Removing the internal combustion engine and geared transmission removes most of the problems aligned with starting a car company from scratch. Safety, ride quality, and performance are things apple can afforded to acquire while they focus on the customer interface, processing, connectivity, and customer facing displays. Design and managing build quality is also a strong suit. Apple gives more cash back to investors via buy backs and dividends than Tesla makes each year because they can’t figure out what to do with all the extra profit in a reasonable timeframe. They have bought back 465 Billion Dollars in the last 4 years. That’s more than the total market value of Ford, Toyota, GM and Honda combined, by over 100 Billion Dollars. This is an endeavor they can definitely afford to do and do right.
Given the numerous electric car companies that have tried to start but have failed or are floundering, I don’t think the key to success is removing the ICE engine. There are many other issues with EV’s.
Elon Musk had zero space program experience and Neil Armstrong even rejected his proposals but yet Space X exceeded NASA expectations. Apple can pull this off just like the first iPhone.
Like everyone else here I would love to see an Apple car. But what can Apple offer that no one else can? Are they working on some mind blowing new technology integration solution that takes human factors and UI to a new level?
Tesla’s AI remains monstrously superior to anything else out there and they’ve got hundreds of millions of miles of road data to input into that AI. If you haven’t watched Tesla’s most recent AI Day, I highly recommend it. The computational modeling will blow your mind. Tesla’s battery technology partnership with Panasonic is about to pay off handsomely. The efficiency of Tesla’s electric motor design is unrivaled. Tesla autos are among the safest in the industry.
Long story short, the Apple car can’t be a Tesla wanna be. It’s got to be markedly better or fill a niche that Tesla cannot easily compete with. That’s a very tall order. Not saying Apple can’t do it. They clearly have the money. But it’s going to take more than money to pull this off.
Citroen found some WOW sure not everyones taste, not what expect Apple to do but....
Lots of things Apple could amp up and take some of the same ideas to the other end of the market. Might be a good partner. I mean one of the assumptions of the team is Apple will do better interface so why waste time.
Citroen found some WOW sure not everyones taste, not what expect Apple to do but....
Lots of things Apple could amp up and take some of the same ideas to the other end of the market. Might be a good partner. I mean one of the assumptions of the team is Apple will do better interface so why waste time.
The OLI is very interesting and so are the decisions Citroen made during design and engineering. Their goal is to make a car intended to last decades, be easily repairable, use materials that are reuseable/recyclable and have minimal planetary impact. The OLI is just a one off concept prototype, but it has a giant amount of new (or at least non-typical) thinking in it. Marc Newson's protoypes he designed for Ford were similarly good examples of outsider and alternative thinking about what a car can and should be. Newson and Ive are both self-described "car guys". Too bad they are no longer involved with Apple.
Still not 100% sure Apple wants to or will make an automobile. They definitely are interested in the car OS and I really hope they can make inroads in that market. I really hate seeing Google/Android OSes in cars with no Apple option available.
The industry changing feature will be that you don’t buy an Apple car but it’s use is included in some Apple one mobile bundle. Apple cars will be free floating and you can open any one and it will customize to you. You can rent it longer or just remove all you stuff and have someone else use it.
So long as Apple actually develops personal vehicles (especially in SUV format), I’ll be first in line.
The only way I wouldn’t is if it’s a glorified cab as some rumors suggest.
Give me great style, great performance + range, and all of the Apple tech goodness at a mass market price point and I’m in.
The thing that scares me is that Ford sells its EVs at a loss, Tesla didn’t become profitable for s long time, and Rivian is in big trouble, with crazy financial losses as people can’t afford their vehicles in enough numbers to scale pricing down.
Apple has the supply chain that no one else does, the technical acumen no one else does, and the commitment to quality no one else does, so they can solve this. I’m just hoping that the Apple Car is actually a good deal and not the Mac Studio version of price wonky ness.
Apple is far from alone in that regard and is topped by many.
