Apple was correct in dumping Project Titan. They don't have any expertise in building any type of car. They would need land and millions of dollars worth of manufacturing equipment. If they wanted to buy Rivian for a fire sale price to get manufacturing facilities and some expertise, I might go for it but they'd need to do a lot of work on fixing Rivian's vehicles plus come up with a respectable sedan. There is room for an American EV manufacturer, Tesla can't build all the EVs without building several more manufacturing facilities.
Tell me, how much cell phone experience did Apple have before entering that market?
Introduction to what's involved courtesy of Motorola?
Introduction to what's involved courtesy of Ford, GM, Tesla, Mercedes, BMW, Porsche, Lucid, and dozens of others. This is not an "unknowable" field that requires some sort of shamanistic intuition. It's manufacturing at scale.
I don't disagree. Even the article says they learned a lot by picking the brains over at Mercedes. My comment pertained to the idea that Apple didn't know much about phones before deciding to make one.
Don't underestimate the value of domain expertise when it comes to automobile manufacturing at scale. Very few large scale auto manufactures of today do the complete automobile manufacturing and assembly from bumper to bumper, foundry castings, unibody and body panel stampings that feed the welding process, engine and transmission manufacturing, electrical systems, electronic control systems, wiring harnesses, tubing, hydraulics, interior components, exterior trim, infotainment systems, glass, rubber, coatings, lubricants, rust inhibitors, paint, batteries, etc. Every manufacturer has a vast network of suppliers, in house and external, that have to deliver their part of the final product at the right time, in the required quantities, and with the agreed upon quality and precision. In the past, large automobile manufacturers did a lot of these things internally with dedicated subdivisions and subsidiaries. A lot of those internal or captive specialties have been spun off or divested and are now semi- or fully- independent companies that have to stand on their own and serve multiple makers.
Those are just the pieces and parts. Plants have to be built and those plants must have everything necessary including financing, regulatory adherence, human capital, water, electricity, industrial waste stream handling, transportation access, robots, and automated systems to put all of the piece together. The materials, sub-assemblies, and work in process vehicles have to be brought together at the right time and place to assemble a complete automobile that can be driven off of the end of the assembly line. This requires material handling equipment and systems including storage systems, cranes, conveyors, monorails, AGVs, skids, lifts, etc., to keep everything working in unison to meet the expected production rate.
A lot of the required production, assembly, finishing, and automated systems have very long lead times and require domain experts in each of those areas to come up with an engineered solution for each system and subsystem, along with system integration subcontractors and specialized automotive plant construction project management experts who've been through the entire process many times before and know how to bring it all together in the allotted time and at the contract defined cost. This is about as nontrivial as it gets, on many levels.
Tesla had to learn a hell of a lot largely on their own, but did have help, and they struggled mightily. A number of the assumptions they held going in, such as a heavy reliance on autonomous automation, were overly optimistic and did not survive the scrutiny and reality of the problems they had to deal with. Building cars is a very human + machine intensive endeavor. Whether you like Elon Musk or despise him, few organizations faced with the challenges that Tesla faced while crawling up a very steep learning curve would have stuck with it without throwing in the towel and admitting defeat. I'm pretty sure Tesla brought in as many smart. seasoned, and knowledgeable people as they could get their hands on to overcome the many hurdles between being a semi-boutique or low volume manufacturer to one that could produce at scale, even with a fairly small number of models and model variations. It was still a might struggle with many on-the-fly and seat-of-the-pants adaptations and workarounds at every roadblock. Rivian is now in a similar place in terms of scaling up their manufacturing operations, even though like Tesla, they are getting a lot of outside help. Whether they are up to the task is still uncertain.
Could Apple plus a large cast of "helpers" build a car, even one model of an electric car? Probably. But is that really the best use of their financial capital, human capital, brain trust, credibility, and future aspirations? Maybe, maybe not. There are a lot of big challenges that Apple can go after, things that have no historical or current equivalent and open up possibilities and blaze new trails and solve problems that no other company other than Apple is as prepared to solve. The 20th century brought us the horseless carriage and the 21st century will eventually bring us the human-less horseless carriage. But that's just one narrow spectrum problem to solve and it's not clear whether Apple even needs to be part of that or take on some other aspect of improving the human condition. I think Apple's first few but significant steps towards satisfying the latter that they have demonstrated through their focus on human health assistance point in a direction than has even more potential and value for humanity than does building autonomous electric vehicles.
Apple was correct in dumping Project Titan. They don't have any expertise in building any type of car. They would need land and millions of dollars worth of manufacturing equipment. If they wanted to buy Rivian for a fire sale price to get manufacturing facilities and some expertise, I might go for it but they'd need to do a lot of work on fixing Rivian's vehicles plus come up with a respectable sedan. There is room for an American EV manufacturer, Tesla can't build all the EVs without building several more manufacturing facilities.
