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Apple to wind down electric car effort after decadelong odyssey
- RecycledEle 3y agoWhy does this remind me of Admiral Yamamoto's orders to switch his bombers from AP to HE at Midway in 1942?
- nojvek 3y agoApple should get into home robots. Cleaning cooling laundry delivery shopping.
- freeplay 3y agoOff one hype train and onto the next. In all honesty, I think local, LLM driven Siri would be a complete game changer and their efforts are much better spent here.
- j45 3y agoMaybe the next versions of CarPlay will be driven out of this effort.
- igravious 3y agoHuawei and cars: https://edition.cnn.com/2024/01/18/cars/huawei-new-smart-car-company-china-intl-hnk/index.html https://edition.cnn.com/2024/01/18/cars/huawei-new-smart-car... Xiaomi and cars: https://www.cnet.com/roadshow/news/xiaomis-first-electric-car-is-here-and-it-looks-amazing/ https://www.cnet.com/roadshow/news/xiaomis-first-electric-ca...
- thewileyone 3y agoProbably couldn't brand and limited access to multiple parts of the car. Imagine only being able to use Apple Tires+ and nothing else.
- webreac 3y agomaybe the car industry was just a strategy to hire talented people. Now, they use them on useful tasks. Just a theory.
- justinclift 3y agohttps://archive.is/pcqO4 https://archive.is/pcqO4
- hacknews20 3y agoThis reminds me of when Cisco did Public Cloud.
- jbuild 3y agohttps://archive.is/eJNAD https://archive.is/eJNAD
- riddlemethat 3y agoThis is a smart move. Apple seems so far behind in generative AI it's making Google look innovative.
- nightfly 3y agoWhy does everyone have to it?
- CharlieDigital 3y agoIf you don't have it, you'll pay your competitors to have it. Generative AI is significant enough to Apple's use cases that there would seem to be a very strong business case to bring it in house.
- gordon_freeman 3y agoi agree with your general sentiment but for Apple I do believe it makes sense to focus on AGI as they could incorporate it within their OSes and products to make them more productive for the users.
- dorkwood 3y agoA noble goal for a superintelligence.
- observationist 3y agoApple has a reputation to uphold, of being bleeding edge and having the best, latest, greatest tech. Their "AI" is a not-so-great scripted bot over a decade old at this point. They are laughably behind the curve. Android should see widespread deployment of Gemini baked into the next generation of phones, and this could have a significant impact on Apple.
- JumpCrisscross 3y ago> Apple has a reputation to uphold, of being bleeding edge and having the best, latest, greatest tech Their reputation is of being the best. The most polished. The most accessible. It’s never been to be on the bleeding edge. Apple’s brand is that of the perfectionists. Even in their hackiest 80s lore, the elements that rise to myth are those about resourcefulness and design.
- deleted 3y ago[deleted]
- dougmwne 3y agoI wonder if this is connected to the Vision Pro release. That’s another giant hardware fishing project that failed to meet the “vision” of an all-day wearable iPhone. Perhaps it became obvious that the car was in even murkier waters. And to dump some of the employees on image and text generators off whatever self driving computer vision work they were presumably doing before? Interesting choice.
- yreg 3y agoAVP has not failed yet. Saying so today would be akin to stating that the iPhone failed in the fall of 2007. Some did, Steve Ballmer laughed his butt off, convinced that no one sane will ever buy a $500 phone.
- tapoxi 3y agoI mean the hype around the iPhone was huge. There was obvious need for a phone that "runs OS X" and was part of the already massive iPod ecosystem. It sold itself. I still don't get the case for a screen you can wear. My phone screen is big enough for most use cases (like posting this comment). If I need to get work done, my laptop is realistically not much larger than the keyboard I'd need to use anyway. The laptop is also cheaper, and I can show what I'm working on to other people without jumping through hoops. Classic solution in search of a problem.
- deleted 3y ago[deleted]
- dougmwne 3y agoI understand it, or at least what it could be. Picture something in eyeglasses or even invisible contacts or neural implant. It adds an AR layer on everything. There are no devices, no screens, no buttons. You look and think and the world responds. The Vision Pro is a clunky preview, but decently feature complete. Utopian or dystopian, this is exactly the future that Apple, Meta and NeuraLink are chasing.
- dougmwne 3y ago
- baggy_trough 3y agoThe demand for expensive EVs is not unlimited, despite the ardent desires of California and federal politicians.
- KerrAvon 3y agoThere's plenty of latent demand; there isn't currently a viable charging network and NACS doesn't take over until 2025.
- Tiktaalik 3y agoAnd there'd be a hell of a lot more demand if we priced the negative externality of the CO2 emitted and damage ICE vehicles do to the environment but sadly we don't.
- baggy_trough 3y agoThere’s quite a big subsidy for EVs though.
- baggy_trough 3y agoThere's also quite an oversupply at the moment.
- MisterPea 3y agoCook's best trait is being reactive very well. What he lacks in the Jobs "magic", he has in the ability to react to industry incredibly well and do better than most. I have little doubt Apple is going to be a major player in AI, especially in the non-Nvidia hardware space after playing around with MLX
- stevev 3y agoI disagree. They had a leading edge with Siri but failed to invest in AI over a car. This move is just correcting a vital mistake in time past. They’re playing catch up.
- internetter 3y agoOP said reactive, not anticipative. You are both in agreement.
- jjtheblunt 3y agoHow would one know how much they invested in AI, if they've not discussed such?
- ldjkfkdsjnv 3y agoCook just optimized Jobs vision. He hasnt done anything special
- gnicholas 3y agoI really hope Apple continues its privacy-first ethos and offers an on-device LLM. It would also be great if they could use Handoff-like technology to let my (almost always nearby, almost always plugged-in) laptop do the thinking, instead of depleting the battery of my phone. I'd surely buy a bunch of HomePod minis if I could tie them into a local LLM.
- croes 3y ago>privacy-first ethos Apple doesn't have a privacy first ethos, it's more of an All your-data-are-belong-to-us. They just don't like to share the asset of their users data, that's not privacy.
- thefourthchime 3y agoThat's not true you can have complete end to end encryption. By default. iCloud is not encrypted, but you can encrypt it and nobody but you can get access access your data. It's off by default because if you lose the password then you lose everything and that's a support nightmare.
- croes 3y agoThey own the OS they don't need to decrypt the transport if they own the source. They could track every button pressed if they wanted to. https://gizmodo.com/apple-iphone-analytics-tracking-even-when-off-app-store-1849757558 https://gizmodo.com/apple-iphone-analytics-tracking-even-whe...
- krunck 3y agoWho can confirm this though?
