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> Apple is fundamentally now a company that can move immense amounts of capital into new industries with the underlying ethos of user experience. Also: insane

by finnh 6y ago

> Apple is fundamentally now a company that can move immense amounts of capital into new industries with the underlying ethos of user experience. Also: insane supply-chain management chops, a skill that is more and more transferable - especially for electric cars.

localhost 6y ago
But Apple have outsourced all their manufacturing. That, as we've seen in Tesla's struggles, is a huge component of making a successful product. Agree with the vertical integration aspect + nearly unlimited capital.
- cortesoft 6y ago
  Yeah, that is what modern supply chain management is.... being able to manage a ton of different outsourced suppliers
  - petra 6y ago
    Car manufacturers manage a ton of different outsourced suppliers. Yet still, they manufacture cars on their own.
    - Luc 6y ago
      Not always. You can have Magna Steyr develop and/or assemble cars for you. They’ve done so for a long time, for big brands like BMW and Audi too.
    - ardit33 6y ago
      not all of them... many do outsource lower volume cars (usually luxury) to third parties. "Magna currently holds contracts to produce vehicles for BMW, Daimler, Jaguar Land Rover and Toyota."
      - fomine3 6y ago
        But is there any car manufacturer that fully outsourced manufacturing? It seems that owning factory is important to design cars.
treis 6y ago
I'm not sure I see that. Clearly they are good at making computer like things, but it's not like they're God's gift to supply chain management. There's been quite a few mistakes over the years. Hard to see them doing better than car companies that have been building cars for decades. I'm also not sure what Apple's edge here is. At this point all I really want out of an entertainment center is a screen for my phone to plug into. Everything else is better done as knobs and buttons.
- sneak 6y ago
  > Everything else is better done as knobs and buttons. Apple is quite good at knobs and buttons, and what may eventually become interior finishes.
  - function_seven 6y ago
    When they decide to implement a hardware control, it's usually done well. But their records is hit-and-miss in my opinion. Good: iPod click wheel, iPhone side buttons/switches, old chiclet keyboards, trackpad. Bad: Butterfly keyboards, AppleTV remote is awful (swipes and edge-clicks for all sorts of things), their mice have always been a pain to use (wanna right click? Better lift your left finger completely away from the mouse) But they also aggressively remove physical interfaces where possible. One-button mice, removal of home button on iPhone, removal of function keys on MacBooks, etc. I hope they don't do that with a car. There should be a dozen knobs and buttons that have dedicated features. Not just wipers and signals either. I'm talking about volume control, seat adjustments, windows, etc.
    - daniellarusso 6y ago
      I look forward to steering and shifting gears with a multipoint touchscreen, don’t you?
    - chipotle_coyote 6y ago
      I hadn't thought about this until your comment. While I think Apple building a car is... dubious (both the idea that they would and that they should even if they can), I'd been thinking "well, at least Apple is good at UI," but I really don't like Tesla-esque touchscreen-for-everything auto interfaces, and that would be a serious temptation for Apple.
ajross 6y ago
I don't know that I completely buy that. Shipping/transport and resource management at the scale of automobile production is a rather different world than consumer electronics where literally everything anyone cares about fits on a plain old wooden pallet. Apple does have smart people, and they obviously have a ton of cash. So they absolutely could make a play here. But to imagine that they'll walk in to a market that Tesla has been growing successfully in for a decade and be competitive out of the gate seems like a stretch.
- reitzensteinm 6y ago
  I 100% agree Apple won't walk in and be competitive out the gate. But who in this chain is claiming that? Grandparent specifically listed patience as an Apple virtue, which implies they'll need staying power.
- st1x7 6y ago
  As a company that is running mostly on brand status, Tesla is probably the easiest competitor for Apple to beat in this space. The real competition are the companies that have been building cars for decades.
  - ajross 6y ago
    > As a company that is running mostly on brand status They shipped like half a million cars this year! They own like 70-80% of every EV market they compete in. This is the kind of criticism you'd read about Tesla in 2014. The companies that "have been building cars for decades" are getting stomped by Tesla in this space, 12x more Model 3's were sold than LEAF's in the US last year. At some point the established wisdom among some people that Tesla is failing is going to change, right? The ship has sailed on that, left the harbor, and is half way across the ocean by now. And the weirdest thing here is that it's not an attempt to attack Tesla from the perspective of established auto makers but from Apple Computer, a company with no experience at all in the market and almost nothing to bring to the table but "brand status" (and a freighter full of cash, of course).
    - 6y ago
foxtr0t 6y ago