A key factor is which market you are selling to. If you are producing for harsh or inaccesible environments each and every component is stress tested. No Apple component is given such rigorous testing because CE products do not require it and it would send prices sky rocketing.
Apple sets a minimum quality threshold and tests samples before, at and after manufacture. It backs that up with a basic statutory warranty.
Of course there are plenty of others that set thresholds lower but that doesn't mean Apple is alone in quality, acumen or verticality.
Like everyone else here I would love to see an Apple car. But what can Apple offer that no one else can? Are they working on some mind blowing new technology integration solution that takes human factors and UI to a new level?
Tesla’s AI remains monstrously superior to anything else out there and they’ve got hundreds of millions of miles of road data to input into that AI. If you haven’t watched Tesla’s most recent AI Day, I highly recommend it. The computational modeling will blow your mind. Tesla’s battery technology partnership with Panasonic is about to pay off handsomely. The efficiency of Tesla’s electric motor design is unrivaled. Tesla autos are among the safest in the industry.
Long story short, the Apple car can’t be a Tesla wanna be. It’s got to be markedly better or fill a niche that Tesla cannot easily compete with. That’s a very tall order. Not saying Apple can’t do it. They clearly have the money. But it’s going to take more than money to pull this off.
Elon musk is working very hard to create demand for EVs from companies competing with Tesla — apple might benefit from that.
Like everyone else here I would love to see an Apple car. But what can Apple offer that no one else can? Are they working on some mind blowing new technology integration solution that takes human factors and UI to a new level?
Tesla’s AI remains monstrously superior to anything else out there and they’ve got hundreds of millions of miles of road data to input into that AI. If you haven’t watched Tesla’s most recent AI Day, I highly recommend it. The computational modeling will blow your mind. Tesla’s battery technology partnership with Panasonic is about to pay off handsomely. The efficiency of Tesla’s electric motor design is unrivaled. Tesla autos are among the safest in the industry.
Long story short, the Apple car can’t be a Tesla wanna be. It’s got to be markedly better or fill a niche that Tesla cannot easily compete with. That’s a very tall order. Not saying Apple can’t do it. They clearly have the money. But it’s going to take more than money to pull this off.
Elon musk is working very hard to create demand for EVs from companies competing with Tesla — apple might benefit from that.
I didn’t know politics was such a big factor in people’s choices regarding transportation. 🤨
Like everyone else here I would love to see an Apple car. But what can Apple offer that no one else can? Are they working on some mind blowing new technology integration solution that takes human factors and UI to a new level?
Tesla’s AI remains monstrously superior to anything else out there and they’ve got hundreds of millions of miles of road data to input into that AI. If you haven’t watched Tesla’s most recent AI Day, I highly recommend it. The computational modeling will blow your mind. Tesla’s battery technology partnership with Panasonic is about to pay off handsomely. The efficiency of Tesla’s electric motor design is unrivaled. Tesla autos are among the safest in the industry.
Long story short, the Apple car can’t be a Tesla wanna be. It’s got to be markedly better or fill a niche that Tesla cannot easily compete with. That’s a very tall order. Not saying Apple can’t do it. They clearly have the money. But it’s going to take more than money to pull this off.
Elon musk is working very hard to create demand for EVs from companies competing with Tesla — apple might benefit from that.
I didn’t know politics was such a big factor in people’s choices regarding transportation. 🤨
I think it would be more the erratic behaviour of the CEO suggests deeper issues with company willing to over-promise then loss focus. Their CEO seems obsessed with creating division not production, would you let a product created like that be the safety cage of your family.
Like everyone else here I would love to see an Apple car. But what can Apple offer that no one else can? Are they working on some mind blowing new technology integration solution that takes human factors and UI to a new level?
Tesla’s AI remains monstrously superior to anything else out there and they’ve got hundreds of millions of miles of road data to input into that AI. If you haven’t watched Tesla’s most recent AI Day, I highly recommend it. The computational modeling will blow your mind. Tesla’s battery technology partnership with Panasonic is about to pay off handsomely. The efficiency of Tesla’s electric motor design is unrivaled. Tesla autos are among the safest in the industry.