- the_mar 3y agoCan and do are two vastly different things. The assumption that data privacy can only be accomplished by no one having any access to data is ridiculous. Of all the companies that exist right now, apple does a fair bit of work regarding data anonymization and access restriction.
- orenlindsey 3y agoIt was always a distraction for them. Apple couldn't add anything real to cars that other manufacturers did not have.
- yreg 3y agoAside from CarPlay.
- filmgirlcw 3y agoGood. This was an idea that never made any sense to me. It’s high overhead/low-margin and requires infrastructure, sales and after-sales support that just aren’t aligned with how Apple does business. It’s one thing to create a new car company (even tho those attempts usually fail), it’s another to purposefully take it on as a business line when your existing business groups prints money and have 40%+ margins. Especially when you could just have a higher-margin business selling software for other people’s cars. What surprises me is that it took this long to kill the product. And while I feel bad for the engineers and researchers who worked on this project, this really does seem like the best outcome.
- UncleOxidant 3y ago> What surprises me is that it took this long to kill the product Maybe I'm misremembering, but I seem to recall that it was killed once before?
- SheinhardtWigCo 3y agoIt’s been scaled down and then back up, never fully shut down.
- odshoifsdhfs 3y agoI think the Apple car has been killed maybe 10 times or more in the last decade.
- madeofpalk 3y agoIt's been killed, restarted, scaled down, scaled up about every 9 months for the past 10 years.
- MBCook 3y agoYeah based on rumors they were on like version 12 of the program.
- brandall10 3y agoIs this current news more irreversible?
- MBCook 3y agoI was always rather puzzled by the car. I can’t see them ever competing even with the small makers like Jaguar or Polestar or Lamborghini. They’re certainly not going to take on Ford or Mazda or Honda. The idea of making the infotainment guts is interesting but I can’t see any carmaker giving up that much control. If they don’t like CarPlay they’d never like full Apple infotainment. Sure Apple could do ADAS stuff, but why would an OEM choose Apple instead of others they’re used to and are likely far easier to work with. Unless they went highly left field for the US, like tiny city cars more like Smart, I just don’t get it. And if they did that… well Smart isn’t breaking records in the US are they. The initial idea seemed to be self driving cars, but for individuals you have the problems above and for fleets why would they want to buy from Apple? So unless Apple wanted to be Uber that doesn’t make much sense either. An odd move all around.
- eli 3y agoTo be fair, that was what a lot of people thought about Apple making a cell phone. That they'd never compete with Nokia or Motorola and that US carriers would never give them enough control.
- amyjess 3y agoThe problem is that smartphones had very little consumer uptake before the iPhone came out. You had your Windows Mobile and Symbian devices, which were popular among hardcore turbonerds, but normies weren't interested in them. And that goes double for the US; there was more uptake of WinMo and Symbian in Europe, but very little in Apple's home market. The closest thing to a "normie" smartphone before the iPhone was BlackBerry, but most people who had one were business users who had their device issued and provisioned by their employer. And enthusiasts always pooh-poohed BlackBerries as "not a real smartphone" because it was basically just a messaging and groupware beast with limited general-purpose capabilities. So there was a big gap to be filled. Enthusiasts had their market segment, business users had their market segment, but the ordinary consumers had nothing. And Apple gladly swooped in to fill this gap. The problem is that cars are already ubiquitous, especially in the US. What can an iCar offer that a Toyota can't? Hell, even if you specify electric cars, other companies still have this covered. What can Apple offer that Tesla can't? And if you look internationally, it's even worse. You start selling electric cars outside the US market, you're going to end up going head-to-head with Chinese giants like BYD that are already kicking Tesla's ass outside the US. The only real path forward for an iCar that does to cars what the iPhone did to phones is if Apple were to perfect true Level 5 self-driving. If they could actually pull off "Siri, take me to work", it would change things enough that normal cars would look like dumbphones compared to the iCar. But that's a pipe dream. Our roads are too chaotic for Level 5 to be feasible for a long, long time. In fact, I'm willing to bet that the reason this project lasted a whole decade was because Apple was throwing everything they had at Level 5 self-driving, and they canned it because after an entire decade they still couldn't make it work.
- ribeyes 3y ago[flagged]
- vstrava 3y ago[flagged]
- zyang 3y agoIt's insane how many companies went down the "full self driving by 2020" rabbit hole.
- jeron 3y agoI think it makes sense if consider the fact it “solves an actual problem”, would have a massive adoption rate and has a massive market, and the potential value of developing a product like that is easily in the 100 Billions if not Trillions
- pton_xd 3y agoNow everyone's diving straight into the "full AGI by 2025" hole. Which, to be fair, would solve the "full self-driving" problem as a pure side-effect, I guess.
- consumer451 3y agoI believe Musk once admitted on camera that ~"full self driving basically requires AGI." If anyone could help me identify that video, I would appreciate it.
- starbugs 3y ago> I believe Musk once admitted on camera that ~"full self driving basically requires AGI." If anyone could help me identify that video, I would appreciate it. You mean this one? He actually says self driving and LLMs are both headed towards AGI there: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sEm81F3vjy0 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sEm81F3vjy0
- ukuina 3y agoLow-latency multi-modal LLMs with constrained outputs can outperform most specialized prev-gen networks, so this may actually work out independent of achieving AGI!
- postalrat 3y agoIts a deep rabbit hole that led us to the current AI craze and will lead use to AGI in 2025.
- PlunderBunny 3y agoI suspect the impetus for the car project was Jony Ive saying “If you don’t let me design a car, I will quit.”
- jitl 3y agoMeanwhile Xiaomi and Sony both have electric car projects nearing release: https://www.cnbc.com/amp/2024/02/26/xiaomi-bets-on-new-ev-su7-targets-potential-20-million-premium-users.html https://www.cnbc.com/amp/2024/02/26/xiaomi-bets-on-new-ev-su... https://www.caranddriver.com/news/a42400955/afeela-sony-honda-ev/ https://www.caranddriver.com/news/a42400955/afeela-sony-hond...
- jermaustin1 3y agoI (maybe incorrectly) feel that Asian companies are better at this type of vertical diversification. So many of the big Japanese and Korean companies do so many different things. I'm thinking of Yamaha, Casio, Sony, Samsung, etc.
- numpad0 3y agoDoes this mean Waymo and/or Cruise had given up and they're no longer a threat to Apple?
- resolutebat 3y agoCruise has given up, but Waymo is doubling down I don't see how either is/was a "threat to Apple" though, people aren't going to replace their iPhones with Waymo rides.
- geodel 3y ago[flagged]
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- varelse 3y ago[dead]
- awesomeMilou 3y agoSurely this must be a hardware focused move? I can't see generative AI benefiting Apples core software. Rather I'd be interested to see what I can do with some specialized, custom hardware on their platform.
