Apple iCar -- Your Thoughs?

[rr6013]

I am skeptical. Apple branded cars will not feature anything. Engineering will make things “just work”. Apple will design a car in Cupertino you’ll love. Battery life is a strategic hook for the brand. Its ability to siphon electrons rather than consume energy to depletion will be a standout discriminator. Integration is everywhere and Apple products enjoy 1st tier accommodations. Lastly, innovation is a result of a paradigm shift. Abstracting interfaces and technology transfer at which Apple excels will not be enough. Tesla brought the innovation I once thought Apple capable. So I don’t understand what it is that Apple could bring to the auto sector or to EV’s that will shift the ground beneath Tesla et. al.

Tim Cook supply chain chops are unquestionable but he is no car guy. I owned AAPL stock, was a 3rd party developer and at NeXT. SteveJobs hated car mfgr “feature” marketing. You never saw a SteveJobs product sell a list of features. Cars sell on features.

Tesla has contributed to automaotive design vocabulary, EV engineering and manufacturing technology. People respect Elon sleeping on the factory floor commitment, ground breaking Cybertruck design and SpaceX technology transfer into everyday products.

SO I ask “who leads, where does Apple fit, what is its contribution and does it have a paradigm shift innovation that can change the world of transportation”? Those are my four answers missing before pulling the trigger on AAPL and an Apple car. How can it profit here with a car in 2024?

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[cyberhunter]

And in response to Apple making a car, Tesla will be releasing a phone and with the vertical integration will be able to sell for $25 a phone

But the Tesla screen glass will break.

 

[Cyberman]

And in response to Apple making a car, Tesla will be releasing a phone and with the vertical integration will be able to sell for $25 a phone

Bullet-proof 3mm SS, armored glass face, etc. I like it already. My phone is so old I have to pull start it every morning

 

[FutureBoy]

Bullet-proof 3mm SS, armored glass face, etc. I like it already. My phone is so old I have to pull start it every morning

yes, one side is armored glass, other is SS. Whole phone is bulletproof. It will take me a while to get used to putting a large triangle in my pocket. But it can be used as a weapon, hand held pick axe, shovel, sled, and has a camping mode.

 

[jerhenderson]

Software and apps only? You have misjudged Apple entirely.

The iPhone is more than software and apps, it is a camera, video recorder and computer as well. The Apple Car will be more than software and apps. Apple designs their own computer chips just like Tesla. The new M1 SoC(processor, I/O, security, and memory)is nothing short of amazing and TSMC makes them for Apple as they do Tesla's computer chips. Apple envisions the Apple Car as more than just an electric car and autonomous driving. The Xpeng P7 comes to mind as to where Apple Car may be headed.

Per Xpeng website for the P7:
One platform delivers full intelligent experience

Built on the SEPA (Smart Electric Platform Architecture) with a comprehensive built-in neural network backed by powerful dual-chip computing system, the P7’s data processing capability eclipses its predecessor to handle more scenarios. Each Firmware OTA upgrade will significantly improve your experience.

200 x faster1
Data bandwidth

8x enhanced2
Data security module
computing power

High-level functional
safety3
Fully secure autonomous
driving computing platform

100% connectivity4
Fast Ethernet
architecture

*1 The system adopts 100M Ethernet central gateway, which is 200 times faster than 500K high-speed CAN bus.

*2 The computing power of the information security module (i.e. the main frequency and RAM) is 8 times faster than that of the previous version.

*3 Xavier SoC core computing platform has passed ASIL D level certification, the highest level of ASIL.

*4 The SEPA controller is 100% networked through the central gateway.


Of course only time will tell what more information is forthcoming about the Apple Car but don't discount an Apple Car just yet.

I still doubt it..... they will be years behind three rest of the market and the 2024 time guess is unreasonable.....3 years to design and mass produce a car from scratch? Nope.

 

[TruckElectric]

I still doubt it..... they will be years behind three rest of the market and the 2024 time guess is unreasonable.....3 years to design and mass produce a car from scratch? Nope.

You're not alone. From Teslarati - 'In a recent research note, reliable Apple analyst Ming-Chi Kuo wrote that the tech giant could postpone the launch of its electric car to 2028 or later. Kuo has been dubbed the “most accurate Apple analyst in the world,” and may have more insight into the Apple Car project.'

