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I 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

by MBCook 3y ago

I 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 ago
To 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 ago
  The 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.
- ylee 3y ago
  >To 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 Not true. I helped cover Apple for a large investment bank before and after iPhone's launch. If anything, Apple was the one company that had the technology and market credibility to immediately make a splash in the market despite being totally foreign to it. >and that US carriers would never give them enough control. We did think that there was a real possibility of Apple launching its phone in conjunction with an MVNO. But this was again out of belief that Apple had the credibility to immediately have millions of customers switch to it as their carrier, not because Apple—of all companies—could not get what it wanted from carriers.
- MBCook 3y ago
  The phone made sense to me because by that point Apple had clearly proven themselves as a consumer electronics company. It’s wasn’t as big a jump and cell phone software was largely junk. The carrier thing was true, but they could have launched outside the US. Instead they found a carrier desperate enough. But they’ve never done safety critical stuff like a car. Of highly mechanical stuff like a car. Or things that need something of a dealer network the way a car does (existing Apple stores wouldn’t cut it). And really I’m not sure how much they could add a special “Apple touch” outside infotainment/interior controls compared to luxury automakers. If they a fully self driving car by 2018 and beat everyone by 7 years maybe. But as time went on it went from little to almost no sense. I enjoyed following it for that reason. But I never thought it would happen.
  - theturtletalks 3y ago
    Apple is still waiting it out until most of the existing EV issues are resolved. Then, they can swoop in and leverage their walled garden to get buyers/users. They'll also be different than Ford, Mazda, Honda, etc since I don't think they will try to sell their cars. It'll be a subscription fee and Apple will own the car. All this news tells me is that Apple is putting EV in the back burner since users are still not convinced about EVs in the long-term. AI is here to stay so it makes sense pivoting the team to that. Hell, the AI might make it into their cars for all we know.
    - MBCook 3y ago
      What does Apple‘s walled garden have to do with buying a car? I’m so tired of people claiming apples walled garden gives them magic abilities. It has nothing to do with this. Do you really think people are going to pay an extra $30,000 for a car because it works with the iPhone? I have an iPhone. I love Apple stuff. I’m not paying any premium for an Apple car, they have to convince me it’s worth it over the competition.
      - theturtletalks 3y ago
        What does Apple‘s walled garden have to do with bluetooth headphones? Now, look at AirPods, simple bluetooth headphones, with tight integration with iOS. I was the one ridiculing Apple for even entering this market and I thought they looked dumb. Sony XMs looked way better. Now headphones are a sizable market for Apple. So many of my friends are awaiting the refreshed AirPods Max. The same people that said they would never buy AirPods when they launched.
- dkjaudyeqooe 3y ago
  Not really the point. Apple succeeded because they applied their strengths, product and user interface design, to what is essentially a small computer. Apple have always developed core products that are essentially a computer. Even though cars increasingly look like laptops on wheels, the actual computer bit is relatively minor and the user interface is mostly the wheel and pedals, not so much the screen.
  - MBCook 3y ago
    I think that’s why they were a bit more interested when the original idea was to skip all that and do all automatic driving. But as soon as it became clear that wasn’t going to be an option I don’t understand why they didn’t just give up and instead seemed to try to shift towards a more normal car.
  - eli 3y ago
    I agree that a car is on a different scale, but I think it's only in hindsight that a phone is obviously just a computer and that the user interface is important part.
    - mtlmtlmtlmtl 3y ago
      Do you really not see how a car is a much greater departure from their core expertise than the iphone? They were already making handheld electronic devices well before the iPhone. And they were making computers pretty much for the whole history of the company. Ipod touch was a natural evolution of the ipod and the iphone was basically just an incremental improvement on the ipod touch. The closest thing they've made to a car is those wheels for the mac pro.
      - _aavaa_ 3y ago
        The Mac Pro comment is an unfair comparison. It's closer to a car on cinder blocks since the wheels cost extra.
      - fabioborellini 3y ago
        iPhone predates iPod touch, though.
- scarface_74 3y ago
  Rumors of Apple making an “iPhone” were rampant and always seen as the next step from making the iPod.
- kazinator 3y ago
  Phones are just networked computers though.
- xorcist 3y ago
  A connected PDA was always a thing. Palm/3Com made phones. HP/Compaq made iPaq phones. Sharp made their Zaurus. The were OEM phones you could get branded. The Qt guys had their Trolltech phone. Everyone wanted to see what phone software developed by an actual computer company who knew software would look like. Everyone and their brother wanted to see what an iPod phone would look like. The Apple phone was perhaps the most anticipated device in years. What surprised people wasn't that they released one, it was that they went all in on a capacitive touch screen, which was novel tech, and that it didn't have real mobile data or native apps. There was this long song and dance about how apps were to be replaced by web pages but people were still skeptical.