Long story short, the Apple car can’t be a Tesla wanna be. It’s got to be markedly better or fill a niche that Tesla cannot easily compete with. That’s a very tall order. Not saying Apple can’t do it. They clearly have the money. But it’s going to take more than money to pull this off.
Elon musk is working very hard to create demand for EVs from companies competing with Tesla — apple might benefit from that.
I didn’t know politics was such a big factor in people’s choices regarding transportation. 🤨
I think it would be more the erratic behaviour of the CEO suggests deeper issues with company willing to over-promise then loss focus. Their CEO seems obsessed with creating division not production, would you let a product created like that be the safety cage of your family.
Tesla seems to be doing extraordinarily well at the moment. It’s not all about one man, important though he may be.
If you want to talk about division, I can’t think of anything much more divisive that a rogue social media company working with the FBI and DHS that willfully disregards its own TOS and actively filters what information and correspondence gets disseminated leading up to an election. I’m not meaning to create a firestorm here. But Musk is a hero regarding freedom of speech. You don’t have to like him or anything he says. But the overhaul at Twitter is a breath of fresh air. Twitter V1.0 and it’s key operators deserve public exposure and repudiation. These were some deeply unethical people. It’s there for all to read.
I think it would be far better for Apple to establish a partnership with one or more respected, well-established automakers.
They're not going to make a similar-but-worse mistake by playing a subservient role to one or more car manufacturers as some sort of Apple-branded insert into a vehicle designed and built by someone else.
I don't disagree that Apple would like to be in charge of 100% of the product — but entering a new product category like vehicles is far more of a risk, with a far higher cost of failure, than entering (and failing) in a new product category like smart speakers or VR glasses. That's why I think Apple should consider partnering with an established automaker, lending their expertise in software (and, to some extent, hardware, at least for the controls that drivers touch) to an automaker that lacks it.
The Verge has a story today (see https://www.theverge.com/2022/12/14/23508088/volkswagen-software-id4-bug-problem-smartphone) that perfectly illustrates my point. Volkswagen Group (which makes Audi, Bentley, Lamborghini, Porsche, Volkswagen, and other brands) is well-established but is having real trouble with software in their push to become an all-EV company. A company like that might be a perfect partner for Apple. The article mentions that other automakers are partnering with Google. I continue to think Apple should consider a similar strategy, at least in this one product category (software for vehicles).
I think it would be far better for Apple to establish a partnership with one or more respected, well-established automakers.
They're not going to make a similar-but-worse mistake by playing a subservient role to one or more car manufacturers as some sort of Apple-branded insert into a vehicle designed and built by someone else.
I don't disagree that Apple would like to be in charge of 100% of the product — but entering a new product category like vehicles is far more of a risk, with a far higher cost of failure, than entering (and failing) in a new product category like smart speakers or VR glasses. That's why I think Apple should consider partnering with an established automaker, lending their expertise in software (and, to some extent, hardware, at least for the controls that drivers touch) to an automaker that lacks it.
The Verge has a story today (see https://www.theverge.com/2022/12/14/23508088/volkswagen-software-id4-bug-problem-smartphone) that perfectly illustrates my point. Volkswagen Group (which makes Audi, Bentley, Lamborghini, Porsche, Volkswagen, and other brands) is well-established but is having real trouble with software in their push to become an all-EV company. A company like that might be a perfect partner for Apple. The article mentions that other automakers are partnering with Google. I continue to think Apple should consider a similar strategy, at least in this one product category (software for vehicles).
It's conceivable that Apple could partner with one or more automotive manufacturers to build cars the same way they do with FoxConn for building iPhones, but it seems truly improbable that they would have a partnership where the design and construction of an Apple device -in this case a car- is controlled by anyone but Apple.