Apple’s electric car launch could be postponed to ‘2028 or later,’ estimates analyst

 

[christianUK]

I don’t think it can ever be bad for consumers to have two innovation behemoths slugging it out to bring new or improved products to market. As for leadership, electric cars are here to stay. Elon and Tim like Steve will have their day and leave the stage. The play is much longer than this decade’s CEO

 

[Luke42]

I still doubt it..... they will be years behind three rest of the market and the 2024 time guess is unreasonable.....3 years to design and mass produce a car from scratch? Nope.

It may be enough time to arrange for contract-manufacturing of a customized car design from existing auto companies, though.

Would Magna or BYD agree to be Apple's Foxcon-for-cars? I bet they could adapt one of the platforms they're using now to meet Apple's specifications in 3 years (the usual automotive design cycle is 5 years). I bet they would do it, too, if Apple were willing to write the big checks.

 

[Frankenblob]

Apple stock rises, Tesla dips after report that ‘iCar’ could emerge in 2024

Published: Dec. 21, 2020 at 4:06 p.m. ET
By
Wallace Witkowski


Apple Inc. shares AAPL, +1.24% closed higher Monday following a report that the tech giant is targeting 2024 as the year it produces a passenger vehicle.

Apple intends to move ahead with its own version of self-driving car technology including a “breakthrough” battery design following a project that began in 2014, Reuters reported, citing people familiar with the matter. Apple declined to comment to Reuters on its plans.

Apple shares finished up 1.2% at $128.23, after being down as much as 2.5% earlier in the session, with a noticeable gain directly after the report hit late in the session.

Tesla Inc. shares TSLA, -6.49% finished down 6.5% at $649.86, following a session where the stock reached an intraday high of 3.8% below Friday’s closing price, and declined directly after the report was released.

https://www.marketwatch.com/story/a...rt-that-icar-could-emerge-in-2024-11608584812
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The ‘Apple car’ chatter is back with new reports pointing to a 2024 launch date
Kirsten Korosec@kirstenkorosec / 5:07 PM CST•December 21, 2020


The demise of the Apple car, the technology giant’s not-so-secret secret project, was perhaps overstated. Apple’s so-called Project Titan, which last year reduced the team by some 200 employees, is not only alive, it has plans to produce an electric passenger vehicle with “breakthrough battery technology” and automated vehicle technology by 2024, according to a report from Reuters.

It’s unclear what the vehicle will look like, who will be the manufacturing partner or if the self-driving system that Apple has been working on will be part of the car or offered as a software product to other companies. The Reuters article builds off of another report from Taiwanese media outlet Economic Daily Times, which describes Apple ramping up orders for auto parts and components from suppliers in the country. Together, the reports offer confirmation that Apple, while quiet and with a smaller team, hasn’t ditched the idea of a car after all.

Reuters sources describe this as a passenger vehicle, which would put Apple in a different category than autonomous vehicle technology companies like Waymo that are trying to commercialize robotaxi services. (Waymo has said that it is also interested in licensing its AV tech for passenger vehicles, but it’s not the company’s first priority.)


The day-to-day operations of Apple’s Project Titan is led by Doug Field, who returned to the company in 2018 after a stint at electric automaker Tesla. Field, who was senior vice president of engineering at Tesla, was one of the key executives behind the launch of the Model 3. Under Field’s leadership, it appears the Apple car might square off more directly with Tesla than say Alphabet’s Waymo.

Earlier this month, Bloomberg reported that Apple has moved Field and the rest of the Project Titan team under Apple executive John Giannandrea’s artificial intelligence and machine-learning group.

https://techcrunch.com/2020/12/21/t...h-new-reports-pointing-to-a-2024-launch-date/

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2024 is a long time away and this is just "unnamed sources" at Apple. There has been a lot of chatter over the last 6 years about an Apple car. They may want to get into the car manufacturing business or wind up selling the architecture for autonomous driving. Either way, if another company could step successfully into the electric car market it would be Apple with their $125+ billions of dollars socked away for a rainy day.

