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Apple targets car production by 2024, eyes ‘next level’ battery tech: sources

reuters.com

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Re: Apple targets car production by 2024, eyes ‘next level’ battery tech: sources

#651

Post by discreteevent »

coldtea wrote: post #645
foxtr0t wrote: post #251

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Despite becoming more similar in recent years, the cell phone supply chain is still very different than the automotive supply chain. The number of parts/unit differs by an order of magnitude and so does the size and weight, not to mention manufacturing techniques and materials. These are capabilities, not so much skills, and they aren't as transferable as you may think. For instance, logistically things are very diff…

> Despite becoming more similar in recent years, the cell phone supply chain is still very different than the automotive supply chain. “We’ve learned and struggled for a few years here figuring out how to make a decent phone,” he said. “PC guys are not going to just figure this out. They’re not going to just walk in.” (Palm CEO Ed Colligan, regarding Apple’s prospects in the mobile phone market)

Apple worked with Motorola to figure out how to do it.

Re: Apple targets car production by 2024, eyes ‘next level’ battery tech: sources

#652

Post by cacarr »

j2bax wrote: post #153
marta_morena_9 wrote: post #77

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> I'm really curious what Apple's differentiators will be. Really? Why are you not curious what the differentiator of all the car companies out there is? Why don't we just have one car company? (Hint: There is so much demand, so many different tastes, budgets and features and regulation, that a single company will never serve all of them. Tesla is a niche product and I for one would never buy one) The iPhone was spec…

Perhaps Tesla is the Blackberry of the car industry, waiting for Apple to show people what they've actually been waiting for in personal transportation. :P

More likely Apple Car is going to be the Apple Maps of the car industry, for a couple decades at least.

Re: Apple targets car production by 2024, eyes ‘next level’ battery tech: sources

#653

Post by als0 »

aidenn0 wrote: post #496
als0 wrote: post #490

Earlier quoted context omitted.

ASIL D certification isn’t comparable to mobile phones.

Does any government require ASIL D yet?

Most governments require safe cars. The easiest way to show they are safe is to show how all aspects of the car adhere to IEC 61508, a widely accepted international standard. Within that there are various safety ratings that are expected. ASIL D is expected of life threatening aspects like brake controllers. Less critical parts don't need such a high rating.

Re: Apple targets car production by 2024, eyes ‘next level’ battery tech: sources

#654

Post by coldtea »

discreteevent wrote: post #651
coldtea wrote: post #645

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Despite becoming more similar in recent years, the cell phone supply chain is still very different than the automotive supply chain. “We’ve learned and struggled for a few years here figuring out how to make a decent phone,” he said. “PC guys are not going to just figure this out. They’re not going to just walk in.” (Palm CEO Ed Colligan, regarding Apple’s prospects in the mobile phone market)

Apple worked with Motorola to figure out how to do it.

I don't think so. Apple had ditched Motorola for cpus for 2 years by the time the iPhone came out.

Motorola had no clue about Apple making a phone, and Apple wasn't getting phone-making knowledge from them.

If you mean about before, their single phone collaboration with Motorola was just a 100% Motorola phone design running an Apple-provided music player part.

Motorola didn't collaborate with Apple on the design of that phone or anything, Apple didn't get any IP or copied any elements, and nor was the iPhone anything like it.

Re: Apple targets car production by 2024, eyes ‘next level’ battery tech: sources

#655

Post by vel0city »

saberience wrote: post #602
vel0city wrote: post #408

Earlier quoted context omitted.

How many windows are on an iPhone? Window motors? Window motor switches? Door panels to hold the window motor switches? Mechanical guides for the windows? The little weather striping to keep rain out from inside the doors? How many doors are there on an iPhone? Door latches? Door locks? Door handles? Door close sensors? Weather stripping to keep the rain out from inside the cabin? The little sticker inside the door l…

How many components on a car are engineered at a 5 nanometer level? Your comment is going to age like milk... For a company like Apple, making a car is child's play.

You do realize there are several SoC's in modern cars right? There's the ABS and stability systems, torque vectoring systems, lane keeping/driving automation, the infotainment system, and more. Sure they're not made to the 5nm level at the moment, but supply chain wise a 15nm part is about the same as a 5nm part when it comes to making the silicon. This is especially true when you're needing them to be more resilient temperature-wise and have other restrictions needed in the automotive space.

I drive a 2017 Santa Fe. Its a pretty basic car tech-wise compared to many others on the market these days. There's still the computerized ABS and traction control system taking samples thousands of times a second and making split second decisions on how to handle the car. There are radar sensors tracking the distance to vehicles around me, that data is being fed to computer systems for automatic cruise control and alert aids. The car features lane keeping features which is based off computer vision systems to track the lines on the road. The transmission system is computerized, being more like a computer controlled manual transmission rather than a traditional automatic. The infotainment system is obviously driven by some kind of computer and contains WiFi, LTE, Bluetooth, GNSS, satellite, AM, FM, and digital FM radio systems along with cameras and radar sensors.