Nonsense. You don't think a car that might be $100K has to have a Wow! factor? For $100K, it has to be better in every single respect than any other EV out there. And unless Apple wants to sell only to the very rich elite and be mocked by the media and everyone else, a $100K car is a very bad idea.
Hyundai's Ioniq 5 and the forthcoming 6 are really nice cars and they start at about $45,000. Over the next five years, prices will fall as batteries cost less as more battery factories come online. Plenty of other carmakers are rethinking what a car's cabin should be like in the EV age and many are quite nice.
And Apple can't pull their usual crap of forcing customers to pay for a decent warranty when other manufacturers offer 10 year warranties. And most also offer several years of free charging. Most other EV's (and ICE's) already offer Apple CarPlay and Android Auto, so that's not unique. And I would expect that many will offer voice commands before long.
There's lots of competition in the car industry and legacy brands and unlike phones and computers (to a lesser extent), people who own their cars (as opposed to leasing) keep their cars for a long time. The average car is on the road more than 12 years. So Apple can't expect people to trade in their car every two years and they have to get it right the first time.
If Apple is making the car themselves, they would have already had to have a factory built. And if they're partnering with someone, they would have had to be building a new factory. So IMO, an Apple car by 2026 is unlikely. And if they don't manufacture the car in the U.S., there will be no incentives.
---- As for Consumer Reports, I think they're honest and not on the take, but frequently biased or incompetent in their car ratings. Style is not a factor for them, but it is for many car buyers. And they've also been resistant to change in the UX because they think such changes are dangerous. What is reliable are their frequency of repair reports.
Back in the 1970's, they rated the AMC Gremlin 'the best subcompact made" and I bought one. They later apologized, but it was too late for me. Everything that could go wrong in a car went wrong in that car except for the radio and the HVAC system. Wheel bearings, electrical shorts, rings, oil leaks, brake issues, etc. Even the driver's seat back failed - I had to put a metal rod in there to keep the back up. The only thing good about the car was the wide storage area, the AC never failed, with a 6-cylinder engine it was decently powerful (but noisy) and it had a huge gas tank. But I wound up putting as much money into that car as it cost originally. The happiest day of my life was when I got rid of it. Never bought an American car since, although my Honda was manufactured in the U.S.
Citroen found some WOW sure not everyones taste, not what expect Apple to do but....
Lots of things Apple could amp up and take some of the same ideas to the other end of the market. Might be a good partner. I mean one of the assumptions of the team is Apple will do better interface so why waste time.
That car sucked when it was called the BMW i3. I had an i3 for 3 years and loved it, but what you see there are mostly failed ideas imo. Suicide rear doors mean it's really for 2 people, or 2 people with small kids. Large kids or 4 adults, it becomes too cumbersome. The only that would make it into production are the C shaped lights, and that has its plusses and minuses. Looks nice, but probably will cost $1000 to replace.
If Apple is making the car themselves, they would have already had to have a factory built. And if they're partnering with someone, they would have had to be building a new factory. So IMO, an Apple car by 2026 is unlikely. And if they don't manufacture the car in the U.S., there will be no incentives.
The time has passed for Apple to have its own car factories. If they wanted to build their own EVs, they should have started 4 or 5 years ago, when the Apple car rumors were ramping up. Today, they are just going to wait for Foxconn to be able assemble their design. It would not surprise me if Foxconn is able to do it in a couple of years, making 2026 viable.
I plan on buying one more ICE vehicle so my first BEV likely won't happen for maybe 20 years or so. I'll be curious where Apple will be at that point. I'm a little skeptical right now. Consumer Reports says that Teslas are quite unreliable. I totally get that Apple products are highly reliable but they have never built a car before. I guess we'll see what happens.
consumer reports takes money from ford and others. tesla's cars coming out of their new factories in shanghai, berlin and austin are very reliable. less so their cars coming out of their Fremont factory, but they're improving
Ummm… yes they do. A large portion of their revenue comes from non-profit donations, and their largest donor is the Ford Foundation.
