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A couple of takeaways from this article: Apple has a problem with leadership. When managers aren't buying into a vision, mostly because it's murky at best, tha

A couple of takeaways from this article: Apple has a problem with leadership. When managers aren't buying into a vision, mostly because it's murky at best, that is a big problem. SV hubris believing you can go into any industry and disrupt the incompetent incumbents is laughable. FB found this out with phones and it sounds like Apple and Google are now figuring it out with cars. The Netflix idea works here too: Apple and Google have to become more like GM and BMW before GM and BMW become more like Apple and Google. GM will have an awesome electric with a better range than a Tesla Model 3 this year! If they ever figure out aesthetics and software they will win. Finally this article highlights what Musk has done at Tesla. They are the closest SV company to actually figure out manufacturing. It still remains to be seen but if they do it Tesla will be the market leader in cars.

mikeash 10y ago
Phones is a really weird example here, considering that the two dominant phone players are both SV companies that went into that industry and crushed the incompetent incumbents. I see no reason to think that Apple could do with cars what they did with the iPhone, but that particular example doesn't make any sense.
- samfisher83 10y ago
  You could say the iphone was the evolution from the ipod, and I would argue samsung is quite important to the android growth.
- csydas 10y ago
  I can name a few differences, even if I don't think it's impossible. Phones were ready for a natural complete upgrade from brick phones to smartphones. The mobile environment was there, all the network components were coming online to make it a really useful device, processors were getting to a good stage for mobile usage where it made sense to make the jump and the jump was right into what Apple already knew pretty well. The phone part of smart phones is pretty minor, quite honestly. Smartphones weren't so much an evolution of dumb phones, they were a complete redesign and replacement thereof. The technology that puts an OS in your hand just did the job of being a phone better than a brick phone did[1], and it came with a bunch of extra features that people didn't know they wanted. Cars are a little different. Fundamentally, a self-driving car is still a car with an OS attached. It's not so much just figuring out the OS part of it, it's also getting the engineering on a vehicle right, and I'm guessing with autonomous cars there's a lot you have to take into consideration when it comes to the mechanical aspects. It's not quite like the phone situation where you just replace brick phone with smart phone - a smart car is fundamentally the same as a dumb car except that you don't drive the smart car (and in some models, you do). There's a lot more to take into consideration, a much larger spectrum of rules and regulations, and honestly the car part of smart cars is pretty involved. It's not that Apple doesn't have the money to throw at car R&D, it's just it doesn't seem to make a lot of sense to do it. Again, I don't doubt they could do it, but the barrier of entry just seems higher here, and it's not as natural of a segue for Apple either. They're not just building a tiny computer with an iCar, they'd be building a car with an Apple computer. [1]I realize that many prefer the brick phones to smart phones and that smart phones are pretty bad at the phone part of being a phone, but ultimately between the myriad of communication apps available, you have more communication options available in your hand than you do with a brick phone, and more ways to do the communication thing.
  - mikeash 10y ago
    I completely agree, however people were saying pretty much the exact same things about Apple's phone efforts about ten years ago. In hindsight, it's clear that smartphones lined up just about perfectly with Apple's core competencies, but before they proved it in the market, people were saying just this sort of thing: the engineering is tough and different, the stuff Apple is good at isn't the stuff that's hard, regulation is far more difficult, it's not just a tiny computer, etc. Now, just because they were wrong to say it then doesn't mean you're wrong to say it now. I think you're right. I'm just saying that phones are a terrible example to bring up if one is arguing that SV companies can't take over industries with entrenched incumbents.
    - csydas 10y ago
