11 ms·

Would seem likely this is more like "Apple executive finally realizes apple doesn't really want to build a car, so leaves.."

by xt00 5y ago

rsj_hn 5y ago
Why on earth would Apple want to build a car? Apple wants to make money off of cars by selling devices and software that integrate with cars -- look at the hugely successful CarPlay -- but Apple is not going to manufacture their own cars.
- nojito 5y ago
  Why not? A car is basically a computer on wheels theses days.
  - colejohnson66 5y ago
    Despite being completely “drive by wire”, (modern) cars are not just “computers on wheels”. For starters: cars have moving parts; Your phone doesn’t (or does but barely). They’re complex beasts.
    - jdavis703 5y ago
      My current laptop has a fan, and in the old days it had a spinning disc media (CD/DVD and HDD).
      - deleted 5y ago
        [deleted]
      - meibo 5y ago
        Are you comparing a small DC electro motor that drives a static fan blade with the drive train and steering systems of a car?
    - Schweigi 5y ago
      I dont know why you got downvoted. Servicing cars is very different from handling what Apple is currently selling and definitely not remotely the same. So it’s definitely a good question how or why Apple would enter the car market.
    - xt00 5y ago
      Probably most folks would think Apple could build a car -- and something being a computer on wheels Apple could handle, its more like Apple probably doesn't like the economics of it.. iphones and software services are pretty lucrative, and worst case scenario you ask the person to bring in their phone to get a replacement.. when you scale that up to building service centers, paying mechanics, building huge factories that produce a small number of cars per day compared to the 1 million iphones per day it would be a losing part of the business in both profit margin and risk for years even if they end up being pretty successful with it eventually..
    - nojito 5y ago
      Apple designs the machines that build iPhones. I am almost certain they have moving parts.
  - mhh__ 5y ago
    Designing the bits the computer actuates is not something you can model like a computer, though. Vehicle Dynamics isn't easy to get right. Tyres in particular might as well have been invented by Satan himself if you try to model them in a hurry.
  - Animats 5y ago
    Ford is positioning the electric F-150 as a power station on wheels. Run a table saw off your work truck. Run your camp site off your personal truck. Emergency power during the next flood.
- nickff 5y ago
  Apple's Carplay may also be their first step in a 'automotive operating system' for partial or full self-driving cars. I could also see them building a 'development kit' car, with documentation to allow 'chassis-builders' and/or 'coach-builders' to create their own customized designs.
  - wyager 5y ago
    I hope to God I never have to ride in a vehicle where its core safety-critical functionality in any way shares code with CarPlay.
    - FireBeyond 5y ago
      Yup. I deal with hysteresis on mine that will flip back and forth between day and night view every second if the ambient light is borderline. And other things. Car Play is great, but currently one of Apple's buggiest products.
- nicoburns 5y ago
  > Why on earth would Apple want to build a car? From a business perspective, possibly because it's a huge market and Apple has a lot of cash to invest. It's quite different to what they currently do, but they are limited in how much they can expand in their current markets so they're probably going to want to try something new. Entering the phone market was pretty ambitious too (not as ambitious, but they were a much smaller company then), and they were prepared to take their time doing it. I believe precursor forms of the iPhone were in development for over 10 years before it was actually released. I'm not going to say that Apple will decide to manufacture cars, or that they'd be successful at it if they did decide to. But I wouldn't rule them out either.
  - TheOtherHobbes 5y ago
    It's not really a standard Apple play - take a new-ish technology and commoditise it, while wrapping it in pretty design and marketing glitter. Making pocket/rucksack electronic doodads is one thing. Cars are on a completely different level of industrialisation, supply chain management, dealer networking, service support... and existing competition. And the plausible market capture is much smaller. It would be like Apple trying to compete against NEC, Fujitsu, and IBM with a commercial mainframe project. They could surely get a product out. But why? And then what?
    - nicoburns 5y ago
      > It would be like Apple trying to compete against NEC, Fujitsu, and IBM with a commercial mainframe project. They could surely get a product out. But why? And then what? I think it's quite different. The car market is huge, and it's also a consumer market. Apple would struggle to make headway with enterprises, but they're good at consumer markets. A lot of people would have said the same at the prospect of Apple competing with Nokia, RIM, etc in the phone world. And then they came out with a product that completely blew everyone away. A car is harder for sure, but they have the money and they also have the time so I don't really see why not.
  - marticode 5y ago
    It's a huge market in term of sales but not profits. It's a terrible market to operate in - capital intensive, cyclical, cut-throat competition with low margins. It will suck billions to produce (maybe) a tiny fraction of the profits they make on phones.
- enos_feedler 5y ago
