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The Tesla Model 3 already embodies the minimalism, software focus, and vertical integration that have driven Apple's success in the phone market. Right down to

The Tesla Model 3 already embodies the minimalism, software focus, and vertical integration that have driven Apple's success in the phone market. Right down to the custom SoC and capacitive touchscreen in lieu of buttons. I'm really curious what Apple's differentiators will be. Also, 2024 still seems aggressive to deploy self-driving for real.

modzu 6y ago
door handles?
- kirian 6y ago
  it won't have door handles.
  - panda88888 6y ago
    It won’t have doors.
    - dwighttk 6y ago
      Well it definitely won’t have Windows
- modeless 6y ago
  It's funny because it's true. The door handles are among my least favorite parts of the Model 3, along with the control stalks on the steering wheel (both their mushy feel and lack of physical wiper controls combined with the crappiness of the auto wipers). Apple could certainly improve on those, although Tesla does have better handles on their other cars already including fully automatic doors on the Model X.
jonplackett 6y ago
It's Siri of course!
ProfessorLayton 6y ago
>I'm really curious what their differentiators will be Extremely good build quality? Accessories notwithstanding, most of their products look and feel like they were built extremely well. Even their failures like the butterfly keyboard looked and felt like they were built to extremely tight tolerances.
- api 6y ago
  Tolerances and build quality weren't the problem with the butterfly keyboard. It was just a fundamentally flawed design that was not durable enough for real world use.
  - jacobolus 6y ago
    I can't imagine that it didn't stand up to very extensive lab testing, before getting approved for mass production across Apple's laptops. It would be very interesting to hear some inside accounts about what went wrong there. I wouldn't at all be surprised to learn that the mass-produced parts didn't quite measure up to the prototypes, whether because of less consistent materials, part manufacturing defects, slightly off assembly, .... To be fair to the designers, the height budget they were working with is an extremely hard target to hit for a part that gets as much physical abuse as a keyboard. I was pretty impressed with how passable the keyboard was for typing on, given the height constraint. (However, I was not impressed with the dropped actuations, double actuations, inconsistent key feel after a few months use, broken keycap that my 1-year-old keeps removing and hiding around the house, etc. Overall it ended up being a catastrophically bad design based on poor reliability.) The biggest problem at company scale was that they couldn't revert to something like their previous keyboard in a shorter time frame. The lesson is to avoid completely locking the whole rest of the system design around a brand new untested part for which there is no alternative. It would have been better to test the new keyboard design in a context like an external iPad keyboard where if it turned out to be a dud there would be an obvious path to an alternative, and customers wouldn't be left with a broken $2000 machine.
    - novok 6y ago
SkyMarshal 6y ago
>I'm really curious what Apple's differentiators will be. There's room for more than one car company like this. If Apple brings high quality, tight fit and finish, elegant design, software focus, vertical integration (including their new M1 processor tech), logistics support (charging station network, maintenance, etc), and "next-level batteries" to the mix, then I'm sure they'll find space in the market. If Apple can execute with electric cars as they've executed with consumer electronics, then they'll be competing not just with Tesla, but directly with Audi, BMW, Mercedes, Lexus, etc.
- jdhn 6y ago
  >logistics support (charging station network, maintenance, etc) Honestly, if Apple bought out the existing non-Tesla charging networks and dedicated even a sliver of their UX talent to improving the charging experience, they would really push things forward. This is, of course, assuming that buying the charging networks would make it past the anti-trust people.
  - jayd16 6y ago
    > even a sliver of their UX talent to improving the charging experience Would I have to flip my iCar over and plug into the bottom center?
    - jdhn 6y ago
      Yes, but don't worry, the charging station will automatically do that for you.
- neogodless 6y ago
  But lately Apple has been trending towards not including the charger.
  - SkyMarshal 6y ago
    Haha, touche. At least customers won't be complaining about the lack of user-replaceable batteries in Apple electric cars.
fetus8 6y ago
Utilizing the knowledge they've learned in the last 10 years, by developing their own SoC, their machine learning efforts, and integrating their product ecosystem into a vehicle could be a pretty big differentiator.
iandanforth 6y ago
Having recently sold my Tesla Model 3 I can say there is a lot to be desired with that car. The biggest lesson from Tesla is that cars are not cellphones. Having one display off to the side, without buttons, that does everything is an awful experience in a car. I hope that Apple learns that lesson. I think if they had gone first they might have made that mistake too, but now that it's been tried they can find interesting ways to innovate that don't break the experience. I also don't think they will try for self-driving out of the gate. I know a good number of the experts in this field and no one thinks full autonomy is ready. The moat that Waymo has built with their particular kind of testing and iteration is diametrically opposed to how companies like Tesla, Lyft, Uber etc have tried to do self-driving. Even they are going to be restricted to the easiest of locals for years.
- modeless 6y ago