Yep, that's what they say, alright. So it must be true!
They are separate and legally unrelated. This is not a trick, the facts are publicly available. Ford Foundation is not the same as Ford Motor Company. Furthermore, if you guys had bothered to look, Ford as a manufacturer of cars is ranked #22 by Consumer Reports, so not exactly a ringing indictment of some sort of corrupt influence by the Ford Foundation, which is what you were trying to imply. If you have evidence of unlawful, or even undue influence, please share.
Never claimed it's unlawful. A SuperPAC has by law no connection to a candidate either. So I'm sure that never occurs either. My original reply was to GatorGuy's comment: "consumer reports takes money from ford and others." Which is true. Does it influence their ratings? Doubtful IMHO, and I don't recall making such a claim.
No it does NOT take money from Ford Motor. I suppose with a bit of subterfuge you can imply it does with your initial post but now claim to mean a different Ford, the Ford Foundation, in order to say you were right all along.
I’ll be in the market for an EV, but this looks like it’ll be way out of my budget.
Model 3 cheapest. Not cheap but fit and finish is. Price 56,000. 20,000 down at 3% over 5 years (647 per month or 476 over 7 years)
Model 3 grand slam Not cheap but fit and finish is. Price 81,000. 20,000 down at 3% over 5 years (1096 per month or 806 over 7 years)
https://www.toyota.com/prius/ Price, range (615 miles), fit, and finish, and paint better……by far. Price 28,000. 10,000 down at 3% over 5 years (323 per month) Invest
the difference and be far ahead.
None include tax and license or car insurance which is more on a Tesla….
Though we have a Prius, (two actually, but we’ll drop to one when the one I drive hits 20 years old). Might as well get another 10-15 out of the newer one, rather than updating to an EV soon.
What I’m really balking at is the price. A Prius at $28-30k, the least expensive EVs start at $50k. They gotta drop by nearly half before I’m even going to look seriously. I had an exchange a while back with someone online (so take this with a huge block of salt). They said that prices were high because the companies were factoring in the maintenance they would not be able to charge for after the sale. Don’t know if that’s at all true, but it wouldn’t surprise me. You look at comparable EVs vs Gas vehicles and there seems to be a massive premium for EV.
You don't know what you're talking about. In 2014, we bought a top of the line Nissan Leaf. Price was < $36k. Base model at that time was about $20k. Do some resarch before you decide to talk out of your ass.
We still have & drive the Nissan Leaf today. We also have a 2008 & 2012 Toyota Prius.
Comments
Like everyone else here I would love to see an Apple car. But what can Apple offer that no one else can? Are they working on some mind blowing new technology integration solution that takes human factors and UI to a new level?
Tesla’s AI remains monstrously superior to anything else out there and they’ve got hundreds of millions of miles of road data to input into that AI. If you haven’t watched Tesla’s most recent AI Day, I highly recommend it. The computational modeling will blow your mind. Tesla’s battery technology partnership with Panasonic is about to pay off handsomely. The efficiency of Tesla’s electric motor design is unrivaled. Tesla autos are among the safest in the industry.
Long story short, the Apple car can’t be a Tesla wanna be. It’s got to be markedly better or fill a niche that Tesla cannot easily compete with. That’s a very tall order. Not saying Apple can’t do it. They clearly have the money. But it’s going to take more than money to pull this off.
Citroen found some WOW
sure not everyones taste, not what expect Apple to do but....
Lots of things Apple could amp up and take some of the same ideas to the other end of the market.
Might be a good partner.
I mean one of the assumptions of the team is Apple will do better interface so why waste time.
The OLI is very interesting and so are the decisions Citroen made during design and engineering. Their goal is to make a car intended to last decades, be easily repairable, use materials that are reuseable/recyclable and have minimal planetary impact. The OLI is just a one off concept prototype, but it has a giant amount of new (or at least non-typical) thinking in it. Marc Newson's protoypes he designed for Ford were similarly good examples of outsider and alternative thinking about what a car can and should be. Newson and Ive are both self-described "car guys". Too bad they are no longer involved with Apple.