  - type0 3y ago
    > There was this long song and dance about how apps were to be replaced by web pages Yeah and the first iPhones were terrible if you didn't jailbreak them
    - stephen_g 3y ago
      Terrible compared to what? At the time, mobile applications were universally pretty crap. Browsers were atrocious, not being able to render real CSS or anything (they’d give you a simplified broken layout). I didn’t have the first iPhones (my first was the iPhone 4) but I had a first generation iPod Touch, and Safari felt pretty magical at the time compared to anything else on the market. The capacitive screen, multitouch, being able to decently render pages - lots of stuff we totally take for granted now… The App Store became publicly available just one year after the original iPhone was released too - people seem to make out as if Apple held on for years and years but the SDK was announced less than six months after the iPhone’s release and was made available to developers a couple of months later.
      - vel0city 3y ago
        Opera Mobile would render pages with heavy CSS (for the time) pretty accurately. Even with Pocket IE, a lot of pages did render pretty decently. I was able to browse and post on phpBB boards and what not with it. The browser built-in on the various Symbian devices I owned were also pretty decent. They were built on WebKit, supported real CSS, working JavaScript support, and more. When you're talking about browsers on mobiles, are you talking just WAP browsers on dumbphones or actual smartphones?
- type0 3y ago
  No, that's like comparing apples and oranges
- iancmceachern 3y ago
  Yeah but a cell phone and a computer are close cousins. A car and a cell phone, or anything Apple has yet made, are wildly different. They may as well have had a battle tank program, or started making airplanes. Those things have screens and "infotainment systems" too.
  - heartbreak 3y ago
    > Yeah but a cell phone and a computer are close cousins. Were they really close cousins in 2006?
    - vel0city 3y ago
      Before 2006 my phone was already my portable media player, my internet modem on the go, a quick web browser, my portable email machine, my internet instant messenger client, a mapping tool, and more. By 2007 I was even using it for video calls.
    - int_19h 3y ago
      In 2006, yes. J2ME apps were already fairly broadly supported by feature phones and somewhat popular.
    - iancmceachern 3y ago
      Yes. Anything that has machined and injection molded housings, a screen, pcbas and software/firmware. Basically all consumer electronics are cousins in this context. Time doesn't matter here, industry verticals do. Cars are wildly different, 50 years ago GE would have seemed like the one that would make a phone, not ford.
jitl 3y ago
I’m interested about the Sony/Honda joint venture car (Afeela), and I’d buy an Apple/Toyota joint venture car in a heartbeat.
- MBCook 3y ago
  I’d be far more willing to buy a partnership as reasonable, but that didn’t seem to be the plan. At most they’d find someone to act like Foxcon and built it, but not a real partnership. And I just doubt any existing manufacturer would want to partner with Apple to the level they’d want.
  - xp84 3y ago
    > doubt any existing manufacturer would want to partner with Apple to the level they’d want. It’s increasingly obvious that Apple has ensured by their cutthroat and rent-seeking behavior in the one place they have market power (the App Store) that no sane business wants to partner with them on anything. Everyone knows Apple will leverage any partnership to get a firm foothold and then extract as close to 100% of the possible margins for Apple, leaving them with crumbs, or possibly just losses. And the whole time, Apple’s corporate personality seems to genuinely believe that all of this is not ruthlessness, but just Apple being fairly compensated for their great work. By the way, this doesn’t make them bad, lots of companies are known for margin extraction, like Walmart famously did with its suppliers. Apple are very good at Doing Capitalism in this way, but competitors are rightly going to defend themselves by ruling out anything that could help Apple expand further.
    - MBCook 3y ago
      Even if you ignore the App Store, Apple’s ethos is to control their own destiny. That means they try to bring everything in house or control it with an iron fist. And they have more money than god. So if you parter with them, they will learn from you. And you’ll get “the Apple bump” if the car is successful. But don’t expect to be partners in 10 years. Expect to be competitors or a new division.
AeroNotix 3y ago
[flagged]
- dang 3y ago
  Could you please stop posting unsubstantive comments and flamebait? You've unfortunately been doing it repeatedly. It's not what this site is for, and destroys what it is for. If you wouldn't mind reviewing https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html and taking the intended spirit of the site more to heart, we'd be grateful.
ponector 3y ago
From the other side, phone and home electronics producer Xiaomi invested few billions into car business and now is producing car similar to Porsche. Why you think Apple can't do the same if focused?
- MBCook 3y ago
  I was under the impression that Xiaomi did not target only the top end of the market as Apple tends to. I would expect an Apple card to start at $120k or more. I suppose Apple could go after the Corolla or something if they really wanted to but that just doesn’t seem like an Apple move to me.
  - ponector 3y ago
    Apple does not target only top end. New Iphone starts from under 500$.
    - MBCook 3y ago
      Do you really think Apple would come out with a $25k car? They convinced everyone to increase what they’d pay for a phone. , and to be fair a smartphone is for more capable so that’s understandable. But they would make a luxury level car and I don’t think they’d convince much of the public it would be worth the premium. Even if everyone wanted it I doubt many would buy.
