Apple targets car production by 2024

SteveMc

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Reuters story here

Excerpt:

(Reuters) - Apple Inc is moving forward with self-driving car technology and is targeting 2024 to produce a passenger vehicle that could include its own breakthrough battery technology, people familiar with the matter told Reuters.

The iPhone maker’s automotive efforts, known as Project Titan, have proceeded unevenly since 2014 when it first started to design its own vehicle from scratch. At one point, Apple drew back the effort to focus on software and reassessed its goals. Doug Field, an Apple veteran who had worked at Tesla Inc, returned to oversee the project in 2018 and laid off 190 people from the team in 2019.
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Nickj

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Presuming this is why my Tesla shares lost 1k today then. Bounced back a bit now!
 

PanameraFrank

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Another tech company biting off more than they can chew.

Apple will throw a bunch of money at this and fail.
 

Neptune

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Another tech company biting off more than they can chew.

Apple will throw a bunch of money at this and fail.
Apple has more than $200 billion in cash. If they want to they can.

To put that in perspective, I think porsche paid about $1 billion to build the Taycan production facility. Granted that doesn't include all the knowldge that Porsche has built up over that last 69 years. But a couple billion dollars here and there you can solve a lot of problems.
 

robborover

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Another tech company biting off more than they can chew.

Apple will throw a bunch of money at this and fail.
Depends on where they go with this, they can write software and integrate. If they can crack the automotive assembly with a specific self driving niche then they just might make it happen. If they tried to build out current gen like EV's without the automotive credibility then perhaps not. There again, they could also just buy a challenger EV brand for chump change!
 


Kingske

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Depends on where they go with this, they can write software and integrate. If they can crack the automotive assembly with a specific self driving niche then they just might make it happen. If they tried to build out current gen like EV's without the automotive credibility then perhaps not. There again, they could also just buy a challenger EV brand for chump change!
Or buy an established legacy car builder (e.g. Daimler Benz) for a bit more to acquire the mechanical design and manufacturing know-how, and then take care of the software platform and user interface themselves.
 

PanameraFrank

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Apple has more than $200 billion in cash. If they want to they can.

To put that in perspective, I think porsche paid about $1 billion to build the Taycan production facility. Granted that doesn't include all the knowldge that Porsche has built up over that last 69 years. But a couple billion dollars here and there you can solve a lot of problems.
That's certainly what these giant tech companies think "hey, just throw money at it!"

Fortunately that's been proven time and again to be folly in free market countries. The reality is that these giant tech companies only make progress out of their very narrow niches when they buy out companies that know what they're doing.

An Apple designed & built car will fail. Now, if they buy an existing brand or rights to a production car and just port in their software, sure, they could have a sliver of success in certain markets.

But a luxury EV competitor? Nope.
 


wmras

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That's certainly what these giant tech companies think "hey, just throw money at it!"

Fortunately that's been proven time and again to be folly in free market countries. The reality is that these giant tech companies only make progress out of their very narrow niches when they buy out companies that know what they're doing.

An Apple designed & built car will fail. Now, if they buy an existing brand or rights to a production car and just port in their software, sure, they could have a sliver of success in certain markets.

But a luxury EV competitor? Nope.
There may be a lot of people that would prefer Porsche be owned by Apple instead of VW, especially at Porsche.
 

PanameraFrank

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Looks like Apple is partnering with Kia for their EV venture. Makes a lot of sense. Obviously it seems unlikely that Apple/Kia will look to compete with the sporty luxury segment, probably more of a mid range Polestar/Model 3/Y competitor.
 

MissionC

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IMO, I think the auto industry may be going through a transition, just like the phone market did when the iPhone was released. If you remember, at the time other phone makers scoffed at Apple’s entry, saying “PC guys are not going to just figure this out. They’re not going to just walk in.” Tesla has already proven that a non-traditional automaker, starting with technology and not classic auto pedigree, can make a large dent in the market.

Apple brings a tremendous amount of high-volume manufacturing experience — they deliver 100s of millions of devices per year with extremely high-quality. Even though they don’t manufacture or assemble most of their products, they do set the tooling, process, quality levels and throughput required by their vendors to win their business. And then they learn from that experience to start making more and more of their own solution (see the recent introduction of the M1 chip for traditional computing, which was borne out of a decade of experience building high-performance, low-power chips that they designed and architected and had TSMC build for them).

Our cars, like it or not, are becoming a more vertically integrated experience and that’s something Apple excels at building and delivering. I think Apple’s M1 (or derivative) SoC could be a massive leap forward for car capabilities. I care less about autonomous vehicles, but the ability to run sophisticated ML algorithms in real-time in the car to shape power consumption and better predict driver behavior would be a large leap forward. Porsche has published a number of articles in their Porsche Engineering magazines about using predictive algorithms to help with battery conditioning, thermal management, range management, etc., but one thing they’re lacking is a truly capable and modern computing platform in the car to execute on such a vision. Apple has that. One commenter noted that some inside of Porsche wish they were owned by Apple, and I don’t disagree. Porsche’s manufacturing prowess matches Apple’s technical prowess.

However, in today’s world, and even though I‘m longtime massive fan of both companies, I wouldn’t buy a Porsche Design smartphone and I likely wouldn’t buy an Apple car (at least for myself). I will be in the market for another EV in a couple of years and if the Apple car is compelling, it could be perfect for my better half.
 

W1NGE

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Yep, KIA (with the rubbish new logo that reads "KN" never mind the terrible strap line!) is the likely partner given their wealth of experience and enviable technologies (autonomous driving 10 years ago apparently). KIA is right up there with Samsung as part of the South Korean crown jewels. They just quietly get on with it....
 

Heinekennut

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There may be a lot of people that would prefer Porsche be owned by Apple instead of VW, especially at Porsche.
Yeah, at least CarPlay, PCM and media functions would work and you'd not have to drive to a dealership for a software update to work! :)
 
 




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