Despite becoming more similar in recent years, the cell phone supply chain is still very different than the automotive supply chain. The number of parts/unit differs by an order of magnitude and so does the size and weight, not to mention manufacturing techniques and materials. These are capabilities, not so much skills, and they aren't as transferable as you may think. For instance, logistically things are very different in the automotive space. Many, many more people are required to ship a single unit. You also have many more variables that can hold up a production line anywhere in the hierarchy because you rely on more 3rd parties for parts. While these things are also true of consumer electronics, you may rely on a dozen suppliers for an iPhone, car companies often rely on hundreds. Materials are also very different in the automotive space. You have to build with materials that will last 100k miles driving a 80mph in all weather, day/night, freezing/scorching etc etc. It is a very long tail to cover. Apple can do it, but it will take years and many, many partners to get it done.
- natch 6y ago
  The engine of my electric car has one moving part. One. Made in house from raw materials. Rolls of steel, copper, and aluminum. It’s also considered a single part for manufacturing and servicing purposes. So not simply one moving part. One part, period. >The number of parts/unit differs by an order of magnitude >car companies often rely on hundreds of suppliers See above. You must be thinking of ICE cars. >aren’t as transferable as you may think Other than pulling a few things off the shelf like tires, windshields, and wheels (and more; those are just a few examples) the manufacturer of my car stated from scratch. Prodigiously hard for sure but Apple is good at hard. >will last 100k miles Try one million. >will take years Again Apple excels at this. The real problem for Apple is having Tesla as a competitor. They are used to competing with Google, but it’s easy to compete with lame. Tesla is not lame, by a long stretch.
  - foxtr0t 6y ago
    I was waiting for the Muskians to swoop in and spread their nonsense. Guess what? I drive a white model 3 long range AWD and I love it. I'm still 1: an engineer with 10 years of hardware experience and 2: skeptical of every ounce of BS Elon Musk has ever spread. You know how many parts are under the car? Have you taken one apart? They're complicated machines with, again, orders of magnitude more parts than a phone. Forget ICE vehicles, we're just talking about EVs and iPhones. You don't think Tesla relies on thousands of suppliers? Who do you think makes the screens, wiring hardness, cameras, brakes, glass, acoustic devices, steering, battery temp management, motorized seats, etc etc. And who do you think supplies their parts? And theirs? And so on and so forth. Its a complicated web of suppliers and manufacturers, much more so than what goes into a single iPhone (which is still very complicated). This is why a Tesla costs 35k+ and an iPhone costs ~1k. There are more parts that are more complicated and manufacturing them takes more time, effort, and people. Elon may have a magic car printer in his wet dreams but that won't happen in reality for four, five, or six decades. Also, nobody, I repeat, absolutely nobody is holding their breath for you to hit 1m miles in your Tesla. Currently they don't even have a story for repair and so many parts are fused that if something breaks you can't replace it. The car is totaled. I recommend you watch all of the early Rich Rebuilds on YouTube if you really want to understand some of the nitty gritty details of these vehicles. Yes they are simpler than a normal ICE. By an order of magnitude? Certainly not. Progress is made at the margins, in increments of 1% then 5% then 10% then 15%. Not 1000% in one swoop. EDIT: clarification
vkou 6y ago
I don't think you can supply-chain-manage your way into making cars. The hard part of manufacturing automobiles isn't design, it's manufacturing. You can't just pay some third party contractor to spin up a car factory that does 90% of the work for you, like you can with electronics.
jandrese 6y ago
I can just see Apple now, milling the entire body of the car out of a single block of aluminum using a 4 axis C&C machine.
- contingencies 6y ago
  You would typically use five axes for complex parts unless there was a compelling reason not to. Interestingly, as I am buying one at the moment (our first) I had a chance to talk to different machine shops about their different brands here in China. They alleged that foreign dual use export restrictions have resulted in a situation where China's local five axis machines are now both cheaper and more accurate than the available foreign imports (source: major prototyping shop, machine count >20, machine brands 3x, 5 axis count 10+). This was supported by the second shop I visited who also said they will no longer buy imports.
- ethbr0 6y ago
  > single block of aluminum iCar Space gray, chamfered edges, 115 hp, 4 wheels $100,000
  - HPsquared 6y ago
    An alternate reality where Apple makes the Cybertruck.
- cossatot 6y ago
  "a bicycle for the body"
- icanhackit 6y ago
  You're joking but interestingly Tesla at the Battery Day presentation revealed a giant injection mould to make the aluminium chassis for one of their cars, which will simplify the manufacturing process. So we're going into uni-body territory but with a faster, simpler process than milling/printing. If Apple is happy buying thousands of milling machines for laptops and phones, a chassis injection mould might be the process they'd need to break into the car space.
627467 6y ago
I guess a car is similar to a cellphone like a car is similar to a cruise ship...
Supermancho 6y ago
> a skill that is more and more transferable - especially for electric cars. What does that matter? There are Car manufacturers that have basically had infinite capitalization and funding for a decade and the legal system + technology barriers just didn't move. Supply chain was never an issue. Apple's not going to see any different results, so I am puzzled by this optimism.