      - prawn 3y ago
        They might come out with a car that is quite expensive, but within reach of a fleet purchaser who can use it to create a turnkey Uber? /halfbakery
- sitkack 3y ago
  Xiaomi is better at being the New Apple than Apple is. Apple should be selling micro transportation appliances that fit into a higher urbanized environment. Extremely small cars would be the largest thing I would rent.
closewith 3y ago
Car manufacturers must be coming around on CarPlay. I made a purchasing decision largely because one of the car suitable cars supported wireless CarPlay.
- mrcarruthers 3y ago
  You'd think so... GM has stated that they're doing away with CarPlay and Android auto in favour of their own thing, which will most likely suck on large ways. Ford, on the other hand, came out and said that they lost that battle 10 years ago and are going to keep them.
  - Tostino 3y ago
    Which rules out GM for me as an option for my next vehicle. Maybe they can make up the lost sales by data mining the rest of their customers.
  - DinaCoder99 3y ago
    GM is hardly a car brand that knows what consumers give a shit about, this is just enshitification to squeeze their remaining customers.
    - itsoktocry 3y ago
      Their trucks still sell massively and the Blackwing Cadillacs are both on many 10-best lists.
      - DinaCoder99 3y ago
        Ok? That doesn't contradict anything I said.
        vel0city 3y ago
        > GM is hardly a car brand that knows what consumers give a shit about > Their trucks still sell massively If they didn't know what people wanted, they probably wouldn't be able to sell a massive amount of them.
jejeyyy77 3y ago
yep, Tesla has won the war.
jcfrei 3y ago
Don't have a source ready but if I remember correctly they never planned to build the car themselves. There are plenty of contract manufacturers out there that build for a variety of brands (Magna Steyr in Austria is a typical example). Then Apple adds it's custom electronics and AI driving assistants and voila you got an iCar.
- MBCook 3y ago
  I believe you’re right, but I thought the plan was to design it all themselves as opposed to buying/licensing an existing platform as skinning it + their electronics. But then again they’ve changed things so many times according to the rumors maybe both were true at various times.
- Miserlou57 3y ago
  That’s true; and I think even more recently they were in talks with Kia, who publicly let the cat out of the bag
DinaCoder99 3y ago
> I can’t see them ever competing even with the small makers like Jaguar or Polestar or Lamborghini. None of these are practical luxury car brands. Certainly their competitors would be, say, BMW or Porsche?
- MBCook 3y ago
  I was trying to pick brands that we’re both expensive and low volume. If I don’t think Apple could get the sales of some of those makers then I definitely don’t think they could target numbers like BMW. Lamborghini may be a little small for that list, I don’t really know. But I would think they would stay pretty boutique due to output size.
ActorNightly 3y ago
There are generally 3types of car buyers today. 1. People who are into cars as status items (which encompasses car enthusiasts, because lets be real, very few of those people who are into "performance" even touch 50% of the cars capability on public roads). This is your BMW/Porsche and other buyers. 2. People who want cheap modes of transportation. This is your cheapest level sedan buyers. 3. People who want specific utility and are willing to pay for it. This is the largest group of buyers that ranges from people wanting the convenience/novelty/technology of an electric vehicle, to people who want the safety/robustness/cargo capacity of a pickup truck. Apple car would definitely fit in here.
- theluketaylor 3y ago
  Your categories are largely correct, but #1 is way bigger than you think and not just about performance (unless it's the performance of being seen owning the car). For example, most pickup trucks are status symbols and lifestyle choices, not purely for function. If they were purely for function most of them would be transit vans. Apple car would have absolutely been a pickup truck-like status symbol for highly urban people.
- freeone3000 3y ago
  Apple cars would aim more for the (1) bracket than the (3). Apple products are status items. Same particular utility can be had much cheaper.
  - ActorNightly 3y ago
    In order to be in 1, Apple car has to be a complete package with performance as well. While Apple can build an electric car, you can't outsource design of something that feels sporty.
  - dublinben 3y ago
    How can Apple products be status items when over 60% of smartphones in the US are iPhones? Is Coca-Cola a status item? Is it possible that they're just good products that deliver good value to the majority of people who buy them? Is a $1300 Galaxy S24 Ultra not a status item?
MetaWhirledPeas 3y ago
> I 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. Why were you puzzled? What is so impossible about making a car from scratch, then making money on it? I don't own any Apple products, but I know they could do it. Yes it's difficult, but a lot of the difficulty comes from a lack of resources, not something Apple is worried about. I find it really interesting that you (and those who did not contradict you) choose to form this opinion. I suspect Apple shares it. But to me it's a missed opportunity combined with a self-fulfilling prophecy. It's probably the lack of this very characteristic that makes Elon so successful. He never lets FUD get in the way of his goals. There are some companies out there who don't seem subject to these artificial limitations, at least, at certain points in their history. For a while Mitsubishi made both cars and televisions. Panasonic made both batteries and bicycles. I think what really separates winners from losers when it comes to developing a product and selling it is the willingness to set aside artificial limitations and really commit to beating the competition. Core competencies matter more for companies who are no longer interested in growing. Apple definitely wants to keep growing. So if Apple really was putting R&D money into cars and then quit, then I see this as a failure of Apple leadership. Apple can make a great car, and people would buy it.