Still not 100% sure Apple wants to or will make an automobile. They definitely are interested in the car OS and I really hope they can make inroads in that market. I really hate seeing Google/Android OSes in cars with no Apple option available.
A key factor is which market you are selling to. If you are producing for harsh or inaccesible environments each and every component is stress tested. No Apple component is given such rigorous testing because CE products do not require it and it would send prices sky rocketing.
Apple sets a minimum quality threshold and tests samples before, at and after manufacture. It backs that up with a basic statutory warranty.
Of course there are plenty of others that set thresholds lower but that doesn't mean Apple is alone in quality, acumen or verticality.
Their CEO seems obsessed with creating division not production, would you let a product created like that be the safety cage of your family.
If you want to talk about division, I can’t think of anything much more divisive that a rogue social media company working with the FBI and DHS that willfully disregards its own TOS and actively filters what information and correspondence gets disseminated leading up to an election. I’m not meaning to create a firestorm here. But Musk is a hero regarding freedom of speech. You don’t have to like him or anything he says. But the overhaul at Twitter is a breath of fresh air. Twitter V1.0 and it’s key operators deserve public exposure and repudiation. These were some deeply unethical people. It’s there for all to read.
The Verge has a story today (see https://www.theverge.com/2022/12/14/23508088/volkswagen-software-id4-bug-problem-smartphone) that perfectly illustrates my point. Volkswagen Group (which makes Audi, Bentley, Lamborghini, Porsche, Volkswagen, and other brands) is well-established but is having real trouble with software in their push to become an all-EV company. A company like that might be a perfect partner for Apple. The article mentions that other automakers are partnering with Google. I continue to think Apple should consider a similar strategy, at least in this one product category (software for vehicles).
Hyundai's Ioniq 5 and the forthcoming 6 are really nice cars and they start at about $45,000. Over the next five years, prices will fall as batteries cost less as more battery factories come online. Plenty of other carmakers are rethinking what a car's cabin should be like in the EV age and many are quite nice.
And Apple can't pull their usual crap of forcing customers to pay for a decent warranty when other manufacturers offer 10 year warranties. And most also offer several years of free charging. Most other EV's (and ICE's) already offer Apple CarPlay and Android Auto, so that's not unique. And I would expect that many will offer voice commands before long.
There's lots of competition in the car industry and legacy brands and unlike phones and computers (to a lesser extent), people who own their cars (as opposed to leasing) keep their cars for a long time. The average car is on the road more than 12 years. So Apple can't expect people to trade in their car every two years and they have to get it right the first time.
If Apple is making the car themselves, they would have already had to have a factory built. And if they're partnering with someone, they would have had to be building a new factory. So IMO, an Apple car by 2026 is unlikely. And if they don't manufacture the car in the U.S., there will be no incentives.
----
As for Consumer Reports, I think they're honest and not on the take, but frequently biased or incompetent in their car ratings. Style is not a factor for them, but it is for many car buyers. And they've also been resistant to change in the UX because they think such changes are dangerous. What is reliable are their frequency of repair reports.
Back in the 1970's, they rated the AMC Gremlin 'the best subcompact made" and I bought one. They later apologized, but it was too late for me. Everything that could go wrong in a car went wrong in that car except for the radio and the HVAC system. Wheel bearings, electrical shorts, rings, oil leaks, brake issues, etc. Even the driver's seat back failed - I had to put a metal rod in there to keep the back up. The only thing good about the car was the wide storage area, the AC never failed, with a 6-cylinder engine it was decently powerful (but noisy) and it had a huge gas tank. But I wound up putting as much money into that car as it cost originally. The happiest day of my life was when I got rid of it. Never bought an American car since, although my Honda was manufactured in the U.S.
We still have & drive the Nissan Leaf today. We also have a 2008 & 2012 Toyota Prius.