What expertise did any car company have before they existed? You mention Apple buying Rivian and Tesla so why doesn't their lack of expertise and experience before they made a single automobile carry over to your argument that if you hadn't done something before that you should never try to do it?
Land and millions of dollars available, you say? How could they ever manage that. LOL
Both Tesla and Rivian purchased factories previously established by automakers. I forget, which manufacturing plant did Apple buy in the intervening ten years they've been hacking away at a car?
Why couldn't Apple have purchased a factory? Perhaps you should reevaluate what Project Titan was to Apple since they didn't do something as simple and obvious as purchase a factory to get production up and running quickly.
Apple was correct in dumping Project Titan. They don't have any expertise in building any type of car. They would need land and millions of dollars worth of manufacturing equipment. If they wanted to buy Rivian for a fire sale price to get manufacturing facilities and some expertise, I might go for it but they'd need to do a lot of work on fixing Rivian's vehicles plus come up with a respectable sedan. There is room for an American EV manufacturer, Tesla can't build all the EVs without building several more manufacturing facilities.
What expertise did any car company have before they existed? You mention Apple buying Rivian and Tesla so why doesn't their lack of expertise and experience before they made a single automobile carry over to your argument that if you hadn't done something before that you should never try to do it?
Land and millions of dollars available, you say? How could they ever manage that. LOL
Both Tesla and Rivian purchased factories previously established by automakers. I forget, which manufacturing plant did Apple buy in the intervening ten years they've been hacking away at a car?
Why couldn't Apple have purchased a factory? Perhaps you should reevaluate what Project Titan was to Apple since they didn't do something as simple and obvious as purchase a factory to get production up and running quickly.
There was really no need for Apple to purchase an existing factory for something that was not ready to put into production. Auto plants aren't generic, they're highly specific, laid out, and tooled to meet the needs of the vehicles they are building and the processes and machinery that the manufacturing process requires. Tesla's manufacturing and assembly processes, tooling, plant layout, automation, material handling, storage, etc., are significantly different than what GM/Toyota (NUMMI) used when they they were building cars at the Fremont, CA plant. Tesla likely stripped the NUMMI plant down to its bones before setting it up to meet their manufacturing processes, which are all quite unique, homegrown, and highly innovative. But it still wasn't easy.
The real question is whether Apple spent any time, money, and resources designing the very complex manufacturing and industrialization process to actually build whatever is was that they intended to build. Doing this part would be a considerably complex undertaking.
Buying an existing plant can certainly help a lot with ensuring that you'll have a lot of the required infrastructure, utility capacity, zoning compliance, transportation access, and to some degree, a ready source of available labor needed to staff up at all levels. There are no guarantees. Some existing plants may be superfund sites and have serious environmental issues that must be mitigated prior to bringing the plant online. The labor force and suppliers may have moved on to other places and the current plant location may not be an attractive place for pulling in new talent.
I also think that there was never a sense of urgency for Apple to lock down a specific plant at such an early stage and with a lack of absolute and unwavering commitment to move to production. Plus, there are still plenty of available sites to choose should Apple decide to move forward. The former GM plant in Lordstown, OH was very recently, at least partially, reconfigured to build EV trucks. They built a handful of them before going belly up in partnership with Foxconn. I'd bet it's available at a bargain price for a willing buyer.
It was a hobby, right? Expensive one tough. Burning $10bn with zero results. Says a lot how this project was managed. No heads roll? We had fun and move on?
I think that focusing on the challenges of building plants is a bit misguided. I'm confident that if Apple had been able to create a concept they felt was ready for the market, they would have found manufacturing, distribution and service solutions - using some combination of building their own and outsourcing.
The root problem is that they had to translate the Apple brand from the domain of screen devices to the domain of cars. And lacking the visionary leadership of Steve Jobs, they tried to design it by committee - a well known recipe for disaster. Most of the concept illustrations (of which I believe none actually came from Apple), show some kind of soft and slightly cartoonish car that would fit in a Pixar movie. That's a design language that we associate with Apple devices and user interfaces. But who would actually want to have a car like that? Certainly not people who like SUVs, roadsters, Italian sports cars, pickups, jeeps, vans or large luxury sedans.
Knowing Apple, we can be certain that they would want to target the premium segment, where a smallish and somewhat feminine looking car would have a very hard time to compete. So that's most likely the dilemma they faced, as soon as they realized that creating a new, fully autonomous, car category would be too hard. What segment to go after then? What should an Apple car, that needs to compete with every other car out there, look and feel like? I think that challenge proved to be too much for a committee of executives without strong product leadership and zero experience in the automobile industry.