- HeyLaughingBoy 3y ago
  Because just being able to do it isn't the point. The real question is whether or not it's a good use of the cash they have available. OP is saying that it doesn't make good business sense for Apple to do this, not that it's impossible for them to pull it off.
  - MetaWhirledPeas 3y ago
    I can't help but think of Sears and all their decisions that probably made "good business sense".
  - MBCook 3y ago
    Right. If Apple spent a total of $10B on this, did they get the best ROI they could have? If they went through and released a car, would it be profitable enough for all those costs? Or would spending all that money on insourcing some manufacturing or getting more manufacturing out of China pay off more? Tim Cook is a finance guy, not a “what the hell we’ve got money to burn” leader.
hn_throwaway_99 3y ago
> I can’t see them ever competing even with the small makers like Jaguar or Polestar or Lamborghini. Jaguar is owned by Tata motors, Polestar is a Volvo subsidiary, Lamborghini's ownership is Audi -> Volkswagen, so not really small makers in any sense. But generally I agree, I think Apple making the full car is an odd choice. I think so much of their DNA, though, is "hardware and software working in concert together", and that's probably what they thought this was a good idea to begin with.
- wrs 3y ago
  And Volvo is a Geely subsidiary.
Fricken 3y ago
The comments here are all so off-base. People who work on cars don't get moved to gen-AI. People who work on robocars get moved to gen-AI.
- rezonant 3y ago
  All we have on what this car was supposed to be was rumors, but the rumors seemed pretty consistent, that this was going to be a self driving car. I do agree that there's a huge amount of specialization for cars that doesn't overlap with gen AI in any meaningful way.
  - Fricken 3y ago
    It's no rumour that Apple was developing vehicle autonomy. Their test vehicles were driving around Cupertino for years.
- jojobas 3y ago
  The "car" part would have been subcontracted and must have been seen as inconsequential as say phone screen suppliers. I'd speculate there were some hard realizations in both the car part and the robot part.
coldtea 3y ago
>I 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. That was what people saying about them getting in music players, phones, and smart watches. The average car is crap compared to what it could be - and that's without any self-driving involved either: purely the basic car functionality has seen little thought UX and convenience wise in 50+ years.
- ClumsyPilot 3y ago
  > That was what people saying about them getting in music players, phones, and smart watches. Nobody was saying that about music players and smart watches.
  - MBCook 3y ago
    When Apple got into music players no one cared because they were waiting for the company to die. When Apple got into watches there were lots of rumors they were for years first, and it made sense as an extension to the iPhone. Remember the Pebble already showed the basic idea could be useful.
  - coldtea 3y ago
    >Nobody was saying that about music players and smart watches Those things were said for both music players and smart watches, by pundits and competitors alike. E.g. re the Apple Watch, here's a Forbes summary: "In 2015, the year the Apple Watch was launched, LVMH watch division president and Tag Heuer CEO Jean-Claude Biver said the Swiss industry was not afraid of Apple’s new product, because it could not be repaired in a thousand years or eighty years, nor inherited by children, nor would it ever become a status symbol. As is always the case when disruption occurs in an industry, traditional competitors are not able to see the threat, and continue to try to analyze it according to the variables that were important yesterday."
insane_dreamer 3y ago
I'm more surprised they haven't bought a smallish car maker with proven automotive engineering experience that is already making EVs and then focus on the software and self-driving aspects. Polestar would have been a nice fit and Apple could easily afford it.
- moberley 3y ago
  As a subsidiary of Geely it seems unlikely Polestar would be available, but perhaps one of the US-based EV startups like Rivian, Lucid or Fisker would be interested. I am not sure how that would work with the Apple brand though.
JKCalhoun 3y ago
Yeah, so glad they're ditching the car. CarPlay? Cool. Actual car? The world doesn't need another tony, luxury car. The world needs an affordable (preferably electric) "folks" car (and I don't see that as Apple's market).
hx833001 3y ago
Any of the car companies are more likely to give Apple business after this announcement that they’re not competing.
gscott 3y ago
To develop patents to license and further develop CarPlay maybe. If they hit it big with the right patent they could become the Qualcomm of the carspace.
kken 3y ago
> not going to take on Ford or Mazda or Honda. Very odd, why would you mention these? These brands neither have the brand recognition Apple would strive for nor the scale they are interested in.
creer 3y ago
If anyone could have created a new category for cars. And NOT gone head on against others. It would of course be Apple. What is possible is that after spending enough effort on the project, they couldn't see what that new category could be. And that just making one more (like one more monitor perhaps) had not enough margin to bother.