- asow92 3y agoCan you imagine how expensive that car would've been? Carplay is enough for me, thanks.
- baron816 3y agoI really wonder if Lucid was positioned to be bought by Apple.
- threeseed 3y agoLucid is not a car company. It's a strategic, capability building project for Saudi Arabia. They want to turn the country into the AI / advanced manufacturing / software development hub of the Middle East and they need an innovative brand that can help to attract talent and foreign investment.
- thomassmith65 3y agoFinally! The idea that Apple had any business making cars was rooted in overconfidence and business school nonsense. It was overconfidence to think that the shipping of tens of millions of smartphones meant the company was well-suited to make heavy machinery. It was business school nonsense that birthed the idea. Consumers never needed Apple to make a car; the car presumably was to 'diversify' and placate investors worried about smartphone market saturation. Tim Cook, and whoever else had a part in scrapping this dumb project, are probably mourning its death, but they ought to congratulate themselves.
- 1970-01-01 3y agoNo clear goal (other than "build a self-driving EV") was ever set for Project Titan. This isn't surprising news. 9 years ago: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=9047833 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=9047833
- modeless 3y agoTesla is already the Apple of cars. Designed in California. Capacitive touchscreen instead of buttons. Vertical integration. Minimalist hardware design. Focus on software. Over the air updates. Custom SoC. When Apple did all this in phones it was unique. There was no Tesla of phones. But there is a Tesla of cars and it's tough to imagine what unique thing Apple could bring to the market.
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- bombcar 3y agoTen years ago Apple buying TSLA would have been something that could have happened. Today, not so much.
- intrasight 3y agoAnd if they had, they would likely have killed it off years ago. Apple's not exactly a "move fast and break things" kind of culture.
- jejeyyy77 3y agothis.
- tomdell 3y agoDefinitely similar in a lot of ways (going against the current, similar design language), but there are a couple of key differences to the point I wouldn't say Tesla is the Apple of cars - Apple typically productizes mature technology and ensures that its products are designed well. Tesla is an early adopter and productizes immature technology which it overhypes and overpromises on (e.g. self-driving). Apple's manufacturing quality control and attention to detail is also generally pretty impressive. Tesla products looks impressive on the outside but feel cheap on the inside, and there are a lot of issues with the quality of manufacturing. Apple uses nice materials and Tesla uses cheap materials. Apple making a car always struck me as weird, though. I would argue BMW or Mercedes are much closer to being the Apple of cars - they aren't early adopters of new technology, and their products are immaculately designed (though using a much different design language than Apple does) and are and feel expensive, unlike Tesla's cars, which look nice but feel like toys.
- cowsup 3y agoDisappointing to hear. It seems every car manufacturer has settled in to their niche, and they are now working to become software companies, adding a bunch of “smart” functionalities to their cars. I was very curious as to whether it was easier for an automotive company to get good at tech, or for a tech company to get good at automobiles. Perhaps this result is a good indicator.
- mortenjorck 3y agoGranted it's already been several years since Apple reportedly abandoned self-driving as a priority for its car project, but I wonder if this signals a larger shift. A decade ago, the popular sentiment was that autonomous vehicles were going to completely reshape our built environment in the coming decade. And yet here we are in 2024, with the industry leader still only running limited trials in two markets, the next two woefully behind, and everyone else out of the market. Perhaps AVs have entered the realm of fusion, something that may yet be transformative, but on a much longer time scale than initially thought.
- h2odragon 3y ago"shifts team" ... 'cuz the skillset overlap is so high, seems natural. Cars, AI; as far as Apple is concerned, is all marketing bullshit. A "direction shift" like this is turning the spout this way or that.
- Philpax 3y agoThe car was partially autonomous. The people who were working on making it autonomous will be moved over to the full-time AI team.
- gamepsys 3y agoReplacing an ICU with an electric car reduces carbon output. Training an AI model costs a lot of carbon in manufacturing chips and in electricity. I'm worried that this will negatively impact their goal of being carbon neutral by 2030.
- ARandumGuy 3y agoI'm kinda surprised it took this long. On a broad level, there's nothing that Apple really brings to the table that would help them build a successful car. They don't have the internal expertise necessary to help with the practical elements necessary to build a car, like fine tuning a suspension or manufacturing brakes that work. And they don't have the logistics infrastructure necessary to handle actually manufacturing a car. The main thing Apple had that could help them build a car is a lot of money. But they could also use that money to get into food delivery or manufacturing CNC machines. Realistically, if Apple invested their cash into car manufacturing, they'd just end up with a whole lot less cash.
- bcx 3y agoI still think it's reasonable to have Apple consider building a car. Their core competency is in design, integrated platforms/ecosystems, and outsourced manufacturing. Assuming that they could use their supply chain expertise to simplify and outsource manufacturing, the cars of the future likely looks more like a software enabled consumer electronics device than a consumer mechanical device, and there are some really neat things you could do in that ecosystem that only apple could pull off (cutting edge design coupled with high end finishes, and a software ecosystem with a self-driving car as a new platform). That said, it's likely not the right market timing for Apple to bring an electric car to market.
- skmurphy 3y agoIt's a highly regulated product, something they have no experience with.
- hprotagonist 3y agothey're growing experience with regulated markets -- but with a privacy/medtech slant. Of the two, I'd probably rather fight with the FDA versus the NTSB, though.
- asadotzler 3y agothe thing about regulation is you don't get good at it. You get good at a specific area of regulation but that rarely transfers to some entirely different set of regulations from different authorities in different places. Saying "they're getting good at regulation" is like saying a paleontologist is "getting good at science". Sure some concepts cross, but actual understanding and competence needed to do the new job at hand don't.
- debacle 3y agoMany companies are shifting away from electric cars right now. As someone who doesn't pay much attention to the industry, is it about capital costs, battery material shortages, consumer behavior, loss of subsidies, general competition, etc? It feels like we made a lot of promises about a shift to "all electric" in certain places by 2030 and I see those promises being rolled back or weakened.
- geodel 3y agoThey have large low level software teams with compilers, runtimes and what not. They also have great hardware teams to develop whatever custom hardware is needed for purpose. I think they can do a full stack thing for AI.
- spywaregorilla 3y ago[flagged]
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- ranyefet 3y agoCar does not make sense to me. But I would love if Apple will make a home robot, like HomePod on wheels maybe with a projector. I would also really like if they will make an electric skateboard, or some kind of personal electric vehicle.