I'm sure I'm forgetting some additional computerized systems on this list. So honestly there are several iPhones worth of computer systems on this list, all with more extreme hardening requirements to expect a longer deployed lifetime than an iPhone and all of which need to reliably talk to each other in some kind of fashion.

Re: Apple targets car production by 2024, eyes ‘next level’ battery tech: sources

#656

Post by jandrese »

rangoon626 wrote: post #582
jandrese wrote: post #318

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The first couple of generations of the iPod kinda sucked too. It's really hard to get everything perfect in the first generation, probably impossible. Having the agility to iterate on the design quickly so you can capitalize on the initial hype is what Apple does so well.

Did they? Not that much about the iPod changed between 2001 and 2005. A simple to use interface, large storage made it great from the start, but windows support it what made it successful.

They physical wheel was fragile and the internal HDDs weren't quite big enough for a good music library. They were also a little too big and heavy, and they used Firewire as the interface which wasn't well supported at the time (or ever) on PCs.

Re: Apple targets car production by 2024, eyes ‘next level’ battery tech: sources

#658

Post by mortenjorck »

saagarjha wrote: post #599
mortenjorck wrote: post #526

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Each of these comparisons makes sense at only the most superficial level. The automotive industry may have more in common with personal electronics than it did thirty years ago, but forced comparisons belie the unique and complex challenges in shipping a road-legal car. And yet, that massive gulf is the whole point here. Apple is treading in 95% unfamiliar waters, but the company has proven time and again this is its…

Wait, they definitely made phones and watches before. You just don't remember them ;)

Technically correct! Still, I’m not entirely sure a prototype desk phone that never shipped and a couple of promotional Think Different-branded quartz watches offered much in the way of relevant experience for getting into the smartphone and wearable markets.

Re: Apple targets car production by 2024, eyes ‘next level’ battery tech: sources

#659

Post by ska »

starfallg wrote: post #641
ska wrote: post #416

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That's not a disclaimer. That's (part of) the indications for use, which is a term of art. These are inherently narrowing statements, and they are in place to constrain what the company can market a device as, and gives the FDA a stick to beat you with if you aren't careful about this. If you follow the submission you'll also see they were granted approval to market as a de-novo filing as a class II device, so it's n…

>Even for a smallish software only project like this, it means they had to set up all the basic infrastructure and have it audited. They also wrote a ton of formal engineering process documentation, a full design history file, etc. These skills at least are pretty transferable. That's like saying English is a transferable skill. Domain knowledge is what counts here. It's the same reason medical device makers don't tr…

It doesn't mean you easily set up shop in the other domain, sure. But the two processes are much closer than never having worked in a regulated environment. Especially at a corporate level, you have a much better idea of what is involved if you have been successful in one domain.

You'd have to hire a bunch of people with domain knowledge, but you are better off than starting from scratch.

If I am hiring engineers for aerospace, I'd rather bring someone in from medical devices than no regulatory experience, all else equal. Same in the other direction. Principle extends reasonably.

I guess there are lots of reasons I'd think it would be a big jump for apple, but "they won't get their head around the regulatory requirements" isn't really one of them.

Re: Apple targets car production by 2024, eyes ‘next level’ battery tech: sources

#660

Post by TheDong »

africanboy wrote: post #619
TheDong wrote: post #291

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Safety is multi-faceted. Yes, a car that can slow down to avoid collisions is a form of safety. Seatbelts are another form. A car that does various things to avoid driver distraction is another form of safety. Just because you can think of a more immediate safety system does not make other increases to safety in some way "not practical" or "not real increases". There are many things, small and large, that go into pra…

Safety is engineered, it's not about throwing as many devices you can to a car hoping that something sticks and improve safety by chance. Safety belts work even if I am unconscious, a car that slows down works even if I am unconscious, airbags work even if I am unconscious, so they are 100% safety devices, as in "they keep me safe when everything else failed and things are already out of my control". Hands-free calls…

> So yes, small things are important, but BIG things are even more important.

Totally agree.

> Let's fix those before thinking that cars need UI/UX designers more than safety engineers.

"Let's fix big things before we even think about fixing small things". Which is silly. We can try to improve multiple things at once. We can improve easy small hanging fruit before we improve harder things. This is a false dichotomy I think.

Anyway, all tesla vehicles already have automatic emergency braking, so I don't really understand why you went on such a long rant to argue for adding that instead of voice commands. The car under discussion has both, which seems better than having just one or the other.

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