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Apple Scales Back Its Ambitions for a Self-Driving Car

nytimes.com

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Re: Apple Scales Back Its Ambitions for a Self-Driving Car

#51

Post by ctdonath »

hkmurakami wrote: post #21
anilshanbhag wrote: post #8

This is the right way. Building a mass market car is an enormous exercise. We have seen this with Tesla, which has thrown money at the problem and will still take 4 years to become mass market (2.5 already over + another 1.5 years). After these 4 years, its unclear what the value add will be.

Tesla has built a category from the ground up. That is a very different challenge from replicating an existing business that has gone through decades of refinement.

But isn't what Apple (at least via rumor) was planning to do - build a category from the ground up a la Tesla, even if outright buying the full capacity of a major automotive manufacturer which barely has a grasp on EVs (think Bolt, Leaf, i3, etc)? I mean the OP referenced rumors of spherical wheels and other total revamping/replacing of existing tech plus totally new tech to boot.

If anything, "replicating" (or outright purchasing) what was developed over decades is just entrenching the past. Apple succeeds as it does by practically inventing future tech and making it instant commodities (yes, they're not always first, but hit so hard and go so far they dominate first movers).

Re: Apple Scales Back Its Ambitions for a Self-Driving Car

#52

Post by erikpukinskis »

hkmurakami wrote: post #30
mypalmike wrote: post #15

If Apple were truly serious about building self-driving cars, they would buy one of the big 3 US auto manufacturers. It could buy all 3 with cash and still have one of the largest hoards of cash ever accumulated.

They wouldn't get the tech they're looking for. Manufacturing scale is not something they need until after they have the self driving tech (and also, I'd just partner with a Japanese or German automaker tbh. Toyota under the current CEO has made moves that hint that it would be open to a joint venture). The main differentiator of current big auto is the engine and drivetrain engineering, which you can circumvent when…

You're also buying huge liabilities:

- constrictive agreements with dealers

- rapidly deprecating manufacturing assets

- a workforce with sunk costs in last generation skills

- a warranty burden on old vehicles

- pensions and other union agreements

- a beloved brand that the public may not be happy seeing chewed up and regurgitated as iTaxi Supplier 4A

If you believe in an autonomous and electric near future, some of these companies should have Yahoo-style negative valuations.

Re: Apple Scales Back Its Ambitions for a Self-Driving Car

#54

Post by freehunter »

mozumder wrote: post #47
freehunter wrote: post #42

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Trains are great at moving people to train stations. Buses are great at moving people to bus stops. Cars are great at moving people to their homes and businesses. When millions of Americans live in rural or suburban areas, what do you think is easier? Extending rail and bus routes to within walking distance of every house, or convincing everyone to move to a city? The answer is neither, and that's why cars exist. Her…

And streetcars are great at moving people that last mile. Take that road in front of your office, and just put rails in it. If your local government can pay for a road in front of your house, it can pay for a streetcar. This applies to dense areas as well as rural areas. Rail lines actually cost less to maintain than roads, and they cost YOU less because you don't have to buy and pay for a car. And you don't have to…

But would a streetcar go past my house? How far do I have to walk to get from my house to a bus stop or train station? Because I own 19 acres and my nearest neighbor is three miles from my house. The nearest town is 20 minutes by car. How would public transport deal with that kind of remoteness? My office is one end of the equation, my home (and the homes of my coworkers) are the other end.

It's surprisingly common when you leave the bigger cities. 90% of the country might live in cities, but the other 10% is spread out across the other 99% of the nation.

Re: Apple Scales Back Its Ambitions for a Self-Driving Car

#55

Post by post_break »

notfried wrote: post #26
kartD wrote: post #3

"But people within the industrial design team including Jonathan Ive, Apple’s chief designer, believed that a fully driverless car would allow the company to reimagine the automobile experience, according to the five people." Ah Jony Ive, first he ruined iOS 7 and now this constant need to tinker with things that work fine. I love the hardware design but please leave the software and HID bit alone... of course YMMV P…

I think iOS usability has become and is increasingly becoming, more complicated and less easy to use. But this doesn't have anything to do with the flat design, but with the many features, buttons, and gestures being added every new release.

Having to teach my dad that buttons and settings are hidden until you tap something or swipe around has proven to me that the new UI is trying to be more clever all while being extremely confusing.