by MBCook 3y ago

eli 3y ago

To 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 ago
The 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.
ylee 3y ago
>To 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 Not true. I helped cover Apple for a large investment bank before and after iPhone's launch. If anything, Apple was the one company that had the technology and market credibility to immediately make a splash in the market despite being totally foreign to it. >and that US carriers would never give them enough control. We did think that there was a real possibility of Apple launching its phone in conjunction with an MVNO. But this was again out of belief that Apple had the credibility to immediately have millions of customers switch to it as their carrier, not because Apple—of all companies—could not get what it wanted from carriers.
MBCook 3y ago
The phone made sense to me because by that point Apple had clearly proven themselves as a consumer electronics company. It’s wasn’t as big a jump and cell phone software was largely junk. The carrier thing was true, but they could have launched outside the US. Instead they found a carrier desperate enough. But they’ve never done safety critical stuff like a car. Of highly mechanical stuff like a car. Or things that need something of a dealer network the way a car does (existing Apple stores wouldn’t cut it). And really I’m not sure how much they could add a special “Apple touch” outside infotainment/interior controls compared to luxury automakers. If they a fully self driving car by 2018 and beat everyone by 7 years maybe. But as time went on it went from little to almost no sense. I enjoyed following it for that reason. But I never thought it would happen.
- theturtletalks 3y ago
  Apple is still waiting it out until most of the existing EV issues are resolved. Then, they can swoop in and leverage their walled garden to get buyers/users. They'll also be different than Ford, Mazda, Honda, etc since I don't think they will try to sell their cars. It'll be a subscription fee and Apple will own the car. All this news tells me is that Apple is putting EV in the back burner since users are still not convinced about EVs in the long-term. AI is here to stay so it makes sense pivoting the team to that. Hell, the AI might make it into their cars for all we know.
  - MBCook 3y ago
    What does Apple‘s walled garden have to do with buying a car? I’m so tired of people claiming apples walled garden gives them magic abilities. It has nothing to do with this. Do you really think people are going to pay an extra $30,000 for a car because it works with the iPhone? I have an iPhone. I love Apple stuff. I’m not paying any premium for an Apple car, they have to convince me it’s worth it over the competition.
    - theturtletalks 3y ago
      What does Apple‘s walled garden have to do with bluetooth headphones? Now, look at AirPods, simple bluetooth headphones, with tight integration with iOS. I was the one ridiculing Apple for even entering this market and I thought they looked dumb. Sony XMs looked way better. Now headphones are a sizable market for Apple. So many of my friends are awaiting the refreshed AirPods Max. The same people that said they would never buy AirPods when they launched.
dkjaudyeqooe 3y ago
Not really the point. Apple succeeded because they applied their strengths, product and user interface design, to what is essentially a small computer. Apple have always developed core products that are essentially a computer. Even though cars increasingly look like laptops on wheels, the actual computer bit is relatively minor and the user interface is mostly the wheel and pedals, not so much the screen.
- MBCook 3y ago
  I think that’s why they were a bit more interested when the original idea was to skip all that and do all automatic driving. But as soon as it became clear that wasn’t going to be an option I don’t understand why they didn’t just give up and instead seemed to try to shift towards a more normal car.
- eli 3y ago
  I agree that a car is on a different scale, but I think it's only in hindsight that a phone is obviously just a computer and that the user interface is important part.
  - mtlmtlmtlmtl 3y ago
    Do you really not see how a car is a much greater departure from their core expertise than the iphone? They were already making handheld electronic devices well before the iPhone. And they were making computers pretty much for the whole history of the company. Ipod touch was a natural evolution of the ipod and the iphone was basically just an incremental improvement on the ipod touch. The closest thing they've made to a car is those wheels for the mac pro.
    - _aavaa_ 3y ago
      The Mac Pro comment is an unfair comparison. It's closer to a car on cinder blocks since the wheels cost extra.
    - fabioborellini 3y ago
      iPhone predates iPod touch, though.
scarface_74 3y ago
Rumors of Apple making an “iPhone” were rampant and always seen as the next step from making the iPod.
kazinator 3y ago
Phones are just networked computers though.
xorcist 3y ago
A connected PDA was always a thing. Palm/3Com made phones. HP/Compaq made iPaq phones. Sharp made their Zaurus. The were OEM phones you could get branded. The Qt guys had their Trolltech phone. Everyone wanted to see what phone software developed by an actual computer company who knew software would look like. Everyone and their brother wanted to see what an iPod phone would look like. The Apple phone was perhaps the most anticipated device in years. What surprised people wasn't that they released one, it was that they went all in on a capacitive touch screen, which was novel tech, and that it didn't have real mobile data or native apps. There was this long song and dance about how apps were to be replaced by web pages but people were still skeptical.
- type0 3y ago
  > There was this long song and dance about how apps were to be replaced by web pages Yeah and the first iPhones were terrible if you didn't jailbreak them
  - stephen_g 3y ago
    Terrible compared to what? At the time, mobile applications were universally pretty crap. Browsers were atrocious, not being able to render real CSS or anything (they’d give you a simplified broken layout). I didn’t have the first iPhones (my first was the iPhone 4) but I had a first generation iPod Touch, and Safari felt pretty magical at the time compared to anything else on the market. The capacitive screen, multitouch, being able to decently render pages - lots of stuff we totally take for granted now… The App Store became publicly available just one year after the original iPhone was released too - people seem to make out as if Apple held on for years and years but the SDK was announced less than six months after the iPhone’s release and was made available to developers a couple of months later.
    - vel0city 3y ago
      Opera Mobile would render pages with heavy CSS (for the time) pretty accurately. Even with Pocket IE, a lot of pages did render pretty decently. I was able to browse and post on phpBB boards and what not with it. The browser built-in on the various Symbian devices I owned were also pretty decent. They were built on WebKit, supported real CSS, working JavaScript support, and more. When you're talking about browsers on mobiles, are you talking just WAP browsers on dumbphones or actual smartphones?
type0 3y ago
No, that's like comparing apples and oranges
iancmceachern 3y ago
Yeah but a cell phone and a computer are close cousins. A car and a cell phone, or anything Apple has yet made, are wildly different. They may as well have had a battle tank program, or started making airplanes. Those things have screens and "infotainment systems" too.
- heartbreak 3y ago
  > Yeah but a cell phone and a computer are close cousins. Were they really close cousins in 2006?
  - vel0city 3y ago
    Before 2006 my phone was already my portable media player, my internet modem on the go, a quick web browser, my portable email machine, my internet instant messenger client, a mapping tool, and more. By 2007 I was even using it for video calls.
  - int_19h 3y ago
    In 2006, yes. J2ME apps were already fairly broadly supported by feature phones and somewhat popular.
  - iancmceachern 3y ago
    Yes. Anything that has machined and injection molded housings, a screen, pcbas and software/firmware. Basically all consumer electronics are cousins in this context. Time doesn't matter here, industry verticals do. Cars are wildly different, 50 years ago GE would have seemed like the one that would make a phone, not ford.

