, Musk is known for making design choices for vehicles that create massive engineering problems for the actual car builds. You know, like the Cybertruck, and the gull-wing doors on the Model X. While Steve had that thing one time where he insisted they repaint a machine blue, and it never worked properly again.

I don't think Apple will do a car, but I wouldn't want to claim that Tesla is the Apple of car manufacturers. For the most part, Apple seem to know what they're doing, and produce new models every year, while Tesla do a lot of announcements that never seem to quite get there, and if they do appear, are a disappointment.

To be fair, Tesla is still in raid growth mode.  Apple has had more than a decade under super-supply-chain genius Cook.  I don’t think it’s rational to expect annual model refreshes from Tesla at this point.  Also, there’s a lot of not so visible innovation going on under the skin of Tesla’s products on an ongoing basis.  

It's been 20 years. How long are they supposed to be in that phase?