Re: Apple Scales Back Its Ambitions for a Self-Driving Car

#57

Post by scarmig »

jamestimmins wrote: post #20
slackoverflower wrote: post #11

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Is it that you don't want self driving cars to happen or you don't THINK it will happen? I, for one, am super excited for self driving personal vehicles and will be glad to see the eradication of mass public transportation like trains and buses.

There's a strong case to be made that this isn't a desirable outcome in a lot of areas. Trains and buses are much more efficient at moving people than individual cars, even if they're self-driving. I'm also extremely excited about autonomous cars, but neither desire nor think they will replace mass transit. edit: As a few people have mentioned, my suggestion that "trains are buses are much more efficient" is dubious.…

I think you overstate how much better mass transit is than self driving cars. Transportation is fundamentally about traversing a graph, and transportation infrastructure is about maximizing the value of the flows on that graph. Mass transit only makes sense when the edges become a certain weight. The vast majority of point to point connections are far too light to support mass transit. Car transit is a bit better for these P2P and near P2P connections, but still pretty mediocre, because of coordination costs.

To a significant extent the issues with mass transit can be remedied by breaking the global graph up into connected subgraphs, and each subgraph can be similarly subdivided, recursively down to the point where the form factors and utilization rates cause the economics to break down. The edges between those subgraphs is mass transit.

Autonomous technologies make both point to point and mass transit transportation much cheaper. But labor (market or not) comprises a much more of car transportation costs than mass transit costs. Eliminating that cost inherently drives a shift from mass transit to car transit. Combine that with an efficient coordination algorithm to increase car utilization rates, and it gets a significant upper hand.

Each approach will still have its place, of course.

Re: Apple Scales Back Its Ambitions for a Self-Driving Car

#58

Post by ctdonath »

plicense wrote: post #48
ctdonath wrote: post #39

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Over the decades I've noticed how businesses need to recognize and focus on their core competencies - if they don't, they die. Everything must feed that core, and undue distractions are lethal. Occasionally there's a need to pivot , which is deliberately stepping from one competency to another, but that is rare and difficult. Apple's core is to build small computers; everything else they do (music, video, cloud servi…

I definitely wouldn't call AWS, Echo from Amazon occasional. I think companies come in all shapes and sizes - some focus 90% on their core, some try to spend more time and diverge out to other business segments. Its upto Apple to figure out what to do and what would make it successful.

AWS is an offshoot of building the massive system needed to process the "we sell absolutely everything" goal. Methinks they just got so good at it, cloud services just kinda took on a life of its own and grew from there - but still feeds the retailing monster.

Echo is a consequence of exploring digital appliances as marketing tools. If you're going to build a device which can voice-interface someone ordering 6 bottles of Tide with extreme ease, doesn't take much more to turn it into a nice music speaker and tell you weather & sports & jokes on request. Echo, Fire, etc are just extensions to feeding the retailing monster.

Do notice how Amazon's innovative foray into cell phones crashed & burned hard - despite being lauded as rather a well-built device. That shows how straying too far doesn't work, and that "far" isn't very.

Re: Apple Scales Back Its Ambitions for a Self-Driving Car

#59

Post by kartD »

htormey wrote: post #16
kartD wrote: post #3

"But people within the industrial design team including Jonathan Ive, Apple’s chief designer, believed that a fully driverless car would allow the company to reimagine the automobile experience, according to the five people." Ah Jony Ive, first he ruined iOS 7 and now this constant need to tinker with things that work fine. I love the hardware design but please leave the software and HID bit alone... of course YMMV P…

What do you think he got wrong with ios7?

Well to be clear it's everything UI wise since ios7.

Links: https://www.fastcodesign.com/3053406/how-apple-is-giving-des...

https://youtu.be/RT46MpK39rQ?t=2104

TL;DR ver: -> Inconsistent UI within an app -> Gestures that are inconsistent across apps and within the same app -> No undo (I mean shake to undo doesn't count)

Re: Apple Scales Back Its Ambitions for a Self-Driving Car

#60

Post by nadim »

objclxt wrote: post #41
nadim wrote: post #34

More proof Apple is done innovating. This is literally a story about giving up, in the NYT. Can we have SJ back please?

> More proof Apple is done innovating. It's literally the opposite of that. They spent billions of dollars on R&D in a new market segment. Just because you cancel the project or decide it's a failure doesn't mean a) you didn't learn anything, b) you didn't get any tech out of it, and c) it's not innovation. You cannot be innovative if you are not prepared for your efforts to fail. If Apple was "done innovating" they…

> Billions on R&D?

Proof?

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