  The same reason why Apple will probably make a TV even though they have AirPlay. They are different solutions to different problems. AirPlay and CarPlay are all about the iPhone and connecting it to a diverse ecosystem in another product category (TVs, Cars). It increases the value of the phone. Making a TV and making a car are stand alone products that answer the question: can we make a version of this product that is differentiated enough to be meaningful in the market? From a technology standpoint, this means clever integration of hardware, software and services. And beyond that, there are other things too (privacy, etc)
  - lotsofpulp 5y ago
    I do not see any reason why Apple would invest in making a TV when all of these TVs exist that already support Airplay 2. https://www.apple.com/ios/home/accessories/#section-tv https://www.apple.com/ios/home/accessories/#section-tv And they sell Apple TV devices, which when plugged into a TV with HDMI CEC controls (all of them nowadays), renders TVs indistinguishable from one another except for picture quality and maybe how quickly they turn on and off. I guess it is possible for them to integrate the Apple TV device directly into a TV, but I do not see the profit motive on the part of Apple nor the convenience motive on the part of the TV user as it is pretty easy to stick an Apple TV onto the back of a TV.
    - justahuman1 5y ago
      Most TVs have garbage menu interfaces, I'd love for apple to provide a dumb screen + appletv
      - lotsofpulp 5y ago
        You never have to interact with a TV’s interface already. HDMI CEC allows you to take a new TV, plug an apple TV in, and just use the Apple TV remote. The TV will automatically turn off and on switched to the Apple TV input, hence a dumb screen + Apple TV.
        5y ago
- smnrchrds 5y ago
  > Why on earth would Apple want to build a car? I am wondering about the same question. Cars are not a high-margin business.
  - dduugg 5y ago
    This was true of smart phones until Apple came along. It's still the case for non-Apple manufacturers: https://www.forbes.com/sites/johnkoetsier/2019/12/22/global-phone-profits-apple-66-samsung-17-everyone-else-unlucky-13/ https://www.forbes.com/sites/johnkoetsier/2019/12/22/global-...
    - smnrchrds 5y ago
      Apple's margins are high not because its production costs are much lower than others, but because it has premium pricing. Average cost of a new car in close to 39k USD. How much more can people possibly afford? It's easy for Apple to take the market for 100$ phones and create a market for 1000$ ones. It is much harder to find a market for 390k$ cars.
      - dharmab 5y ago
        There is a market for $3 million cars in 2021.
  - ssijak 5y ago
    Yeah wait till we see the price of some self driving 50kw tops ricksha size vehicle Apple will produce.
  - dharmab 5y ago
    Cars? No. Luxury cars? Possibly.
- jollybean 5y ago
  Cars are becoming platforms for software and services, where the differentiation are those things, which Apple is good at. Apple is so big, they have to look to giant markets to expand into. At their scale, they should probably always 'be thinking about making a car' because the potentiality is so big, but being prudent enough to say 'no' almost all of the time. To the point that I think it's unlikely they will make one. They partnered with Motorola just before the iPhone to dip their feet, so watch out for that one, i.e. the fully integrated Fiat, designed by Aplle or something.
- mandeepj 5y ago
  > Why on earth would Apple want to build a car? You would have said something similar if you had heard about Apple's Phone plans back in 2004-2006
- shrimpx 5y ago
  It makes sense from the perspective of Apple consistently being a "personal device" company. A car is another personal device. The more cars become imbibed with computing the closer they get to Apple's core interest.
- twobitshifter 5y ago
  The value of the car market is enormous. If you look at the top 10 industries, cars are the best market for Apple to branch out into. I can’t see them in financial services, construction, or oil/energy. If you look at previous behemoth companies, like GE, they tried to hit all these industries and overextended. There was GE energy, GE Capital, GE digital, GE Healthcare, GE Transportation systems, GE Aviation, and some part of that made light bulbs. With Apple, they can’t just keep producing phones and grow so the challenge is to break into new neighboring sectors. Their goal with the car was not so much to manufacture it as it was to provide industrial design, branding, and software support as an initial foray. They were turned back by Kia/Hyundai as not bringing enough to the table.
  - spoonjim 5y ago
    They are already in financial services big time (Apple Wallet/Pay/Cash) and that can grow.
  - vineyardmike 5y ago
    As others mentioned, they already have huge financial services. Plus their mountain of cash is probably not just in some bank account, surely it's invested and put to work growing too. Apple clearly has healthcare ambitions by the Apple Watch. They're building stupidly popular medical monitoring devices, and a health data research platform. Seems like they could tip-toe their way towards medical records management software too. I am surprised they don't offer more cloud services for app developers, but i'm guessing its hard for them to compete with the major clouds. Apple does not have the manufacturing or sales chops to sell whole cars. While Apple Geniuses are great at fixing an iphone, they're ill equipped to service cars.
- bee_rider 5y ago
  Maybe they got suckered in by the "autonomous cars are only 5 years out" phase we went through a couple years ago, and figured they could sell rides, rather than cars? Not sure. Maybe they just try everything because they have infinite money, and don't want to become the next IBM or Microsoft.
deleted 5y ago
[deleted]