- m3kw9 3y agoWould one day want to see what they had envisioned
- summerlight 3y agoThis decision makes sense. Apple failed to establish a good relationship with the existing car makers and they couldn't even begin their very first manufacturing process over 10 years. Which means even if Apple gets a magic wand to bring all the technologies that it needs, it would take another decade to ramp up the business.
- m3kw9 3y agoI can see Jenson picking up the phone to call Tim right when he saw this headline to make a deal for 100k A100s or 20% of their next gen chips
- BogdanPetre 3y agoGood ! Chinese are already ahead of everyone in EV
- dkjaudyeqooe 3y agoSo Apple pivots from one thing that it doesn't have a natural advantage with to another. Apple has gone from leading the industry to increasingly desperate and huge "me too" developments that they've failed at. AI, generative or otherwise, is going to be their next failure. To say AI moves fast is a serious understatement. I predict that which is white hot now (LLMs) will be a blind alley long left behind in a year or two. How are Apple going to attract the talent they need to pull of something decent in AI? Their share price can't have the upside of hot startup or even a sleazy non-profit for that matter. I predict they buy something fairly pedestrian from some large player at some point. Apple is a huge cash cow and with Cook at helm it will remain so but will slowly fade over time and resort even more to extractive behaviours on their customers and suppliers.
- FirmwareBurner 3y ago> AI, generative or otherwise, is going to be their next failure. Just look at how retarded Siri is. Same goes for Alexa.
- scottyah 3y agoIf they can make a voice assistant that runs on-device I'd pay good money for that. Now that a lot of LLMs are able to run (slowly) on raspberry pi's, they could get a great following by just not stealing data and not having their assistant get very noticeably worse over time. Google assistant has completely dropped the ball from a user perspective, though I'm sure they're capturing great data and have reduced server costs 90%.
- TheOtherHobbes 3y agoApple had a huge lead on this with Siri, and then let it stagnate - actually devolve - instead of throwing money at it to develop it further. My guess is they'll try to turn VisionPro into some kind of generative gaming system. Text/image is close to being a solved problem, video is on its way but still not great. Both will be impossible to beat from a cold-ish start. I'm not convinced Apple has the hire-power to attract the best people for any of this.
- jeffbee 3y agoIs this also the end of their autonomous program? I've enjoyed reading the DMV reports of people crashing into them all over the Bay Area. Seemingly Apple are alone in testing on freeways.
- edfletcher_t137 3y ago> The two executives told staffers that the project will begin winding down and that many employees on the team working on the car — known as the Special Projects Group, or SPG — will be shifted to the artificial intelligence division under executive John Giannandrea. It sounds like this means the official end of SPG, the group that Tony Fadell took over to eventually build the iPod (among other things). A storied history, to say the least. RIP SPG.
- unsignedint 3y agoI'm questioning whether cars align with their business strategy in the first place. Their approach seems to focus on creating an ecosystem where users are deeply integrated into their suite of products and services. Introducing cars, which inherently need to appeal to a broader demographic, might lead to a disconnect from this model. (Sarcastically: Were they considering a car that's unusable without an iPhone?)
- tbatchelli 3y agoI don’t think the market can take what would probably be a very expensive EV, at least not at scale. EV sales in the US seem to be stalling, in part because the charging infrastructure is not fully there, and in part because of cost. The price to get mass adoption would have to be significantly lower than current offerings, and Apple is not known to undercut on price. Vision Pro is 3.5x Meta Quest Pro, for example. In the EU the EV adoption is mostly on the heels of BYO cheaper EVs, with the exception of Norway and other northern countries. I assume Teslas are only luxury items elsewhere, and EV adoption is also based on cheaper Chinese builds. So this is not like when the iPhone was a step function in quality, functionality and price over a commoditized mobile phone market. This is a market that is still mostly luxury, with some attempts at commoditization. A 3.5x price would be over mostly Tesla prices. Maybe Apple realized they would take too long to achieve scale if they went to market anytime soon?
- ProfessorLayton 3y agoTo be honest, I'm not sure what Apple could've brought to the table in regards to making an electric car. Apple's hardware design philosophies[1] don't really align with what consumers want in a car. Apple being less minimalistic than a Tesla — which is already at an extreme — is a hard sell. [1] Examples of what I mean: - Cars use faux materials all the time for cost and weight purposes, or even just looks (i.e. fake chrome bits, spoilers and vents that don't do anything etc.). Apple these days does not, if it looks like metal, it almost always is, same for glass, and vents are as hidden as possible. - Creature comforts: Cars are a place people spend a lot of time in, and are usually as comfortable as possible for it. Apple examples where ergonomics took a back seat for looks: All their mice, Airpods Max (Heavy, can't fold or turn off without a case), Vision (Heavy), Apple TV (ZERO buttons, need to unplug to reset from a crash). I'm not saying it's impossible for them to make a comfortable car, but I am saying they've prioritized looks over comfort several times. - Apple design in general has lost a lot of it's soul. They used to be more fun and whimsy, just look at iMac designs of the past. The Cyber truck, love it or hate it, is not boring. Everything apple sells is a glass and metal slab, or as close as possible to it. By the way, I like a lot of Apple's hardware design decisions, like premium materials etc. I just don't think it's in their DNA to launch a car that isn't a touch-screen-hell appliance with rounded corners.
- solardev 3y agoYou don't like their mice? My Magic Mouse is the single most comfortable mouse I've ever had, and the only one that doesn't give me wrist or finger pain after a day's work. I've tried dozens from Logitech and Microsoft and SteelSeries and Razer, including ergo ones and track balls and track pads, but keep coming back to the Magic Mouse for its simple comforts. Similarly, the Airpod Pros are so incredibly comfortable it's hard to imagine going back to anything else. (Even though I have an Android and it doesn't support all the features, just basic Bluetooth.) It's not always that great though, of course. My M2 MacBook Pro is so much heavier than my old ThinkPad, and its keyboard is much much worse. The touchpad has terrible palm rejection and keeps jumping the cursor around. Overall I still love the machine but mostly use it docked. I do miss the old iMacs, but the new ones are gorgeous and elegant in their own way. It was the first time I was tempted by a desktop in a looooong while.
- swozey 3y ago"I drive an Apple" sounds so odd.
- zeitgeistcowboy 3y agoRichard Scarry's Lowly Worm character drives one. He was ahead of his time.
- itomato 3y agoCrafted from the fruit of the earth and driven by a worm, the Literal Apple Car embodies the principles of renewable resources and minimal environmental impact, setting an imaginative precedent for eco-friendly design.
- medion 3y agoUgh, Apple doing generative AI. At least the car idea was interesting.