It was a hobby, right? Expensive one tough. Burning $10bn with zero results. Says a lot how this project was managed. No heads roll? We had fun and move on?
Where is your evidence that there are zero results? Because you can’t point to a 1:1 product release it means there was nothing gained? That doesn’t sound reasonable to me.
It would be like saying that the iPhone product was a complete failure in 2006 because they hadn’t related a product and had competing groups building different mobile OSes to see what would be superior.
Personally, I’d be shocked if there wasn’t anything from their years of R&D that didn’t make its way into something at Apple.
I think that focusing on the challenges of building plants is a bit misguided. I'm confident that if Apple had been able to create a concept they felt was ready for the market, they would have found manufacturing, distribution and service solutions - using some combination of building their own and outsourcing.
The root problem is that they had to translate the Apple brand from the domain of screen devices to the domain of cars. And lacking the visionary leadership of Steve Jobs, they tried to design it by committee - a well known recipe for disaster. Most of the concept illustrations (of which I believe none actually came from Apple), show some kind of soft and slightly cartoonish car that would fit in a Pixar movie. That's a design language that we associate with Apple devices and user interfaces. But who would actually want to have a car like that? Certainly not people who like SUVs, roadsters, Italian sports cars, pickups, jeeps, vans or large luxury sedans.
Knowing Apple, we can be certain that they would want to target the premium segment, where a smallish and somewhat feminine looking car would have a very hard time to compete. So that's most likely the dilemma they faced, as soon as they realized that creating a new, fully autonomous, car category would be too hard. What segment to go after then? What should an Apple car, that needs to compete with every other car out there, look and feel like? I think that challenge proved to be too much for a committee of executives without strong product leadership and zero experience in the automobile industry.
A “feminine looking” car? Uh dude - you’ve never seen Apple’s design concepts, you’ve seen silly rumor site musings. Get real. You’re on the outside, you aren’t remotely on the inside, site name be damned.
As for Jobs, he was not a design visionary. He was the first to try to remind people — it’s a team effort. Watch the old keynotes, he said it. The idea of him as one man product team is a myth. He may have acted as a Product Manager, but that isn’t (and he wasn’t) a designer.
I suspect it’s mostly due to autonomy being far harder than the AI nerds thought. Take away the autonomy and it’s a lot harder to figure out a business model for an Apple car.
For those curious about what a fully-autonomous car "sees". Yes, it's full-autonomy, no driver.
The view is from both the occupant and the vehicle software at the same time.
I’ve ridden in Waymo around 10 trips and they’re still needing work on their accuracy. I had one slam on the brakes because a road construction truck with flashing taillights that was 2 car lengths ahead confused it.
I’ve had it avoid a left turn at an intersection with traffic lights and make a left where it was riskier with no traffic lights.
I had another slam on the brakes while driving by some pedestrians that were walking on a sidewalk parallel to the car.
They won’t take the freeways wherever there might be construction, which is everywhere in PHX. So the route is all surface roads and it drives like a 90 year old with glaucoma. It actually got behind a coke tractor trailer going 25 in a right lane for over a quarter mile on a 45 mph speed limit multi lane road when it didn’t need to.
It’s not all it’s cracked up to be. It’s cheaper than using Uber or Lyft but not faster. Not at all.
I suspect it’s mostly due to autonomy being far harder than the AI nerds thought. Take away the autonomy and it’s a lot harder to figure out a business model for an Apple car.
For those curious about what a fully-autonomous car "sees". Yes, it's full-autonomy, no driver.
I think that focusing on the challenges of building plants is a bit misguided. I'm confident that if Apple had been able to create a concept they felt was ready for the market, they would have found manufacturing, distribution and service solutions - using some combination of building their own and outsourcing.
The root problem is that they had to translate the Apple brand from the domain of screen devices to the domain of cars. And lacking the visionary leadership of Steve Jobs, they tried to design it by committee - a well known recipe for disaster. Most of the concept illustrations (of which I believe none actually came from Apple), show some kind of soft and slightly cartoonish car that would fit in a Pixar movie. That's a design language that we associate with Apple devices and user interfaces. But who would actually want to have a car like that? Certainly not people who like SUVs, roadsters, Italian sports cars, pickups, jeeps, vans or large luxury sedans.
Knowing Apple, we can be certain that they would want to target the premium segment, where a smallish and somewhat feminine looking car would have a very hard time to compete. So that's most likely the dilemma they faced, as soon as they realized that creating a new, fully autonomous, car category would be too hard. What segment to go after then? What should an Apple car, that needs to compete with every other car out there, look and feel like? I think that challenge proved to be too much for a committee of executives without strong product leadership and zero experience in the automobile industry.