Would seem likely this is more like "Apple executive finally realizes apple doesn't really want to build a car, so leaves.."

by xt00 5y ago

Would seem likely this is more like "Apple executive finally realizes apple doesn't really want to build a car, so leaves.."

rsj_hn 5y ago

Why on earth would Apple want to build a car? Apple wants to make money off of cars by selling devices and software that integrate with cars -- look at the hugely successful CarPlay -- but Apple is not going to manufacture their own cars.

nojito 5y ago
Why not? A car is basically a computer on wheels theses days.
- colejohnson66 5y ago
  Despite being completely “drive by wire”, (modern) cars are not just “computers on wheels”. For starters: cars have moving parts; Your phone doesn’t (or does but barely). They’re complex beasts.
  - jdavis703 5y ago
    My current laptop has a fan, and in the old days it had a spinning disc media (CD/DVD and HDD).
    - deleted 5y ago
      [deleted]
    - meibo 5y ago
      Are you comparing a small DC electro motor that drives a static fan blade with the drive train and steering systems of a car?
  - Schweigi 5y ago
    I dont know why you got downvoted. Servicing cars is very different from handling what Apple is currently selling and definitely not remotely the same. So it’s definitely a good question how or why Apple would enter the car market.
  - xt00 5y ago
    Probably most folks would think Apple could build a car -- and something being a computer on wheels Apple could handle, its more like Apple probably doesn't like the economics of it.. iphones and software services are pretty lucrative, and worst case scenario you ask the person to bring in their phone to get a replacement.. when you scale that up to building service centers, paying mechanics, building huge factories that produce a small number of cars per day compared to the 1 million iphones per day it would be a losing part of the business in both profit margin and risk for years even if they end up being pretty successful with it eventually..
  - nojito 5y ago
    Apple designs the machines that build iPhones. I am almost certain they have moving parts.
- mhh__ 5y ago
  Designing the bits the computer actuates is not something you can model like a computer, though. Vehicle Dynamics isn't easy to get right. Tyres in particular might as well have been invented by Satan himself if you try to model them in a hurry.
- Animats 5y ago
  Ford is positioning the electric F-150 as a power station on wheels. Run a table saw off your work truck. Run your camp site off your personal truck. Emergency power during the next flood.
nickff 5y ago
Apple's Carplay may also be their first step in a 'automotive operating system' for partial or full self-driving cars. I could also see them building a 'development kit' car, with documentation to allow 'chassis-builders' and/or 'coach-builders' to create their own customized designs.
- wyager 5y ago
  I hope to God I never have to ride in a vehicle where its core safety-critical functionality in any way shares code with CarPlay.
  - FireBeyond 5y ago
    Yup. I deal with hysteresis on mine that will flip back and forth between day and night view every second if the ambient light is borderline. And other things. Car Play is great, but currently one of Apple's buggiest products.
nicoburns 5y ago
> Why on earth would Apple want to build a car? From a business perspective, possibly because it's a huge market and Apple has a lot of cash to invest. It's quite different to what they currently do, but they are limited in how much they can expand in their current markets so they're probably going to want to try something new. Entering the phone market was pretty ambitious too (not as ambitious, but they were a much smaller company then), and they were prepared to take their time doing it. I believe precursor forms of the iPhone were in development for over 10 years before it was actually released. I'm not going to say that Apple will decide to manufacture cars, or that they'd be successful at it if they did decide to. But I wouldn't rule them out either.