- jedberg 3y agoI wish they would get into medical devices, especially for consumers. Apple is really good at making interfaces for technology. Imagine an Apple version of a CPAP or a diabetes sugar monitor/artificial pancreas. Hopefully some of the SPG group was/is/will be working on this.
- nextos 3y agoSame here. I think Apple Watch is their best product, and it has a lot of potential as a biomarker monitor, e.g. to measure insulin.
- croes 3y agoSounds like Apple is in panic mode and FOMO because they are late to the GPT game. Similar cases didn't work out for MS
- stonogo 3y agoThey absolutely did. Microsoft was late to web and now we have O365, Azure, etc. I'd say, however, that this is less FOMO and more employee-retention. A team shifting from electric cars to generative AI sounds more like a directionless hype squad where you park flight risks who can still add value to other departments while they play with the newest shiny.
- chucke1992 3y agoThe issue with MSFT is they missed a lot during the era when they had to deal with regulators. It took away basically their whole decade starting from early 2000s.
- asadotzler 3y agoIt was because they were breaking the law, got found guilty, and settled with the DOJ agreeing to that decade of dealing with regulators enforcing a Microsoft authored consent decree. And thank god their hands were tied for decade so others could come up and we weren't all stuck with MS for another decade or longer. Can we do that to Google and Apple now?
- croes 3y agoO365 is not an example of MS's web strategy, it's just an example of cornering the users. MS has simply done away with the on-premise version of Office and left them with almost no other choice. I don't know if it's worthwhile for car engineers to work on AI. That's how you lose specialists.
- asadotzler 3y agoThat's silly. Desktop Office is a '90s product and O365 is there smart rebuild for the 2010s and beyond, fully embracing the web and SAAS and finally shedding cardboard boxes with CDs inside. Car engineers working on computer vision and sensors or autonomous driving should be able to slide into Apple hardware and software spaces without too much effort if they're wedded to Apple or Apple makes it lucrative for them to park there while they figure out how to better utilize the talent. It's almost like you've never been involved in any of this kind of thing but nevertheless needed to participate and be heard. I appreciate that. it happens. But your reply was actually mindless.
- runeofdoom 3y agoBut... without Apple's car, my only choices for vehicles will be tanks, batmobiles, and Microsoft's Rube-Golberged mopeds.
- ra7 3y agoAn Apple car wouldn't be attractive without autonomous driving. The real (and unsurprising) news here is that Apple has given up on autonomous driving. They are far, far behind Waymo and don't want to compete with them, just like how they didn't want to compete with Google for search. They simply lack the expertise to do it.
- kjkjadksj 3y agoThey have no servicing model anymore. Replacing the stock like for like for each and any issue isn’t going to scale for a car. At least not in a way that makes any sustainability claims total greenwashing.
- whywhywhywhy 3y ago> sustainability claims total greenwashing Already are, company replaced a natural biodegradable material with a micro-plastic shedding plastic weave
- legitster 3y ago> Apple cancels work on electric car Phew. Probably a good idea. >... shifts team to generative AI Actually, I think I would rather them work on an electric car. I know a car was not a realistic idea, but I'll say it: Apple's software stinks. They used to take bold risks with hardware, but this is going to be another dollar-store ripoff of another popular product.
- nerdjon 3y agoIt still seems wild that Apple was even working on it, similar to the rumors that they were working on an actual TV. I have to imagine that there was some shared tech with other products that helped make it make sense for so long. Maybe some of the CarPlay stuff? Like the next generation CarPlay that takes over all the screens and controls.
- itronitron 3y agoIt's shocking/hilarious how much/many people believe that there are any economic prospects in generative AI. By definition, if something is generated by an AI then it's worthless if for no other reason than supply and demand. There's also a reason it's called a singularity, it sucks everything in that touches it but otherwise has very little influence on anything else.
- bradgessler 3y agoHave you tried talking to Siri? Compare that to ChatGPT and you'll see that it's much better. The predictive nature of LLMs are perfect for voice assistant use cases, which when connected to "plugins" means we'll all have our own personal assistants. That's worth something.
- input_sh 3y agoWhy would they want to run LLM queries every time someone asks Siri for the normal shit people ask their voice assistants: weather, timers, controlling music; on a scale of every iPhone user out there. It'd just be waisting compute money with no obvious way of recouping the cost. Doubt many people would be interested in paying for Siri.
- wes-k 3y agoThey already run compute for siri for voice to text. So they could in theory still provide an LLM backed siri service for free for their customers/users.
- moooo99 3y ago> The predictive nature of LLMs are perfect for voice assistant use cases But people in general don't seem to be interested in voice assistants in general. They were a huge hype when you basically had to manually uncheck boxes to not accidentially order an Amazon Echo, etc, but as quick as the hype was there it was gone. To my knowledge Amazon has yet to make any kind of substantial revenue with Alexa stuff. With LLMs I would expect this to be even more of an issue given how costly the inferencing alone is when we're talking about an LLM. And yes, the utility will likely increase substantially with the adoption of LLMs as opposed to previous language processing techniques, but I don't think this will outweigh the disinterest in the overall technology.
- paxys 3y ago> Apple made the disclosure internally Tuesday, surprising the nearly 2,000 employees working on the project Was Apple really trying to build a self-driving electric car from scratch with just a 2,000 person team?
- earth2mars 3y agoA clear sign of shift focus on AI. They understand the importance of focus and resource (money, people) allocation. Never too late. Good move.
- tippytippytango 3y agoIt seems almost like they kept the rumor of an Apple car going to ensure a stock price tailwind during the EV boom. That’s over, now layoffs and AI are the new hotness. This move hits both of these. Seems to be working, stock is up on the news.
- singingwolfboy 3y agohttps://archive.ph/aYAWK https://archive.ph/aYAWK
- andrewia 3y agoI know somebody on the project. The cancellation makes sense, they were years from release and every new VP pivoted the project and lost progress. If they had committed to their original project (a bus) or the first revision (a very high-end car) they could have released on a timely schedule. But they're far too late to the game.
- baal80spam 3y agoApple-bus (iBus?). Now that sounds glorious.
- jncfhnb 3y agoNow demanding 30% of revenue from the businesses they take you too!
- nicce 3y ago> But they're far too late to the game. Not so sure about that. You need battery and 4 x electric motors to wheels. The idea is much simpler than regular combustion engine car. Less parts that wear out. Idea is actually so simple that all the manufactures compete on putting as much nonsense into cars as possible, insted of making easily replaceable battery and car which would last 50 years and accelerate like Ferrari.
- gtirloni 3y agoIf it's so simple why don't we see regional manufacturers popping everywhere?