      Please excuse typos as I am on phone in the metro I appreciate that a lot since I was one of the naysayers. Admittedly I was a bitter PPC Mac user upset that we weren't getting attention on the desktop side but I was still worried. However, even if hindsight is 20/20, I do feel that a lot of the infrastructure and resources necessary for an iPhone were just there already and apple seized an emerging market. With cars I feel that the regulatory, technical, and physical infrastructure for smart cars isn't there yet for anything disruptive. Driverless cars still appear to need a lot of hand holding, and while there will be an investment payout eventually for folks in the game at the moment, I'm not sure it's as great as they are hoping it as soon as they are hoping. In my mind it makes more sense to have an apple iOS port for cars than an iCar. Or set up the infrastructure that driverless car folk are going to want. Siri taxi for example. Siri pizza delivery. Siri breathalyzer and/or drunk talk analyzer and safe delivery to home. Basically whereas I feel that in the mobile space controlling the hardware 100% make sense, with the cars maybe it makes more sense to just get the software right. Maybe Apple sees the writing on the wall and figures very tightly controlled hardware so not much testing needed/similar performance. I do this the differences are great enough Between the car and phone research to warrant the move. But maybe once again I'm just bitter Apple isn't paying attention to their desktop line. :p
      - mikeash 10y ago
samfisher83 10y ago
For all the hate GM get the EV1 was way ahead of their Time. Its sad that GM didn't have the leadership that supported that effort. We would probably have viable low cost EVs by now.
- maxerickson 10y ago
  What's the path they would have followed? The battery in the EV1 was crappy and expensive, is the thesis that billions of automotive dollars would have accelerated progress in battery research? Is it useful to lose money producing electric vehicles while doing that research?
  - samfisher83 10y ago
    Usually you have to spend a lot on research to make advancements. You have to experiment with different materials.
    - Animats 10y ago
      Which GM did. The Chevy Bolt is the result. Pre-orders start today.[1] $37,495 before $7,500 Federal tax rebate. Claimed range 238 miles. Delivery in about 10 weeks. This will change the auto landscape drastically. This is a product of the Chevrolet Division of General Motors. They're good at making and selling large numbers of cars. It may not be as cool as Tesla, but there will be millions of these things soon. [1] http://gas2.org/2016/10/14/chevy-bolt-pre-ordering-begins-california/ http://gas2.org/2016/10/14/chevy-bolt-pre-ordering-begins-ca...
coldtea 10y ago
>Apple has a problem with leadership. When managers aren't buying into a vision, mostly because it's murky at best, that is a big problem. That's the inverse of what would actually be a big problem: managers BUYING into a "murky at best" vision. >SV hubris believing you can go into any industry and disrupt the incompetent incumbents is laughable. Isn't that what people said about music players and then about phones? Heck, they are already the #2 watchmaker in the world in profits too... >FB found this out with phones and it sounds like Apple and Google are now figuring it out with cars. Neither Google nor Apple have ever released in car. If anything, their setbacks are related to the advanced self-driving stuff they aspire to make, not some issue competing with existing car tech or distribution or anything. Besides, tons of companies have entered the car market and gave established car companies a run for their money already. The Japanese obliterated the established Detroit order for example, and new Chinese cars are as good as anybody's for general use. Tesla also come out of nowhere and cornered a niche of the market. Heck, traditional car companies are so complacent and derivative that if anything it's the inverse of hubris to believe one can do better. Nowadays, when most of the manufacturing the expertise is in assembly lines in China and the like, creating a new car to compete with existing models is laughably easy -- especially if you have $500 billion lying around.
- skybrian 10y ago
  You're comparing entirely different things. Chinese cars are barely being imported in the U.S. (Three models so far). It has taken many years to get this far, and will take longer for them to have a similar reputation as, say, Korea. Tesla has done well in the luxury car market, but they've been late and had quality issues. The Tesla 3 is not out yet and there is still a big risk they'll fail. So, "laughably easy" is a major exaggeration. It's possible to launch a new car company but nobody finds it easy.
  - coldtea 10y ago
    >Chinese cars are barely being imported in the U.S. (Three models so far). It has taken many years to get this far, and will take longer for them to have a similar reputation as, say, Korea. Yes, but the US is a mere 5% of the global population and about 20% of global GDP (down from decades ago). You can be a huge player and not even play in the US market. The Chinese are already selling their cars in many global markets. >Tesla has done well in the luxury car market, but they've been late and had quality issues. The Tesla 3 is not out yet and there is still a big risk they'll fail. Tesla doesn't have Apple's half a trillion in the bank though. And which established car maker didn't have quality issues at various times (and still today)?