- TheOtherHobbes 5y ago
  It's not really a standard Apple play - take a new-ish technology and commoditise it, while wrapping it in pretty design and marketing glitter. Making pocket/rucksack electronic doodads is one thing. Cars are on a completely different level of industrialisation, supply chain management, dealer networking, service support... and existing competition. And the plausible market capture is much smaller. It would be like Apple trying to compete against NEC, Fujitsu, and IBM with a commercial mainframe project. They could surely get a product out. But why? And then what?
  - nicoburns 5y ago
    > It would be like Apple trying to compete against NEC, Fujitsu, and IBM with a commercial mainframe project. They could surely get a product out. But why? And then what? I think it's quite different. The car market is huge, and it's also a consumer market. Apple would struggle to make headway with enterprises, but they're good at consumer markets. A lot of people would have said the same at the prospect of Apple competing with Nokia, RIM, etc in the phone world. And then they came out with a product that completely blew everyone away. A car is harder for sure, but they have the money and they also have the time so I don't really see why not.
- marticode 5y ago
  It's a huge market in term of sales but not profits. It's a terrible market to operate in - capital intensive, cyclical, cut-throat competition with low margins. It will suck billions to produce (maybe) a tiny fraction of the profits they make on phones.
enos_feedler 5y ago
The same reason why Apple will probably make a TV even though they have AirPlay. They are different solutions to different problems. AirPlay and CarPlay are all about the iPhone and connecting it to a diverse ecosystem in another product category (TVs, Cars). It increases the value of the phone. Making a TV and making a car are stand alone products that answer the question: can we make a version of this product that is differentiated enough to be meaningful in the market? From a technology standpoint, this means clever integration of hardware, software and services. And beyond that, there are other things too (privacy, etc)
- lotsofpulp 5y ago
  I do not see any reason why Apple would invest in making a TV when all of these TVs exist that already support Airplay 2. https://www.apple.com/ios/home/accessories/#section-tv https://www.apple.com/ios/home/accessories/#section-tv And they sell Apple TV devices, which when plugged into a TV with HDMI CEC controls (all of them nowadays), renders TVs indistinguishable from one another except for picture quality and maybe how quickly they turn on and off. I guess it is possible for them to integrate the Apple TV device directly into a TV, but I do not see the profit motive on the part of Apple nor the convenience motive on the part of the TV user as it is pretty easy to stick an Apple TV onto the back of a TV.
  - justahuman1 5y ago
    Most TVs have garbage menu interfaces, I'd love for apple to provide a dumb screen + appletv
    - lotsofpulp 5y ago
      You never have to interact with a TV’s interface already. HDMI CEC allows you to take a new TV, plug an apple TV in, and just use the Apple TV remote. The TV will automatically turn off and on switched to the Apple TV input, hence a dumb screen + Apple TV.
      - 5y ago
smnrchrds 5y ago
> Why on earth would Apple want to build a car? I am wondering about the same question. Cars are not a high-margin business.
- dduugg 5y ago