- nashashmi 3y agoDuring the hayday, we saw new companies come up with new cars all the time!!! And then they slowly went belly up. Part of me thinks that the endless number of regulations prohibited new car companies from entering. You can import a car from china in a crate that fits on the back of a pickup. But it won’t be legal on roads until it gets things like a DOT approved windshield.
- rubyn00bie 3y agoI think this makes sense. Right now Apple can focus its energy on something that they can more easily compete in and is absolutely overflowing with money and margins. In a few years, if Apple wants to get back into EVs they’d likely be able to just buy a smaller manufacturer with good margins (sort of like what they did with Beats). Right now Apple is the only company who can compete with NVidia (besides AMD) because they can afford to buy up TSMCs shiniest new node capacity. Until Intel does a reverse AMD and jettisons its chip design business from its fab business, being able to buy up TSMC capacity is a massive advantage.
- golbez9 3y agoOne pipe dream for another
- rhelz 3y agoThis reminds me of the oil curse. After a country discovers it has lots of oil, it nukes every other sector of their economy. Why? Because there's nothing you can invest your money in which would give you a larger return than oil. It sucks the lifeblood out of every other sector. Apple just didn't invest in its electric cars enough to let them develop it fast enough, and now with China coming online, the window of opportunity has past. Same reason why Google didn't productize its deep learning R&D. The only company which has ever ben able to escape from this trap is Intel--when the Japanese chased them out of the memory chip market, they switched to microprocessors. And now, when ARM chased them out of microprocessors, they are switching over to building fabs. The chip architects I know over there are watching their budgets being switched over. Only the paranoid survive.
- fngjdflmdflg 3y agoTo be clear, Intel aren't moving away from uarch design. Gelsinger has stated the economics of their fab business don't make sense without a large guaranteed customer like their processor business.[0] [0] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0PrmrMQ9gJU&t=637s https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0PrmrMQ9gJU&t=637s (Ian Interviews: Pat Gelsinger, Intel CEO)
- rhelz 3y agoOf course they are not going to announce they are getting out of CPUs before their new business is fully in place!! Everyone would instantly stop buying Intel CPUs and their revenue would go to zero. But make no mistake, Intel knows when to hold 'em and knows when to fold 'em. You heard it here first.
- deleted 3y ago[deleted]
- iancmceachern 3y agoWe all saw this coming
- r0fl 3y agoIf Siri goes from being complete garbage to half as good as chatgpt while doing all processing on device they will sell 100mil+ new phones in a quarter The bar has been set so low with Siri. Almost seems like a smart move
- radicaldreamer 3y agoThe R1 chip in the Vision Pro came from this effort so there’s definitely some return on investment here.
- asadotzler 3y agoThe billions they plowed into a cancelled automobile project was a good investment because 400,000 nerds will buy a strap-on dorkbox of a face computer this year with slightly improved hand tracking and other signal compositing? Not sure investors will see it that way, certainly not after the silly AVP is cancelled and Cook can get back to fiddling around the edges of Job's iPhone legacy with a few more fashionable accessories, maybe yet another pair of headphones.
- hosh 3y agoI wonder if some of the car UX or generative AI will help Apple improve Siri.
- iExploder 3y agoFrom one bandwagon to the other. Spicy.
- brailsafe 3y agoMaybe they just realized the same thing I did nearly 6 years ago; the best car is none at all.
- lasc4r 3y agoThis never made sense. They just have an ungodly amount of money to burn.
- deleted 3y ago[deleted]
- janaagaard 3y agoI hope this means that CarPlay gets some more focus, because I would like a CarPlay integration where everything I have configured in a car is stored in a profile on my phone. This is what I imagine: When I get into a car, I just have to connect my phone, and the seat automatically adjusts, the radio has my favorite stations configured, and the UI is set up as I prefer it. When I find myself in a car model that I haven't driven before, the phone is able to make a good guess of how to configure things based on my setup in other cars.
- pylua 3y agoMaybe they will just acquire a firm?
- kristianp 3y agoIt takes balls to cancel a project that has probably taken large resources and is probably at late stages of development. Or it was going to be too late and too expensive.
- bbor 3y agoNOOOOOOOOO it’s been literal DECADES. I am literally heartbroken. “Did you know Apple has a secret car project” has been a fun fact for my entire life, and I’m just supposed to walk away like it never happened? Sorry for the not-professional comment but jeez. Dark days.
- chucke1992 3y agoIt feels like Apple is really aimless these days.
- typeofhuman 3y agoThe Vision Pro is a flop. I can't remember when Apple has had this bad of a product. Maybe those messed up keyboards on MacBooks years ago?
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- wolverine876 3y agoI hope it's not an overreaction to the current reactionary anti-ESG trend. We do need electric cars; they are the future.
- somedude895 3y agoDo we need Apple specifically to make an electric car?
- astrodust 3y agoThis is not the question Apple is trying to answer. If you're trying to expand the market of a company with such a broad reach already there aren't many markets big enough to move the needle on revenue. Real-estate, food, fashion and automotive are the only ones really significant enough to tackle, and of those, automotive isn't an unreasonable one to explore. Unless you want a literal Apple Home.
- danielmarkbruce 3y agoAI has given a lot of people a lot of cover to kill projects which are going nowhere. Rather than "this was a terrible idea, we've wasted a bunch of money" they get to say "AI is transformational, we have to allocate resources to it and hence we are cutting X, Y, Z".
- tr_user 3y agoFuture of what? Reliable mass public transport is the best option for a sustainable future. We don't need car centric suburbia but with heavier and more expensive cars.
- tumult 3y agoEven if the US and other car-centric countries started a serious effort on that today, it would take decades. During which people continue to use gasoline cars, and emitting more CO2 we will need to undo in the future. Electric cars make sense right now regardless of your perspective on trains (I like trains, and dislike cars, and I am sympathetic)
- inputError 3y ago[dead]
- evan_ 3y agoIf I were running a successful company I would stay as far away from selling cars as possible- it can't imagine how bad it is for PR (not to mention your psyche) to suddenly have "Family killed by drunk driver" headlines with a giant color picture of your flagship product, blood-stained and mangled below it.
- coldtea 3y agoThat's a strange thought. Neither the name or logo of famous car brands got associated or tarnished by tens of thousands killed every year... Even when some of them ocassionally made a specific "death trap" model or production run, that's simply not how people thinks of them.
- fiskeben 3y agoAt least here in Norway, if a Tesla is involved in anything, the headline will make sure to mention it.
- dmd 3y agoOur local (Boston area) town police blotter always mentions if a Tesla is involved in so much as a bumper-scrape, whereas no other car brand has ever been mentioned even once.
- zemvpferreira 3y agoTrue, but still, Tesla is as popular as a car brand can be, which confirms the original sentiment.