A “feminine looking” car? Uh dude - you’ve never seen Apple’s design concepts, you’ve seen silly rumor site musings. Get real. You’re on the outside, you aren’t remotely on the inside, site name be damned.
As for Jobs, he was not a design visionary. He was the first to try to remind people — it’s a team effort. Watch the old keynotes, he said it. The idea of him as one man product team is a myth. He may have acted as a Product Manager, but that isn’t (and he wasn’t) a designer.
As I wrote: none of the concept illustrations came from Apple. My point was to highlight what the public expectations were for an Apple branded car. If an illustrator were tasked with envisioning a new car from Tesla, BMW, Ferrari or any other premium brand, do you think they would have looked even remotely like those sketches of an Apple car? I don't think so. And that's exactly the dilemma I think Apple wrestled with: Stay on brand and get mediocre sales, or launch a car that doesn't at all reflect people's perception of the Apple brand.
If Steve Jobs wasn't a design visionary, then why, when he took over, did Apples new products look radically different from both earlier Apple designs and everything else on the market? And why do the iPhones and Macs look pretty much the same today as they did when he passed away 13 years ago? (And please don't bring up "flat UI design" or "dark mode", since none of those trends were conceived by Apple.)
The mistake appears to be focussing on autonomous driving instead of good design. Talk about something no one wants, a windoless car with a game controller for emergency driving. It's easy to understand how a tech company can get enamored with something like self driving, but the fact that the executives went along with it for so many years is pretty bad. I'm thinking about 5 years ago they began to figure out it wasn't going to work, but the project was so big and expensive that no one was willing to stand up and kill it.
Autonomous driving likely will never work the way the tech prognosticators want it to. It could be 50 years before it becomes ubiquitous. One thing that will absolutely be necessary for wide adoption is time, and thus the deaths of millions of people like me who would never be comfortable riding in such a vehicle. funny thing about life on earth, every 100 years - all new people.
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The real question is whether Apple spent any time, money, and resources designing the very complex manufacturing and industrialization process to actually build whatever is was that they intended to build. Doing this part would be a considerably complex undertaking.
Buying an existing plant can certainly help a lot with ensuring that you'll have a lot of the required infrastructure, utility capacity, zoning compliance, transportation access, and to some degree, a ready source of available labor needed to staff up at all levels. There are no guarantees. Some existing plants may be superfund sites and have serious environmental issues that must be mitigated prior to bringing the plant online. The labor force and suppliers may have moved on to other places and the current plant location may not be an attractive place for pulling in new talent.
I also think that there was never a sense of urgency for Apple to lock down a specific plant at such an early stage and with a lack of absolute and unwavering commitment to move to production. Plus, there are still plenty of available sites to choose should Apple decide to move forward. The former GM plant in Lordstown, OH was very recently, at least partially, reconfigured to build EV trucks. They built a handful of them before going belly up in partnership with Foxconn. I'd bet it's available at a bargain price for a willing buyer.
The root problem is that they had to translate the Apple brand from the domain of screen devices to the domain of cars. And lacking the visionary leadership of Steve Jobs, they tried to design it by committee - a well known recipe for disaster. Most of the concept illustrations (of which I believe none actually came from Apple), show some kind of soft and slightly cartoonish car that would fit in a Pixar movie. That's a design language that we associate with Apple devices and user interfaces. But who would actually want to have a car like that? Certainly not people who like SUVs, roadsters, Italian sports cars, pickups, jeeps, vans or large luxury sedans.
Knowing Apple, we can be certain that they would want to target the premium segment, where a smallish and somewhat feminine looking car would have a very hard time to compete. So that's most likely the dilemma they faced, as soon as they realized that creating a new, fully autonomous, car category would be too hard. What segment to go after then? What should an Apple car, that needs to compete with every other car out there, look and feel like? I think that challenge proved to be too much for a committee of executives without strong product leadership and zero experience in the automobile industry.
As for Jobs, he was not a design visionary. He was the first to try to remind people — it’s a team effort. Watch the old keynotes, he said it. The idea of him as one man product team is a myth. He may have acted as a Product Manager, but that isn’t (and he wasn’t) a designer.
Watching the video, it's pretty amazing at what it senses and tracks.
If Steve Jobs wasn't a design visionary, then why, when he took over, did Apples new products look radically different from both earlier Apple designs and everything else on the market? And why do the iPhones and Macs look pretty much the same today as they did when he passed away 13 years ago? (And please don't bring up "flat UI design" or "dark mode", since none of those trends were conceived by Apple.)
Autonomous driving likely will never work the way the tech prognosticators want it to. It could be 50 years before it becomes ubiquitous. One thing that will absolutely be necessary for wide adoption is time, and thus the deaths of millions of people like me who would never be comfortable riding in such a vehicle. funny thing about life on earth, every 100 years - all new people.