mikeash 10y ago

Phones is a really weird example here, considering that the two dominant phone players are both SV companies that went into that industry and crushed the incompetent incumbents. I see no reason to think that Apple could do with cars what they did with the iPhone, but that particular example doesn't make any sense.

samfisher83 10y ago
You could say the iphone was the evolution from the ipod, and I would argue samsung is quite important to the android growth.
csydas 10y ago
I can name a few differences, even if I don't think it's impossible. Phones were ready for a natural complete upgrade from brick phones to smartphones. The mobile environment was there, all the network components were coming online to make it a really useful device, processors were getting to a good stage for mobile usage where it made sense to make the jump and the jump was right into what Apple already knew pretty well. The phone part of smart phones is pretty minor, quite honestly. Smartphones weren't so much an evolution of dumb phones, they were a complete redesign and replacement thereof. The technology that puts an OS in your hand just did the job of being a phone better than a brick phone did[1], and it came with a bunch of extra features that people didn't know they wanted. Cars are a little different. Fundamentally, a self-driving car is still a car with an OS attached. It's not so much just figuring out the OS part of it, it's also getting the engineering on a vehicle right, and I'm guessing with autonomous cars there's a lot you have to take into consideration when it comes to the mechanical aspects. It's not quite like the phone situation where you just replace brick phone with smart phone - a smart car is fundamentally the same as a dumb car except that you don't drive the smart car (and in some models, you do). There's a lot more to take into consideration, a much larger spectrum of rules and regulations, and honestly the car part of smart cars is pretty involved. It's not that Apple doesn't have the money to throw at car R&D, it's just it doesn't seem to make a lot of sense to do it. Again, I don't doubt they could do it, but the barrier of entry just seems higher here, and it's not as natural of a segue for Apple either. They're not just building a tiny computer with an iCar, they'd be building a car with an Apple computer. [1]I realize that many prefer the brick phones to smart phones and that smart phones are pretty bad at the phone part of being a phone, but ultimately between the myriad of communication apps available, you have more communication options available in your hand than you do with a brick phone, and more ways to do the communication thing.
- mikeash 10y ago
  I completely agree, however people were saying pretty much the exact same things about Apple's phone efforts about ten years ago. In hindsight, it's clear that smartphones lined up just about perfectly with Apple's core competencies, but before they proved it in the market, people were saying just this sort of thing: the engineering is tough and different, the stuff Apple is good at isn't the stuff that's hard, regulation is far more difficult, it's not just a tiny computer, etc. Now, just because they were wrong to say it then doesn't mean you're wrong to say it now. I think you're right. I'm just saying that phones are a terrible example to bring up if one is arguing that SV companies can't take over industries with entrenched incumbents.
  - csydas 10y ago
    Please excuse typos as I am on phone in the metro I appreciate that a lot since I was one of the naysayers. Admittedly I was a bitter PPC Mac user upset that we weren't getting attention on the desktop side but I was still worried. However, even if hindsight is 20/20, I do feel that a lot of the infrastructure and resources necessary for an iPhone were just there already and apple seized an emerging market. With cars I feel that the regulatory, technical, and physical infrastructure for smart cars isn't there yet for anything disruptive. Driverless cars still appear to need a lot of hand holding, and while there will be an investment payout eventually for folks in the game at the moment, I'm not sure it's as great as they are hoping it as soon as they are hoping. In my mind it makes more sense to have an apple iOS port for cars than an iCar. Or set up the infrastructure that driverless car folk are going to want. Siri taxi for example. Siri pizza delivery. Siri breathalyzer and/or drunk talk analyzer and safe delivery to home. Basically whereas I feel that in the mobile space controlling the hardware 100% make sense, with the cars maybe it makes more sense to just get the software right. Maybe Apple sees the writing on the wall and figures very tightly controlled hardware so not much testing needed/similar performance. I do this the differences are great enough Between the car and phone research to warrant the move. But maybe once again I'm just bitter Apple isn't paying attention to their desktop line. :p
    - mikeash 10y ago