  > Having one display off to the side, without buttons, that does everything is an awful experience in a car I have to strongly disagree with this. The touchscreen is great for the vast majority of things it replaces. The only physical controls I ever miss are for temperature (which is a very minor complaint) and windshield wipers (though I would also accept auto wipers that actually work). I do think the UI smoothness and touch latency could be slightly improved, and Apple would do better, but Tesla is already so far ahead of every other car manufacturer there that it's not even funny.
  - dwighttk 6y ago
    Man I don’t drive with a passenger enough to care about ui animations on my car. I just want to set the fan speed and move on... preferably without looking.
    - andreilys 6y ago
      When I rented a Tesla I recall being able to set all these controls with my voice.
      - 6y ago
notatoad 6y ago
A big differentiator will obviously just be the apple brand. There's going to be a huge number of people who just want to be seen driving around in an apple-branded car. And a lot of those people are currently tesla fans
suby 6y ago
I know I am not alone in this, but I absolutely cannot stand touch screens in cars, and would like for this trend to reverse. It is hard to navigate without physically looking at the screen, which is a huge safety hazard while driving.
- mdeeks 6y ago
  For some things, like navigation and settings, I absolutely love a touch screen. For other things, like wiper control in the Model 3, I definitely do not like it and it is worse. I think this might just come down to personal preference. After owning a Model 3 for a while now, I can't stand my Audi (or other cars) that aren't touch screens. There are far too many buttons and dials. It is overwhelming (and ugly to me). The non-touch UIs are clunky and confusing and often far more distracting for me as I try to figure them out.
marta_morena_9 6y ago
> I'm really curious what Apple's differentiators will be. Really? Why are you not curious what the differentiator of all the car companies out there is? Why don't we just have one car company? (Hint: There is so much demand, so many different tastes, budgets and features and regulation, that a single company will never serve all of them. Tesla is a niche product and I for one would never buy one) The iPhone was special in the regard that there simply was NO competition. We are not talking EV vs combustion (which was Tesla's main step, and even still, everyone knew EVs would work and how they work, but nobody was ready to fully commit to them yet). We are talking horses vs. cars. Apple managed to establish themselves in a market that most companies didn't even think exist... So no comparison here. All Tesla has done is make EVs more approachable and "cool" for the masses. However they have literally ZERO differentiator compared to established car companies. They are going to tank so hard stock wise in the next 10 years that investors will wonder what hit them.
- modeless 6y ago
  I'm not curious about other car companies because their products are on the market already and their differentiators are well known by everyone... > they have literally ZERO differentiator compared to established car companies. They are going to tank so hard stock wise Their stock is insanely overvalued, no argument there. But they have one of the largest installed and fastest growing DC charging networks, software that doesn't suck, and the most capable and fastest improving driver assist system enabled by a proprietary custom ASIC. That's far from "ZERO" differentiators, especially in a world where other manufacturers keep faceplanting on their software efforts over and over again.
  - ethbr0 6y ago
    Also, incredibly well-integrated battery packs, a reliable source of batteries (at the volume they need), and various other ventures to amortize their EV-related costs over (e.g. Tesla Energy).
  - novok 6y ago
    TBH they're pretty much the only car manufacturer that doesn't look like generic car interior with generic car exterior shape too.
Aunche 6y ago
Well Apple is known for its QA, and Tesla is known for its lack of QA. In general, Tesla fans want the latest bleeding edge technology, while Apple fans generally want something that "just works".
damnyou 6y ago
> I'm really curious what Apple's differentiators will be. It'll only work with an iPhone.
chadash 6y ago
> I'm really curious what Apple's differentiators will be. In the car market, being a different brand is a differentiator. Ferrari, McLaren, Bugatti, Lamborghini, and Porsche don't offer vastly different products. But the car market is heavily driven by people wanting something different from their friends. Once Teslas become popular enough, people will want something else just to be different.
- jagger27 6y ago
  Bugatti and Porsche are about as far away as Porsche and Tata. There are more differences between cars in terms of unique tech than there are between Apple and Android phones today. I don’t agree with this at all.
m3kw9 6y ago
If fully autonomous AI driving can be done, it will be the service on top that will drive difference. Like houses, what accommodations does it have. Sort of like air travels economy, business, first etc. The hp of the car won’t matter as much anymore.
rootusrootus 6y ago
> I'm really curious what Apple's differentiators will be. I bet they support CarPlay, at least :). I have CarPlay on all my cars excdept for my Tesla, and it still annoys me. I won't buy another Tesla that doesn't support it.
pazimzadeh 6y ago
It's not enough to have the best hardware, software, and vertical integration. You also have to know when to apply it and when not to. A capacitive touch screen makes for a terrible driving experience. Apple doesn't simply add touch to every product it can. Note how the Airpods Max have a huge surface that looks almost like a Magic Mouse, but volume is controlled by the tactile Digital Crown instead. I expect Apple to make better choices than Tesla overall.