- NoPicklez 3y agoPeople don't think that way generally about cars where humans have historically been in complete control, because we associate that with our own driving experience and we're conditioned to it. When it comes to a car brand where crashes occur due to autonomous driving that's different. It's all about timing and the brand. Apple coming into the car market will have the same media scrutiny as Tesla. There might be 1000s of Toyota motor vehicle accidents weekly, but if there's one involving a Tesla and particularly one driving autonomously, you can bet it will be on the front page. It's an enormous PR challenge for Apple if one of their cars kills someone, especially in any autonomous mode. They likely won't be about to stop that from happening completely but either way it's still a challenge they will need to deal with. Finally, Apple historically have not been associated with building high speed vehicles that can kill people. That is an inherent risk if you are entering the market as purely a car maker.
- coldtea 3y agoFrom now on they'll be known as the "Hype" team: working on whatever technology is hyped at the moment.
- russellbeattie 3y agoThis is the problem with Tim Cook. He was able to execute on the ideas that Steve Jobs had about the future of computing, but has no real vision of his own. For the past decade he's made all the right decisions about how to best expand personal technology and introduced a couple new products like the Apple Watch and AirPods. But those are just extensions of the same basic idea. But in terms of the future? He's just been chasing trends. The VR headset is a copy of a fad that peaked a few years ago. The car project is the same - way outside Apple's core competency and doomed from the start. It probably started simply because Cook drives a Tesla and wanted an Apple version. Just like the push to make the iPad a replacement for the Mac - it's all he normally uses, so that's what he thought was important. Apple completely dropped the lead they had with Siri. They should have had a massive generative AI project for the past 5 years. It's not a secret that Cook isn't a visionary, he's the type of guy who implements the vision of others. I think over the next decade we're going to start seeing Apple start to pay the price for that deficiency.
- acaloiar 3y ago> The two executives told staffers that the project will begin winding down and that many employees on the car team — known as the Special Projects Group, or SPG — will be shifted to the artificial intelligence division under executive John Giannandrea. Those employees will focus on generative AI projects, an increasingly key priority for the company. This line really excited my PR-spin senses. The set of people working on automobile R&D who are good candidates to work on "generative AI projects" is so small that it's hardly worth mentioning. "Many employees" will be moving to jobs within Apple only insomuch as ~5% of 2000 people is arguably "many" (or whatever the size of the autonomous vehicle software team is). I understand this line as a large layoff announcement that reads more like an internal team reassignment.
- alsetmusic 3y agoI thought the skills for building an engine and those for building software were largely the same? /s Yes. They'll be letting a lot of people go. This smells like a controlled leak to signal that the company isn't experiencing cooling sales / services when that happens.
- anonylizard 3y agoWhere does it say only 5% will move jobs? You underestimate the overlap between GenAI and EVs. Apple is not merely a software company, their AI strategy will not be merely send data to datacenter to run LLMs. Apple has to run local LLMs heavily amongst its devices, for responsiveness, cost, and privacy reasons. This will entail a holistic effort from batteries to the neural inference chips to the AI models to the user design. Much more complicated than the datacenter only approach. The car division would have also had people working on the battery, neural chips, UI design, etc. I would estimate 30% at least get moved to AI.
- tibbar 3y agoThere is more overlap between the two than you'd think, specifically in producing and evaluating datasets for training and fine-tuning models. Most software engineers and ML engineers who worked on self-driving cars would do fine at working on GenAI; in fact, they're more qualified than the vast majority of engineers to work in a brand-new industry. Same goes for engineers working on compute hardware. Even engineers working on automotive controls and sensors could easily have a role working on increasingly multimodal models and applications, though I have no idea what projects Apple is actually prioritizing within that space.
- pyromaker 3y agoWas the project Titan - the Apple car project - actually initiated by Apple execs & from the strategic PoV? I read the book "After Steve" [1] and I remember reading a section in which there was a lot of grumbling from employees about how Apple is not working on the latest & greatest R&D project and one of them was self-driving cars. Not sure how "strategic" it was and I guess the question is "What would have Steve done?" My call is he would've never jumped in the car game. https://www.amazon.com.au/After-Steve-Became-Trillion-Dollar-Company/dp/0063009811 https://www.amazon.com.au/After-Steve-Became-Trillion-Dollar...
- jaimex2 3y agoCalled it for years. Apple had long had the reputation as being the Tesla reject bin, if you got fired that's where you would go. Their self driving will go nowhere also unless they buy someone out. They aren't an AI company and they don't have access to meaningful data.
- slac 3y agoThe market is being flooded by Chinese brands... all with deep pockets thanks to subsidies from the state. So many brands in Europe right now: xpeng, honqchi, MG, nio, byd, maximus,... the list goes on and on.
- Marazan 3y agoI cannot think of a more defining moment for this age than the premier company of its time pivoting from making "a thing" to focusing on infinite bullshit generators instead.
- RickJWagner 3y agoI heard Apple gave up on the car because they found it had to have Windows.
- komodus 3y agoOn the Android side of the fence, Xiaomi car looks nice: https://techcrunch.com/2024/02/26/this-is-xiaomis-first-electric-car-the-su7/ https://techcrunch.com/2024/02/26/this-is-xiaomis-first-elec...
- cushpush 3y agoLet me guess, the "one pedal" design was not catching on in focus groups.
- gavin_gee 3y agoIMHO This is an excellent decision by Apple. what is their differentiated value for a car? It's all downsize. If it didn't end up being amazing consumers would see behind the curtain and judge all their products. Margins on cars are nowhere near phones. I'm not sure there is a ton of cross over benefits from manufacturing small sized electronics vs large cars. Not to mention that apple outsources all of this work.
- deleted 3y ago[deleted]
- atleastoptimal 3y agoThe most obvious possible conclusion. A car has absolutely no connection, relevance or benefit to their core as a business. It seemed like one of those random fake factoids people would make up "hey did you hear Apple is making a car"
- ein0p 3y agoKinda still wish they’d have made it, or at least shown some pre-production work, just to see what a radical product re-think could look like in this space. Cars of 2024, even in the premium segment, are nearly uniformly garish and tasteless, with tons of half baked features of marginal utility accreted over the years and never perfected. Apple’s take on the category could have been a master class in product design and attention to detail, if nothing else.
- iwontberude 3y agoMaybe cars are inherently garish and tasteless.
- ein0p 3y agoDoubt it. I think good ones can be made, it’s just that nobody gives a shit, including most of the buyers.
- imoverclocked 3y ago“Good” is subjective. My idea of a good car is something that can get me from A-B, can hold dogs and be cleaned up easily, can tow a few thousand pounds in a pinch, doesn’t get stuck in the steep and muddy hills around my house, doesn’t break the bank, and it would be nice if it didn’t spy on me and have a giant shiny console in my field of view.