by finnh 6y ago

localhost 6y ago

But Apple have outsourced all their manufacturing. That, as we've seen in Tesla's struggles, is a huge component of making a successful product. Agree with the vertical integration aspect + nearly unlimited capital.

cortesoft 6y ago
Yeah, that is what modern supply chain management is.... being able to manage a ton of different outsourced suppliers
- petra 6y ago
  Car manufacturers manage a ton of different outsourced suppliers. Yet still, they manufacture cars on their own.
  - Luc 6y ago
    Not always. You can have Magna Steyr develop and/or assemble cars for you. They’ve done so for a long time, for big brands like BMW and Audi too.
  - ardit33 6y ago
    not all of them... many do outsource lower volume cars (usually luxury) to third parties. "Magna currently holds contracts to produce vehicles for BMW, Daimler, Jaguar Land Rover and Toyota."
    - fomine3 6y ago
      But is there any car manufacturer that fully outsourced manufacturing? It seems that owning factory is important to design cars.

treis 6y ago

I'm not sure I see that. Clearly they are good at making computer like things, but it's not like they're God's gift to supply chain management. There's been quite a few mistakes over the years. Hard to see them doing better than car companies that have been building cars for decades. I'm also not sure what Apple's edge here is. At this point all I really want out of an entertainment center is a screen for my phone to plug into. Everything else is better done as knobs and buttons.

sneak 6y ago
> Everything else is better done as knobs and buttons. Apple is quite good at knobs and buttons, and what may eventually become interior finishes.
- function_seven 6y ago
  When they decide to implement a hardware control, it's usually done well. But their records is hit-and-miss in my opinion. Good: iPod click wheel, iPhone side buttons/switches, old chiclet keyboards, trackpad. Bad: Butterfly keyboards, AppleTV remote is awful (swipes and edge-clicks for all sorts of things), their mice have always been a pain to use (wanna right click? Better lift your left finger completely away from the mouse) But they also aggressively remove physical interfaces where possible. One-button mice, removal of home button on iPhone, removal of function keys on MacBooks, etc. I hope they don't do that with a car. There should be a dozen knobs and buttons that have dedicated features. Not just wipers and signals either. I'm talking about volume control, seat adjustments, windows, etc.
  - daniellarusso 6y ago
    I look forward to steering and shifting gears with a multipoint touchscreen, don’t you?
  - chipotle_coyote 6y ago
    I hadn't thought about this until your comment. While I think Apple building a car is... dubious (both the idea that they would and that they should even if they can), I'd been thinking "well, at least Apple is good at UI," but I really don't like Tesla-esque touchscreen-for-everything auto interfaces, and that would be a serious temptation for Apple.

ajross 6y ago

I don't know that I completely buy that. Shipping/transport and resource management at the scale of automobile production is a rather different world than consumer electronics where literally everything anyone cares about fits on a plain old wooden pallet. Apple does have smart people, and they obviously have a ton of cash. So they absolutely could make a play here. But to imagine that they'll walk in to a market that Tesla has been growing successfully in for a decade and be competitive out of the gate seems like a stretch.

reitzensteinm 6y ago
I 100% agree Apple won't walk in and be competitive out the gate. But who in this chain is claiming that? Grandparent specifically listed patience as an Apple virtue, which implies they'll need staying power.
st1x7 6y ago
As a company that is running mostly on brand status, Tesla is probably the easiest competitor for Apple to beat in this space. The real competition are the companies that have been building cars for decades.
- ajross 6y ago
  > As a company that is running mostly on brand status They shipped like half a million cars this year! They own like 70-80% of every EV market they compete in. This is the kind of criticism you'd read about Tesla in 2014. The companies that "have been building cars for decades" are getting stomped by Tesla in this space, 12x more Model 3's were sold than LEAF's in the US last year. At some point the established wisdom among some people that Tesla is failing is going to change, right? The ship has sailed on that, left the harbor, and is half way across the ocean by now. And the weirdest thing here is that it's not an attempt to attack Tesla from the perspective of established auto makers but from Apple Computer, a company with no experience at all in the market and almost nothing to bring to the table but "brand status" (and a freighter full of cash, of course).
  - 6y ago

foxtr0t 6y ago

Despite becoming more similar in recent years, the cell phone supply chain is still very different than the automotive supply chain. The number of parts/unit differs by an order of magnitude and so does the size and weight, not to mention manufacturing techniques and materials. These are capabilities, not so much skills, and they aren't as transferable as you may think. For instance, logistically things are very different in the automotive space. Many, many more people are required to ship a single unit. You also have many more variables that can hold up a production line anywhere in the hierarchy because you rely on more 3rd parties for parts. While these things are also true of consumer electronics, you may rely on a dozen suppliers for an iPhone, car companies often rely on hundreds. Materials are also very different in the automotive space. You have to build with materials that will last 100k miles driving a 80mph in all weather, day/night, freezing/scorching etc etc. It is a very long tail to cover. Apple can do it, but it will take years and many, many partners to get it done.