  This was true of smart phones until Apple came along. It's still the case for non-Apple manufacturers: https://www.forbes.com/sites/johnkoetsier/2019/12/22/global-phone-profits-apple-66-samsung-17-everyone-else-unlucky-13/ https://www.forbes.com/sites/johnkoetsier/2019/12/22/global-...
  - smnrchrds 5y ago
    Apple's margins are high not because its production costs are much lower than others, but because it has premium pricing. Average cost of a new car in close to 39k USD. How much more can people possibly afford? It's easy for Apple to take the market for 100$ phones and create a market for 1000$ ones. It is much harder to find a market for 390k$ cars.
    - dharmab 5y ago
      There is a market for $3 million cars in 2021.
- ssijak 5y ago
  Yeah wait till we see the price of some self driving 50kw tops ricksha size vehicle Apple will produce.
- dharmab 5y ago
  Cars? No. Luxury cars? Possibly.
jollybean 5y ago
Cars are becoming platforms for software and services, where the differentiation are those things, which Apple is good at. Apple is so big, they have to look to giant markets to expand into. At their scale, they should probably always 'be thinking about making a car' because the potentiality is so big, but being prudent enough to say 'no' almost all of the time. To the point that I think it's unlikely they will make one. They partnered with Motorola just before the iPhone to dip their feet, so watch out for that one, i.e. the fully integrated Fiat, designed by Aplle or something.
mandeepj 5y ago
> Why on earth would Apple want to build a car? You would have said something similar if you had heard about Apple's Phone plans back in 2004-2006
shrimpx 5y ago
It makes sense from the perspective of Apple consistently being a "personal device" company. A car is another personal device. The more cars become imbibed with computing the closer they get to Apple's core interest.
twobitshifter 5y ago
The value of the car market is enormous. If you look at the top 10 industries, cars are the best market for Apple to branch out into. I can’t see them in financial services, construction, or oil/energy. If you look at previous behemoth companies, like GE, they tried to hit all these industries and overextended. There was GE energy, GE Capital, GE digital, GE Healthcare, GE Transportation systems, GE Aviation, and some part of that made light bulbs. With Apple, they can’t just keep producing phones and grow so the challenge is to break into new neighboring sectors. Their goal with the car was not so much to manufacture it as it was to provide industrial design, branding, and software support as an initial foray. They were turned back by Kia/Hyundai as not bringing enough to the table.
- spoonjim 5y ago
  They are already in financial services big time (Apple Wallet/Pay/Cash) and that can grow.
- vineyardmike 5y ago
  As others mentioned, they already have huge financial services. Plus their mountain of cash is probably not just in some bank account, surely it's invested and put to work growing too. Apple clearly has healthcare ambitions by the Apple Watch. They're building stupidly popular medical monitoring devices, and a health data research platform. Seems like they could tip-toe their way towards medical records management software too. I am surprised they don't offer more cloud services for app developers, but i'm guessing its hard for them to compete with the major clouds. Apple does not have the manufacturing or sales chops to sell whole cars. While Apple Geniuses are great at fixing an iphone, they're ill equipped to service cars.
bee_rider 5y ago
Maybe they got suckered in by the "autonomous cars are only 5 years out" phase we went through a couple years ago, and figured they could sell rides, rather than cars? Not sure. Maybe they just try everything because they have infinite money, and don't want to become the next IBM or Microsoft.

deleted 5y ago

[deleted]