modzu 6y ago

door handles?

kirian 6y ago
it won't have door handles.
- panda88888 6y ago
  It won’t have doors.
  - dwighttk 6y ago
    Well it definitely won’t have Windows
modeless 6y ago
It's funny because it's true. The door handles are among my least favorite parts of the Model 3, along with the control stalks on the steering wheel (both their mushy feel and lack of physical wiper controls combined with the crappiness of the auto wipers). Apple could certainly improve on those, although Tesla does have better handles on their other cars already including fully automatic doors on the Model X.

jonplackett 6y ago

It's Siri of course!

ProfessorLayton 6y ago

>I'm really curious what their differentiators will be Extremely good build quality? Accessories notwithstanding, most of their products look and feel like they were built extremely well. Even their failures like the butterfly keyboard looked and felt like they were built to extremely tight tolerances.

api 6y ago
Tolerances and build quality weren't the problem with the butterfly keyboard. It was just a fundamentally flawed design that was not durable enough for real world use.
- jacobolus 6y ago
  I can't imagine that it didn't stand up to very extensive lab testing, before getting approved for mass production across Apple's laptops. It would be very interesting to hear some inside accounts about what went wrong there. I wouldn't at all be surprised to learn that the mass-produced parts didn't quite measure up to the prototypes, whether because of less consistent materials, part manufacturing defects, slightly off assembly, .... To be fair to the designers, the height budget they were working with is an extremely hard target to hit for a part that gets as much physical abuse as a keyboard. I was pretty impressed with how passable the keyboard was for typing on, given the height constraint. (However, I was not impressed with the dropped actuations, double actuations, inconsistent key feel after a few months use, broken keycap that my 1-year-old keeps removing and hiding around the house, etc. Overall it ended up being a catastrophically bad design based on poor reliability.) The biggest problem at company scale was that they couldn't revert to something like their previous keyboard in a shorter time frame. The lesson is to avoid completely locking the whole rest of the system design around a brand new untested part for which there is no alternative. It would have been better to test the new keyboard design in a context like an external iPad keyboard where if it turned out to be a dud there would be an obvious path to an alternative, and customers wouldn't be left with a broken $2000 machine.
  - novok 6y ago

SkyMarshal 6y ago

>I'm really curious what Apple's differentiators will be. There's room for more than one car company like this. If Apple brings high quality, tight fit and finish, elegant design, software focus, vertical integration (including their new M1 processor tech), logistics support (charging station network, maintenance, etc), and "next-level batteries" to the mix, then I'm sure they'll find space in the market. If Apple can execute with electric cars as they've executed with consumer electronics, then they'll be competing not just with Tesla, but directly with Audi, BMW, Mercedes, Lexus, etc.

jdhn 6y ago
>logistics support (charging station network, maintenance, etc) Honestly, if Apple bought out the existing non-Tesla charging networks and dedicated even a sliver of their UX talent to improving the charging experience, they would really push things forward. This is, of course, assuming that buying the charging networks would make it past the anti-trust people.
- jayd16 6y ago
  > even a sliver of their UX talent to improving the charging experience Would I have to flip my iCar over and plug into the bottom center?
  - jdhn 6y ago
    Yes, but don't worry, the charging station will automatically do that for you.
neogodless 6y ago
But lately Apple has been trending towards not including the charger.
- SkyMarshal 6y ago
  Haha, touche. At least customers won't be complaining about the lack of user-replaceable batteries in Apple electric cars.

fetus8 6y ago

Utilizing the knowledge they've learned in the last 10 years, by developing their own SoC, their machine learning efforts, and integrating their product ecosystem into a vehicle could be a pretty big differentiator.

iandanforth 6y ago

Having recently sold my Tesla Model 3 I can say there is a lot to be desired with that car. The biggest lesson from Tesla is that cars are not cellphones. Having one display off to the side, without buttons, that does everything is an awful experience in a car. I hope that Apple learns that lesson. I think if they had gone first they might have made that mistake too, but now that it's been tried they can find interesting ways to innovate that don't break the experience. I also don't think they will try for self-driving out of the gate. I know a good number of the experts in this field and no one thinks full autonomy is ready. The moat that Waymo has built with their particular kind of testing and iteration is diametrically opposed to how companies like Tesla, Lyft, Uber etc have tried to do self-driving. Even they are going to be restricted to the easiest of locals for years.