jitl 3y ago

I’m interested about the Sony/Honda joint venture car (Afeela), and I’d buy an Apple/Toyota joint venture car in a heartbeat.

MBCook 3y ago
I’d be far more willing to buy a partnership as reasonable, but that didn’t seem to be the plan. At most they’d find someone to act like Foxcon and built it, but not a real partnership. And I just doubt any existing manufacturer would want to partner with Apple to the level they’d want.
- xp84 3y ago
  > doubt any existing manufacturer would want to partner with Apple to the level they’d want. It’s increasingly obvious that Apple has ensured by their cutthroat and rent-seeking behavior in the one place they have market power (the App Store) that no sane business wants to partner with them on anything. Everyone knows Apple will leverage any partnership to get a firm foothold and then extract as close to 100% of the possible margins for Apple, leaving them with crumbs, or possibly just losses. And the whole time, Apple’s corporate personality seems to genuinely believe that all of this is not ruthlessness, but just Apple being fairly compensated for their great work. By the way, this doesn’t make them bad, lots of companies are known for margin extraction, like Walmart famously did with its suppliers. Apple are very good at Doing Capitalism in this way, but competitors are rightly going to defend themselves by ruling out anything that could help Apple expand further.
  - MBCook 3y ago
    Even if you ignore the App Store, Apple’s ethos is to control their own destiny. That means they try to bring everything in house or control it with an iron fist. And they have more money than god. So if you parter with them, they will learn from you. And you’ll get “the Apple bump” if the car is successful. But don’t expect to be partners in 10 years. Expect to be competitors or a new division.

AeroNotix 3y ago

[flagged]

dang 3y ago
Could you please stop posting unsubstantive comments and flamebait? You've unfortunately been doing it repeatedly. It's not what this site is for, and destroys what it is for. If you wouldn't mind reviewing https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html and taking the intended spirit of the site more to heart, we'd be grateful.

ponector 3y ago

From the other side, phone and home electronics producer Xiaomi invested few billions into car business and now is producing car similar to Porsche. Why you think Apple can't do the same if focused?