- rezonant 3y agohttps://archive.is/izE1K https://archive.is/izE1K
- EchoReflection 3y agohttps://archive.is/2024.02.27-205528/https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2024-02-27/apple-cancels-work-on-electric-car-shifts-team-to-generative-ai https://archive.is/2024.02.27-205528/https://www.bloomberg.c...
- Tiktaalik 3y agoI wonder if this means that Apple didn't see a technical way to get to full self driving. In all the reporting I ever read on this project it seemed to be much more a self driving project than an EV project.
- Fricken 3y agoApple couldn't commit to self driving car development. They never really figured out if they were developing a Robotaxi or just an EV with automated features. (L5 is still science fiction.) Google/Waymo has been working on level 4 for 15 years. They never strayed from their original goal. If they ever really get it to work profitably and at scale they will have no competition. All potential competitors have fallen by the wayside or are faltering. The self driving car race is an ultramarathon.
- frankfrank13 3y agoIf I was a 10000 IQ Apple exec 10-15 years ago this is the exact project I would pitch, so that when the economy became shaky I would have a $100b+ project to cancel. Obviously not really, but even HAVING that amount of cash to blow on a moonshot is crazy. And being this many years in and cancelling is commendable. I do wonder what this means for the self driving industry in general. Most news from that industry has not been peachy recently.
- DonnyV 3y agoApple doesn't do original ideas. They take existing designs and make them better. A car would have been a disaster for them. They missed a bullet.
- bparsons 3y agoApple should build a train.
- steelframe 3y agoAfter having gone through decades of adopting the "latest and greatest" tech, I've gotten to the point where what I really want is the least-complex thing I can find that does the essential job I want done. For a computer, I want something with SeaBIOS, a stripped-down kernel, and a handful of packages from the Debian Stable repository. I want it hackable and repairable -- something like a Framework. Nothing like a MacBook. For a phone, I want something that can run Signal, Fastmail, a music/audiobook player, Syncthing, and Organic Maps, more or less. Minimal connectivity to Cloud services, and nothing about it vying for my attention. Nothing like an iPhone. For a car I want hackable and repairable. Again with minimal complexity. I don't want it spying on me. I don't want computer glitches rendering the car unusable. I want the parking brake attached to a cable that I engage with a lever. I want to be able to shift it into neutral by pressing down on a clutch pedal and pushing a stick. If my 12v battery dies I want the car to be fully functional after a jump. I want a spare tire in the rear hatch with a jack I can use on the roadside. I want to be able to easily fix most things that can go wrong with the car with parts I can find at a common automotive shop or junkyard. Nothing like what an Apple car would have been. Given the number of people on HN with iPhones and Teslas I guess I might be running counter to hacker culture. I don't know. But I'm thinking I might not be the only person around thinking this way about technology these days.
- chatmasta 3y agoI mostly agree with you, but consider that in 50 years, the "least complex thing" might seem much different than it does today.
- captn3m0 3y agoFor iPhones, I’ve been meaning to try out Assistive Access as a “minimalist mode”. It gives you a big icon launcher becomes a dumb phone, more or less. https://support.apple.com/en-in/guide/assistive-access-iphone/devcd5016d31/ios https://support.apple.com/en-in/guide/assistive-access-iphon...
- kls0e 3y agojust tried it! excellent tip. thanks!
- mathattack 3y agoInteresting. If this happened to almost anyone else I would have pegged this as a result of the zero interest rate policy. Apple has buckets and buckets (and boatloads and boatloads) of cash though. Perhaps waiting another decade for benefits does come at a cost if the cash could be deployed elsewhere.
- jake_morrison 3y agoApple making cars was an interesting play when they had a bunch of cash overseas and good relationships with Chinese manufacturers. Tax law changes made bringing money back to the US less punishing, and manufacturing in China is becoming problematic.
- ActualHacker 3y agoEV market stalling, BYD smells blood in the water & primed to eat Detroit's lunch Apple is prudent as ever
- ryzvonusef 3y agoTesla makes the exact same car that Apple would have made (simple sleek style, proprietary port, proprietary UI etc), so we already have the Apple car. Apple has the cash, just buy Tesla, fire Elon and make it so only the iPhone can be the phone key for the car; and voila, the Tesla Model 3 Performance becomes the Apple iCar 3 Pro Max.
- kderbyma 3y agoyou would need to buy the iPad separately and could use the air Dash if you are not willing to fork over the cash, and then you unlock it with your face and wave frantically to get the operation.
- seydor 3y agoHopefully they ll work on electric helicopters
- rldjbpin 3y agomaybe they realized that handing over the sales to private dealerships, which they HAVE to do in their biggest market, would not be worth all the hassle with the development. i am aware that they have/had "authorized resellers" in Asian countries before their physical presence in that region.
- lencastre 3y agonah ja... this is a tad sad. I was really wanting to drive a car that would unapolagetically don't care about any preconcieved ideas of what a car is and what it should have. The car's most well desigend engine would know where to park and ... it's tiresome, $AAPL is going after the wrong horse. I'm sure they could pull making the ideal smartiCarAppleOS (tm c R), but as a v1 it would be a tremendous risk to embark in actual full car manufacturing. I mean, given the size of their warchest they could maybe afford a $TSLA or 3, or a smaller car maker and try tp Sink Diffrent (tm) upendding market dynamics of distribution, maintenance usw. I'm going all over the place to boil down the following, Apple should likely double down on ar/vr/?R and leave something that is up to 2 ton metal heavy to the existing car industry.
- ak_111 3y agoThere must be some incredibly interesting internal documents in Tim Cook's email archive discussing the business, product and financial strategy of this whole project. We can only hope that one day it leaks or we get some glimpse on how this vision evolved. It would be particularly interesting to see the inception and early days of this project and if it ever overlapped with the Jobs era.
- dustedcodes 3y agoAll the latest AI products, as great as they are (and I love them), make me overall less optimistic over the "older" AI products which we were promised one day, because now I see how fickle and very wrong they can be. Today I am the least confident that I will ever sit in a self driving car with my family. So this news doesn't come as a big surprise to me.
- bluescrn 3y agoCars need to be repairable. An Apple car is a terrifying thought.
- whywhywhywhy 3y agoAlways found this pursuit completely absurd and a sign of some issues at the company. The fact they even researched spherical wheels at one point really makes it seem like they have no self-awareness anymore.
- InCityDreams 3y agoShould 'decadelong' be two words?
- chucke1992 3y agoPersonally I am curious how Tesla happened - that suddenly a company was able to enter the established car market.