What are everyone's' thoughts on this? Yes, it is not iTruck, but interesting news.

I think it is becomming TOO stupid especially in the way the "end game" is being set-up.

Technology is awesome, don't get me wrong, but when the same "elites" and their PUPPETICIANS, henchmen and ilk are the same year after year after year after...I simply LOOK at the current situation/Society and see that it is getting worse and worse.

Apple can go and buy "Lucid", that may be a better option.

But i am garnering an interest in the first commercially viable brand that can do "solid state" batteries. I think Toyota said that when they release their sold state battery it will "...mop up the floor with Tesla...", sounds and ONLY SOUNDS good for now.

 

[Jow]

competition will keep tesla on it's toes, all good

 

[rlhamil]

So let’s try to sum up my thoughts on Apple Car.

First and most significant knowledge about Autonomous driving: „It’s the data stupid“.

So how much data from what fleet does Apple have collected until today and what fleet will collect them data until 2024? Even if someone with a lot of fantasy finds an answer that is not “zero” it will be near zero compared to the billions of miles on autopilot data Tesla has collected up until today.

Second most relevant thought on autonomous driving: “It will be solved only once”.

Today every car is only driving 5% of its lifetime. So if someone produces autonomous vehicles and integrates them into a fleet aka MAAS (or colloquial robotaxi) and makes those drive only 60% of the day, that will replace the necesity for 12 of todays cars. So if, e.g. Tesla solves Autonomy first and produces lets say only 500.000 cars a year that will be able to replace 6 Million other cars per year. Where should there be room for s/o else solving autonomy?

And that’s where we come to Apple. Apple has no glue about producing Hardware. At least since the Apple IIe they did not produce any Hardware themselves anymore.

Apple is a catalog engineering company. Their proficiency is not to invent new stuff. Their proficiency is not to produce stuff. Apples expertise is designing the outer appearance and integrating existing products with software. Actually they are only doing the GUI part of the software. Even their operating system is not engineered by Apple but is a Unix Operating System with an Apple GUI (and some drivers for the Apple ROM).

You're vastly underrating Apple. They've done their own chip design (CPUs, GPUs, some I/O chips, cellular modems more recently) for a long time; not totally from scratch, but I don't guess there's a huge amount in common between a basic ARM chip from someone else and one of theirs, except the standard part of the instruction set. No, they don't make the chips themselves, but they do the design themselves in Verilog or whatever their fab partner can support. And the chips are what handles the data. They've got some definite clue dealing with outside world data in terms of Touch-ID, Face-ID, and "computational photography" (all of which they've advanced rather than just borrowed from others). The performance of their new M1 (Apple Silicon) based systems has been widely praised.

So it's not just the data, but what you do with it. And how prepared you are to gather it and process it. They've got mapping vans driving everywhere to catch up with Google maps; what if they put additional (passive, not autopilot) sensors on those too, and learn to use together that data with the data from their few existing prototypes? It wouldn't have nearly as many examples, but it would have a lot more variety of examples; and it's in variety, not just volume, where the problem cases lie.

My hope though is that at worst, one more will make others up their game. At the least, get Tesla to add CarPlay and Android Auto support. Which would be a basic countermeasure, taking some edge off of the "Apple Ecosystem" experience.

 

[rlhamil]

https://www.macrumors.com/2020/12/27/kuo-apple-car-2025-2027-at-earliest/

Rumors vary.

 

[drift]

If Apple were really that great they would control more of the cell phone market than they do. 80% of the cell phones are Android. Looks like hype to me.

 

[kenshortt]

Apple stock rises, Tesla dips after report that ‘iCar’ could emerge in 2024

Published: Dec. 21, 2020 at 4:06 p.m. ET
By
Wallace Witkowski


Apple Inc. shares AAPL, +1.24% closed higher Monday following a report that the tech giant is targeting 2024 as the year it produces a passenger vehicle.

Apple intends to move ahead with its own version of self-driving car technology including a “breakthrough” battery design following a project that began in 2014, Reuters reported, citing people familiar with the matter. Apple declined to comment to Reuters on its plans.

Apple shares finished up 1.2% at $128.23, after being down as much as 2.5% earlier in the session, with a noticeable gain directly after the report hit late in the session.