MBCook 3y ago
I was under the impression that Xiaomi did not target only the top end of the market as Apple tends to. I would expect an Apple card to start at $120k or more. I suppose Apple could go after the Corolla or something if they really wanted to but that just doesn’t seem like an Apple move to me.
- ponector 3y ago
  Apple does not target only top end. New Iphone starts from under 500$.
  - MBCook 3y ago
    Do you really think Apple would come out with a $25k car? They convinced everyone to increase what they’d pay for a phone. , and to be fair a smartphone is for more capable so that’s understandable. But they would make a luxury level car and I don’t think they’d convince much of the public it would be worth the premium. Even if everyone wanted it I doubt many would buy.
    - prawn 3y ago
      They might come out with a car that is quite expensive, but within reach of a fleet purchaser who can use it to create a turnkey Uber? /halfbakery
sitkack 3y ago
Xiaomi is better at being the New Apple than Apple is. Apple should be selling micro transportation appliances that fit into a higher urbanized environment. Extremely small cars would be the largest thing I would rent.

closewith 3y ago

Car manufacturers must be coming around on CarPlay. I made a purchasing decision largely because one of the car suitable cars supported wireless CarPlay.

mrcarruthers 3y ago
You'd think so... GM has stated that they're doing away with CarPlay and Android auto in favour of their own thing, which will most likely suck on large ways. Ford, on the other hand, came out and said that they lost that battle 10 years ago and are going to keep them.
- Tostino 3y ago
  Which rules out GM for me as an option for my next vehicle. Maybe they can make up the lost sales by data mining the rest of their customers.
- DinaCoder99 3y ago
  GM is hardly a car brand that knows what consumers give a shit about, this is just enshitification to squeeze their remaining customers.
  - itsoktocry 3y ago
    Their trucks still sell massively and the Blackwing Cadillacs are both on many 10-best lists.
    - DinaCoder99 3y ago
      Ok? That doesn't contradict anything I said.
      - vel0city 3y ago
        > GM is hardly a car brand that knows what consumers give a shit about > Their trucks still sell massively If they didn't know what people wanted, they probably wouldn't be able to sell a massive amount of them.

jejeyyy77 3y ago

yep, Tesla has won the war.

jcfrei 3y ago

Don't have a source ready but if I remember correctly they never planned to build the car themselves. There are plenty of contract manufacturers out there that build for a variety of brands (Magna Steyr in Austria is a typical example). Then Apple adds it's custom electronics and AI driving assistants and voila you got an iCar.

MBCook 3y ago
I believe you’re right, but I thought the plan was to design it all themselves as opposed to buying/licensing an existing platform as skinning it + their electronics. But then again they’ve changed things so many times according to the rumors maybe both were true at various times.
Miserlou57 3y ago
That’s true; and I think even more recently they were in talks with Kia, who publicly let the cat out of the bag

DinaCoder99 3y ago

> I can’t see them ever competing even with the small makers like Jaguar or Polestar or Lamborghini. None of these are practical luxury car brands. Certainly their competitors would be, say, BMW or Porsche?

MBCook 3y ago
I was trying to pick brands that we’re both expensive and low volume. If I don’t think Apple could get the sales of some of those makers then I definitely don’t think they could target numbers like BMW. Lamborghini may be a little small for that list, I don’t really know. But I would think they would stay pretty boutique due to output size.

ActorNightly 3y ago

There are generally 3types of car buyers today. 1. People who are into cars as status items (which encompasses car enthusiasts, because lets be real, very few of those people who are into "performance" even touch 50% of the cars capability on public roads). This is your BMW/Porsche and other buyers. 2. People who want cheap modes of transportation. This is your cheapest level sedan buyers. 3. People who want specific utility and are willing to pay for it. This is the largest group of buyers that ranges from people wanting the convenience/novelty/technology of an electric vehicle, to people who want the safety/robustness/cargo capacity of a pickup truck. Apple car would definitely fit in here.

theluketaylor 3y ago
Your categories are largely correct, but #1 is way bigger than you think and not just about performance (unless it's the performance of being seen owning the car). For example, most pickup trucks are status symbols and lifestyle choices, not purely for function. If they were purely for function most of them would be transit vans. Apple car would have absolutely been a pickup truck-like status symbol for highly urban people.
freeone3000 3y ago
Apple cars would aim more for the (1) bracket than the (3). Apple products are status items. Same particular utility can be had much cheaper.
- ActorNightly 3y ago
  In order to be in 1, Apple car has to be a complete package with performance as well. While Apple can build an electric car, you can't outsource design of something that feels sporty.
- dublinben 3y ago
  How can Apple products be status items when over 60% of smartphones in the US are iPhones? Is Coca-Cola a status item? Is it possible that they're just good products that deliver good value to the majority of people who buy them? Is a $1300 Galaxy S24 Ultra not a status item?

MetaWhirledPeas 3y ago

> I 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. Why were you puzzled? What is so impossible about making a car from scratch, then making money on it? I don't own any Apple products, but I know they could do it. Yes it's difficult, but a lot of the difficulty comes from a lack of resources, not something Apple is worried about. I find it really interesting that you (and those who did not contradict you) choose to form this opinion. I suspect Apple shares it. But to me it's a missed opportunity combined with a self-fulfilling prophecy. It's probably the lack of this very characteristic that makes Elon so successful. He never lets FUD get in the way of his goals. There are some companies out there who don't seem subject to these artificial limitations, at least, at certain points in their history. For a while Mitsubishi made both cars and televisions. Panasonic made both batteries and bicycles. I think what really separates winners from losers when it comes to developing a product and selling it is the willingness to set aside artificial limitations and really commit to beating the competition. Core competencies matter more for companies who are no longer interested in growing. Apple definitely wants to keep growing. So if Apple really was putting R&D money into cars and then quit, then I see this as a failure of Apple leadership. Apple can make a great car, and people would buy it.