natch 6y ago
The engine of my electric car has one moving part. One. Made in house from raw materials. Rolls of steel, copper, and aluminum. It’s also considered a single part for manufacturing and servicing purposes. So not simply one moving part. One part, period. >The number of parts/unit differs by an order of magnitude >car companies often rely on hundreds of suppliers See above. You must be thinking of ICE cars. >aren’t as transferable as you may think Other than pulling a few things off the shelf like tires, windshields, and wheels (and more; those are just a few examples) the manufacturer of my car stated from scratch. Prodigiously hard for sure but Apple is good at hard. >will last 100k miles Try one million. >will take years Again Apple excels at this. The real problem for Apple is having Tesla as a competitor. They are used to competing with Google, but it’s easy to compete with lame. Tesla is not lame, by a long stretch.
- foxtr0t 6y ago
  I was waiting for the Muskians to swoop in and spread their nonsense. Guess what? I drive a white model 3 long range AWD and I love it. I'm still 1: an engineer with 10 years of hardware experience and 2: skeptical of every ounce of BS Elon Musk has ever spread. You know how many parts are under the car? Have you taken one apart? They're complicated machines with, again, orders of magnitude more parts than a phone. Forget ICE vehicles, we're just talking about EVs and iPhones. You don't think Tesla relies on thousands of suppliers? Who do you think makes the screens, wiring hardness, cameras, brakes, glass, acoustic devices, steering, battery temp management, motorized seats, etc etc. And who do you think supplies their parts? And theirs? And so on and so forth. Its a complicated web of suppliers and manufacturers, much more so than what goes into a single iPhone (which is still very complicated). This is why a Tesla costs 35k+ and an iPhone costs ~1k. There are more parts that are more complicated and manufacturing them takes more time, effort, and people. Elon may have a magic car printer in his wet dreams but that won't happen in reality for four, five, or six decades. Also, nobody, I repeat, absolutely nobody is holding their breath for you to hit 1m miles in your Tesla. Currently they don't even have a story for repair and so many parts are fused that if something breaks you can't replace it. The car is totaled. I recommend you watch all of the early Rich Rebuilds on YouTube if you really want to understand some of the nitty gritty details of these vehicles. Yes they are simpler than a normal ICE. By an order of magnitude? Certainly not. Progress is made at the margins, in increments of 1% then 5% then 10% then 15%. Not 1000% in one swoop. EDIT: clarification

vkou 6y ago

I don't think you can supply-chain-manage your way into making cars. The hard part of manufacturing automobiles isn't design, it's manufacturing. You can't just pay some third party contractor to spin up a car factory that does 90% of the work for you, like you can with electronics.

jandrese 6y ago

I can just see Apple now, milling the entire body of the car out of a single block of aluminum using a 4 axis C&C machine.

contingencies 6y ago
You would typically use five axes for complex parts unless there was a compelling reason not to. Interestingly, as I am buying one at the moment (our first) I had a chance to talk to different machine shops about their different brands here in China. They alleged that foreign dual use export restrictions have resulted in a situation where China's local five axis machines are now both cheaper and more accurate than the available foreign imports (source: major prototyping shop, machine count >20, machine brands 3x, 5 axis count 10+). This was supported by the second shop I visited who also said they will no longer buy imports.
ethbr0 6y ago
> single block of aluminum iCar Space gray, chamfered edges, 115 hp, 4 wheels $100,000
- HPsquared 6y ago
  An alternate reality where Apple makes the Cybertruck.
cossatot 6y ago
"a bicycle for the body"
icanhackit 6y ago
You're joking but interestingly Tesla at the Battery Day presentation revealed a giant injection mould to make the aluminium chassis for one of their cars, which will simplify the manufacturing process. So we're going into uni-body territory but with a faster, simpler process than milling/printing. If Apple is happy buying thousands of milling machines for laptops and phones, a chassis injection mould might be the process they'd need to break into the car space.

627467 6y ago

I guess a car is similar to a cellphone like a car is similar to a cruise ship...

Supermancho 6y ago

> a skill that is more and more transferable - especially for electric cars. What does that matter? There are Car manufacturers that have basically had infinite capitalization and funding for a decade and the legal system + technology barriers just didn't move. Supply chain was never an issue. Apple's not going to see any different results, so I am puzzled by this optimism.