Tesla Inc. shares TSLA, -6.49% finished down 6.5% at $649.86, following a session where the stock reached an intraday high of 3.8% below Friday’s closing price, and declined directly after the report was released.

https://www.marketwatch.com/story/a...rt-that-icar-could-emerge-in-2024-11608584812
-------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------



The ‘Apple car’ chatter is back with new reports pointing to a 2024 launch date
Kirsten Korosec@kirstenkorosec / 5:07 PM CST•December 21, 2020


The demise of the Apple car, the technology giant’s not-so-secret secret project, was perhaps overstated. Apple’s so-called Project Titan, which last year reduced the team by some 200 employees, is not only alive, it has plans to produce an electric passenger vehicle with “breakthrough battery technology” and automated vehicle technology by 2024, according to a report from Reuters.

It’s unclear what the vehicle will look like, who will be the manufacturing partner or if the self-driving system that Apple has been working on will be part of the car or offered as a software product to other companies. The Reuters article builds off of another report from Taiwanese media outlet Economic Daily Times, which describes Apple ramping up orders for auto parts and components from suppliers in the country. Together, the reports offer confirmation that Apple, while quiet and with a smaller team, hasn’t ditched the idea of a car after all.

Reuters sources describe this as a passenger vehicle, which would put Apple in a different category than autonomous vehicle technology companies like Waymo that are trying to commercialize robotaxi services. (Waymo has said that it is also interested in licensing its AV tech for passenger vehicles, but it’s not the company’s first priority.)


The day-to-day operations of Apple’s Project Titan is led by Doug Field, who returned to the company in 2018 after a stint at electric automaker Tesla. Field, who was senior vice president of engineering at Tesla, was one of the key executives behind the launch of the Model 3. Under Field’s leadership, it appears the Apple car might square off more directly with Tesla than say Alphabet’s Waymo.

Earlier this month, Bloomberg reported that Apple has moved Field and the rest of the Project Titan team under Apple executive John Giannandrea’s artificial intelligence and machine-learning group.

https://techcrunch.com/2020/12/21/t...h-new-reports-pointing-to-a-2024-launch-date/

-----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

2024 is a long time away and this is just "unnamed sources" at Apple. There has been a lot of chatter over the last 6 years about an Apple car. They may want to get into the car manufacturing business or wind up selling the architecture for autonomous driving. Either way, if another company could step successfully into the electric car market it would be Apple with their $125+ billions of dollars socked away for a rainy day.

What are everyone's' thoughts on this? Yes, it is not iTruck, but interesting news.

It will work as long as drivers are no long required to see where they are driving

 

[rlhamil]

If Apple were really that great they would control more of the cell phone market than they do. 80% of the cell phones are Android. Looks like hype to me.

Apple phones tend to cost more for a given feature list, although that treats Android OS and iOS as equals, which they might not be, and presumes that all arguments on behalf of Apple having superior design are just hype, and that anything that doesn't give most features for a given price is overpriced.

And Android is an OS, not a single brand or manufacturer. And of course while you can use an iPhone or iPad nowadays without having a desktop or laptop at all, and can certainly use them with a Windows desktop or laptop, there are additional advantages to Apple's devices used with Apple's desktops or laptops (file sharing, integration, using the phone to write your signature on for something on the desktop, etc).

So comparing Apple phones with Android phones is comparing things that aren't two brands, but one against many, and with different selling points.

Try it differently: "If Tesla were really that great they would control more of the car market than they do." Maybe they will one day, maybe not; but that's not today, and it doesn't really mean anything. Tesla is really good at what they do, but they're not immune to having problems. Ditto Apple.

Everything that survives has some fans, except maybe rest stop gas stations, which have a steady supply of people with no other immediate alternative. Apple (or Android) phones don't have that, not even as a duopoly. Heck, there's a few poor fools with Windows phones, and a few Blackberry die-hards still out there.

As for me, I'd like the option of CarPlay (or Android Auto if I had an Android phone); so long as it wouldn't change anything if you wanted to use the phone without that feature, and so long as it wouldn't let someone hack your car via the phone or cost you extra even if you didn't want it, it just doesn't hurt.