modeless 6y ago
> Having one display off to the side, without buttons, that does everything is an awful experience in a car I have to strongly disagree with this. The touchscreen is great for the vast majority of things it replaces. The only physical controls I ever miss are for temperature (which is a very minor complaint) and windshield wipers (though I would also accept auto wipers that actually work). I do think the UI smoothness and touch latency could be slightly improved, and Apple would do better, but Tesla is already so far ahead of every other car manufacturer there that it's not even funny.
- dwighttk 6y ago
  Man I don’t drive with a passenger enough to care about ui animations on my car. I just want to set the fan speed and move on... preferably without looking.
  - andreilys 6y ago
    When I rented a Tesla I recall being able to set all these controls with my voice.
    - 6y ago

notatoad 6y ago

A big differentiator will obviously just be the apple brand. There's going to be a huge number of people who just want to be seen driving around in an apple-branded car. And a lot of those people are currently tesla fans

suby 6y ago

I know I am not alone in this, but I absolutely cannot stand touch screens in cars, and would like for this trend to reverse. It is hard to navigate without physically looking at the screen, which is a huge safety hazard while driving.

mdeeks 6y ago
For some things, like navigation and settings, I absolutely love a touch screen. For other things, like wiper control in the Model 3, I definitely do not like it and it is worse. I think this might just come down to personal preference. After owning a Model 3 for a while now, I can't stand my Audi (or other cars) that aren't touch screens. There are far too many buttons and dials. It is overwhelming (and ugly to me). The non-touch UIs are clunky and confusing and often far more distracting for me as I try to figure them out.

marta_morena_9 6y ago

> I'm really curious what Apple's differentiators will be. Really? Why are you not curious what the differentiator of all the car companies out there is? Why don't we just have one car company? (Hint: There is so much demand, so many different tastes, budgets and features and regulation, that a single company will never serve all of them. Tesla is a niche product and I for one would never buy one) The iPhone was special in the regard that there simply was NO competition. We are not talking EV vs combustion (which was Tesla's main step, and even still, everyone knew EVs would work and how they work, but nobody was ready to fully commit to them yet). We are talking horses vs. cars. Apple managed to establish themselves in a market that most companies didn't even think exist... So no comparison here. All Tesla has done is make EVs more approachable and "cool" for the masses. However they have literally ZERO differentiator compared to established car companies. They are going to tank so hard stock wise in the next 10 years that investors will wonder what hit them.

modeless 6y ago
I'm not curious about other car companies because their products are on the market already and their differentiators are well known by everyone... > they have literally ZERO differentiator compared to established car companies. They are going to tank so hard stock wise Their stock is insanely overvalued, no argument there. But they have one of the largest installed and fastest growing DC charging networks, software that doesn't suck, and the most capable and fastest improving driver assist system enabled by a proprietary custom ASIC. That's far from "ZERO" differentiators, especially in a world where other manufacturers keep faceplanting on their software efforts over and over again.
- ethbr0 6y ago
  Also, incredibly well-integrated battery packs, a reliable source of batteries (at the volume they need), and various other ventures to amortize their EV-related costs over (e.g. Tesla Energy).
- novok 6y ago
  TBH they're pretty much the only car manufacturer that doesn't look like generic car interior with generic car exterior shape too.

Aunche 6y ago

Well Apple is known for its QA, and Tesla is known for its lack of QA. In general, Tesla fans want the latest bleeding edge technology, while Apple fans generally want something that "just works".

damnyou 6y ago

> I'm really curious what Apple's differentiators will be. It'll only work with an iPhone.

chadash 6y ago

> I'm really curious what Apple's differentiators will be. In the car market, being a different brand is a differentiator. Ferrari, McLaren, Bugatti, Lamborghini, and Porsche don't offer vastly different products. But the car market is heavily driven by people wanting something different from their friends. Once Teslas become popular enough, people will want something else just to be different.

jagger27 6y ago
Bugatti and Porsche are about as far away as Porsche and Tata. There are more differences between cars in terms of unique tech than there are between Apple and Android phones today. I don’t agree with this at all.

m3kw9 6y ago

If fully autonomous AI driving can be done, it will be the service on top that will drive difference. Like houses, what accommodations does it have. Sort of like air travels economy, business, first etc. The hp of the car won’t matter as much anymore.

rootusrootus 6y ago

> I'm really curious what Apple's differentiators will be. I bet they support CarPlay, at least :). I have CarPlay on all my cars excdept for my Tesla, and it still annoys me. I won't buy another Tesla that doesn't support it.

pazimzadeh 6y ago

It's not enough to have the best hardware, software, and vertical integration. You also have to know when to apply it and when not to. A capacitive touch screen makes for a terrible driving experience. Apple doesn't simply add touch to every product it can. Note how the Airpods Max have a huge surface that looks almost like a Magic Mouse, but volume is controlled by the tactile Digital Crown instead. I expect Apple to make better choices than Tesla overall.