samfisher83 10y ago

For all the hate GM get the EV1 was way ahead of their Time. Its sad that GM didn't have the leadership that supported that effort. We would probably have viable low cost EVs by now.

maxerickson 10y ago
What's the path they would have followed? The battery in the EV1 was crappy and expensive, is the thesis that billions of automotive dollars would have accelerated progress in battery research? Is it useful to lose money producing electric vehicles while doing that research?
- samfisher83 10y ago
  Usually you have to spend a lot on research to make advancements. You have to experiment with different materials.
  - Animats 10y ago
    Which GM did. The Chevy Bolt is the result. Pre-orders start today.[1] $37,495 before $7,500 Federal tax rebate. Claimed range 238 miles. Delivery in about 10 weeks. This will change the auto landscape drastically. This is a product of the Chevrolet Division of General Motors. They're good at making and selling large numbers of cars. It may not be as cool as Tesla, but there will be millions of these things soon. [1] http://gas2.org/2016/10/14/chevy-bolt-pre-ordering-begins-california/ http://gas2.org/2016/10/14/chevy-bolt-pre-ordering-begins-ca...

coldtea 10y ago

>Apple has a problem with leadership. When managers aren't buying into a vision, mostly because it's murky at best, that is a big problem. That's the inverse of what would actually be a big problem: managers BUYING into a "murky at best" vision. >SV hubris believing you can go into any industry and disrupt the incompetent incumbents is laughable. Isn't that what people said about music players and then about phones? Heck, they are already the #2 watchmaker in the world in profits too... >FB found this out with phones and it sounds like Apple and Google are now figuring it out with cars. Neither Google nor Apple have ever released in car. If anything, their setbacks are related to the advanced self-driving stuff they aspire to make, not some issue competing with existing car tech or distribution or anything. Besides, tons of companies have entered the car market and gave established car companies a run for their money already. The Japanese obliterated the established Detroit order for example, and new Chinese cars are as good as anybody's for general use. Tesla also come out of nowhere and cornered a niche of the market. Heck, traditional car companies are so complacent and derivative that if anything it's the inverse of hubris to believe one can do better. Nowadays, when most of the manufacturing the expertise is in assembly lines in China and the like, creating a new car to compete with existing models is laughably easy -- especially if you have $500 billion lying around.

skybrian 10y ago
You're comparing entirely different things. Chinese cars are barely being imported in the U.S. (Three models so far). It has taken many years to get this far, and will take longer for them to have a similar reputation as, say, Korea. Tesla has done well in the luxury car market, but they've been late and had quality issues. The Tesla 3 is not out yet and there is still a big risk they'll fail. So, "laughably easy" is a major exaggeration. It's possible to launch a new car company but nobody finds it easy.
- coldtea 10y ago
  >Chinese cars are barely being imported in the U.S. (Three models so far). It has taken many years to get this far, and will take longer for them to have a similar reputation as, say, Korea. Yes, but the US is a mere 5% of the global population and about 20% of global GDP (down from decades ago). You can be a huge player and not even play in the US market. The Chinese are already selling their cars in many global markets. >Tesla has done well in the luxury car market, but they've been late and had quality issues. The Tesla 3 is not out yet and there is still a big risk they'll fail. Tesla doesn't have Apple's half a trillion in the bank though. And which established car maker didn't have quality issues at various times (and still today)?