HeyLaughingBoy 3y ago
Because just being able to do it isn't the point. The real question is whether or not it's a good use of the cash they have available. OP is saying that it doesn't make good business sense for Apple to do this, not that it's impossible for them to pull it off.
- MetaWhirledPeas 3y ago
  I can't help but think of Sears and all their decisions that probably made "good business sense".
- MBCook 3y ago
  Right. If Apple spent a total of $10B on this, did they get the best ROI they could have? If they went through and released a car, would it be profitable enough for all those costs? Or would spending all that money on insourcing some manufacturing or getting more manufacturing out of China pay off more? Tim Cook is a finance guy, not a “what the hell we’ve got money to burn” leader.

hn_throwaway_99 3y ago

> I can’t see them ever competing even with the small makers like Jaguar or Polestar or Lamborghini. Jaguar is owned by Tata motors, Polestar is a Volvo subsidiary, Lamborghini's ownership is Audi -> Volkswagen, so not really small makers in any sense. But generally I agree, I think Apple making the full car is an odd choice. I think so much of their DNA, though, is "hardware and software working in concert together", and that's probably what they thought this was a good idea to begin with.

wrs 3y ago
And Volvo is a Geely subsidiary.

Fricken 3y ago

The comments here are all so off-base. People who work on cars don't get moved to gen-AI. People who work on robocars get moved to gen-AI.

rezonant 3y ago
All we have on what this car was supposed to be was rumors, but the rumors seemed pretty consistent, that this was going to be a self driving car. I do agree that there's a huge amount of specialization for cars that doesn't overlap with gen AI in any meaningful way.
- Fricken 3y ago
  It's no rumour that Apple was developing vehicle autonomy. Their test vehicles were driving around Cupertino for years.
jojobas 3y ago
The "car" part would have been subcontracted and must have been seen as inconsequential as say phone screen suppliers. I'd speculate there were some hard realizations in both the car part and the robot part.

coldtea 3y ago

>I 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. That was what people saying about them getting in music players, phones, and smart watches. The average car is crap compared to what it could be - and that's without any self-driving involved either: purely the basic car functionality has seen little thought UX and convenience wise in 50+ years.

ClumsyPilot 3y ago
> That was what people saying about them getting in music players, phones, and smart watches. Nobody was saying that about music players and smart watches.
- MBCook 3y ago
  When Apple got into music players no one cared because they were waiting for the company to die. When Apple got into watches there were lots of rumors they were for years first, and it made sense as an extension to the iPhone. Remember the Pebble already showed the basic idea could be useful.
- coldtea 3y ago
  >Nobody was saying that about music players and smart watches Those things were said for both music players and smart watches, by pundits and competitors alike. E.g. re the Apple Watch, here's a Forbes summary: "In 2015, the year the Apple Watch was launched, LVMH watch division president and Tag Heuer CEO Jean-Claude Biver said the Swiss industry was not afraid of Apple’s new product, because it could not be repaired in a thousand years or eighty years, nor inherited by children, nor would it ever become a status symbol. As is always the case when disruption occurs in an industry, traditional competitors are not able to see the threat, and continue to try to analyze it according to the variables that were important yesterday."

insane_dreamer 3y ago

I'm more surprised they haven't bought a smallish car maker with proven automotive engineering experience that is already making EVs and then focus on the software and self-driving aspects. Polestar would have been a nice fit and Apple could easily afford it.

moberley 3y ago
As a subsidiary of Geely it seems unlikely Polestar would be available, but perhaps one of the US-based EV startups like Rivian, Lucid or Fisker would be interested. I am not sure how that would work with the Apple brand though.

JKCalhoun 3y ago

Yeah, so glad they're ditching the car. CarPlay? Cool. Actual car? The world doesn't need another tony, luxury car. The world needs an affordable (preferably electric) "folks" car (and I don't see that as Apple's market).

hx833001 3y ago

Any of the car companies are more likely to give Apple business after this announcement that they’re not competing.

gscott 3y ago

To develop patents to license and further develop CarPlay maybe. If they hit it big with the right patent they could become the Qualcomm of the carspace.

kken 3y ago

> not going to take on Ford or Mazda or Honda. Very odd, why would you mention these? These brands neither have the brand recognition Apple would strive for nor the scale they are interested in.

creer 3y ago

If anyone could have created a new category for cars. And NOT gone head on against others. It would of course be Apple. What is possible is that after spending enough effort on the project, they couldn't see what that new category could be. And that just making one more (like one more monitor perhaps) had not enough margin to bother.