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Apple to wind down electric car effort after decadelong odyssey

bloomberg.com

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Re: Apple to wind down electric car effort after decadelong odyssey

#271

Post by lotsofpulp »

AJ007 wrote: post #180
dbbk wrote: post #114

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Apple was never going to release a product that would inevitably kill lots of people. Absolute non-starter.

Apple has the data on how many iPhones are being used by drivers, while moving, and how many are involved in accidents. It's almost like if you had a handgun that had a camera on it that knew children where on the other end of the barrel, and had the ability to not fire when the shooter pulled the trigger. Apple knowingly put a tremendous amount of senors on a device that distracts drivers. The class action lawyers h…

How would Apple know if the iPhone is being used by a driver, as opposed to a passenger?

Re: Apple to wind down electric car effort after decadelong odyssey

#272

Post by epistasis »

boznz wrote: post #246
RealityVoid wrote: post #232

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I am incredibly jealous of you guys living in a place where you just bump into random people at coffeeshops that happen to work on incredibly interesting things. The density of talent must be amazing.

And I am so happy I live in a place where this doesn't happen.

Interesting, but I can't understand why that makes you happy. What benefit does it bring you?

Re: Apple to wind down electric car effort after decadelong odyssey

#273

Post by scottyah »

acdha wrote: post #118
wredue wrote: post #104

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Apple started work on this car when vehicles were still reasonably priced. I’d wager this cancellation is purely due to there being no chance in hell Apple could get the Apple premium for it when vehicle sales are stagnating due to massive price increases.

The much-overstated “Apple premium” largely reflects that they don’t compete in the lowest end of the PC/phone market. They’d be competing with BMW, not charging even more.

If there's a spectrum where "Apple premium" is a 10, and lowest end of a market is a 1, where do you place these? https://www.apple.com/shop/product/MX572ZM/A/apple-mac-pro-w...

Re: Apple to wind down electric car effort after decadelong odyssey

#274

Post by Reubachi »

crooked-v wrote: post #172
gnicholas wrote: post #13

I 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.

There are lots and lots of rumors suggesting an LLM-driven Siri 2.0, as well as broad integration of minor LLM-driven functionality like locally creating smart playlists.

I really need to know who thought that the best, first consumer visible iteration of siri 2.0 is to "locally create smart playlists."

More impressive would be shortcut automation/smart shortcut tips IE; "Create a shortcut routine based off my device habits for week XYZ."

Is there any other examples you've heard talked about?

Re: Apple to wind down electric car effort after decadelong odyssey

#275

Post by tekla »

RealityVoid wrote: post #232
vineyardmike wrote: post #174

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Embarrassingly, I was eves dropping on a (loud) woman in a coffee shop who worked on the Apple Car project. She did SLAM work. I was evesdropping because that was a core part of my thesis and I was curious. She told her dining partner she was moved to the Vision Pro team to build the inside-out tracking. Research for the sake of research sometimes pays off. Who knows if this product will recoup the billions spent on…

I am incredibly jealous of you guys living in a place where you just bump into random people at coffeeshops that happen to work on incredibly interesting things. The density of talent must be amazing.

These people are everywhere. Most are not stupid enough to yell about it in public.

Re: Apple to wind down electric car effort after decadelong odyssey

#276

Post by samatman »

dkjaudyeqooe wrote: post #147

So 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 o…

Apple has built-in hardware for neural networks in every chip they produce.

That's a natural advantage.

Your post contains a whole lot of what you want to see, rather than an analysis of the available facts.

Re: Apple to wind down electric car effort after decadelong odyssey

#277

Post by rubyn00bie »

I 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.

Re: Apple to wind down electric car effort after decadelong odyssey

#278

Post by brailsafe »

RealityVoid wrote: post #232
vineyardmike wrote: post #174

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Embarrassingly, I was eves dropping on a (loud) woman in a coffee shop who worked on the Apple Car project. She did SLAM work. I was evesdropping because that was a core part of my thesis and I was curious. She told her dining partner she was moved to the Vision Pro team to build the inside-out tracking. Research for the sake of research sometimes pays off. Who knows if this product will recoup the billions spent on…

I am incredibly jealous of you guys living in a place where you just bump into random people at coffeeshops that happen to work on incredibly interesting things. The density of talent must be amazing.

I'd argue this is true of a lot of cities where you're likely to bump into anyone, depending on how narrow your scope is of what one considers interesting. Also true of probably most universities if they're doing anything right.

The problem with some particularly uptight places is that people aren't always open to chatting (or maybe under strict NDA), and you want to find a place on that nice area of the venn diagram where you actually do bump into and communicate with new and stimulating people.

Re: Apple to wind down electric car effort after decadelong odyssey

#279

Post by k8svet »

jcgrillo wrote: post #112
ezfe wrote: post #62

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Generative AI won't lead to AGI any time soon but it does make our computers at lot better at understanding us. Simple example: Adding something to a reminder list, but the name of your lists don't exactly match the list you said to add to. Prompt: "Add milk to my shopping list" Siri: "I didn't find a shopping list, do you want to create one?" ChatGPT (when asked to pick from my actual lists), properly identifies the…

Does a computer understanding me make it better? I find that attempts the computer makes to understand me, "delight" me, etc. just end up pissing me off. It's a tool. All I ever want a tool to do is be completely invisible and become an extension of my body, which enables me to get a task done. Computer software which does anything other than exactly what I tell it to fails at this, because it instantly breaks my con…

I love watching my friends and family use Siri. Maybe 20% of the time it does what they want first try. 40% of the time they end up unlocking the phone and tapping the screen.

Sounds infuriating to me. (To be clear, I don't have any always-(maybe)-on mics in my life, I doubt Hey Google or Bard or whatever is much better.)

Re: Apple to wind down electric car effort after decadelong odyssey

#280

Post by filmgirlcw »

onlyrealcuzzo wrote: post #65
filmgirlcw wrote: post #18

Good. 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. Especia…

If you look at the market cap of Ferrari, it's not crazy why Apple was considering this. They could maybe sell 4k cars a year and increase their market cap by $100B (~3.5%). You could potentially have some shop hand build them and not have crazy cap-ex or infrastructure. I don't think Apple was planning to take on Tesla in the mass market - that would've been a pretty strange move, I agree.

But I guess my question is, why would you bother with only making 4,000 cars a year, if you’re Apple? Especially if the initial cost of making that $100b market cap (which a solid iPhone quarter alone will net you) is more than $100b (not accounting for R&D tax rules fuckery because I’m not versed enough in how all that works and what the current rules are) on development work.

I have similar concerns about the Apple Vision Pro, given its small yields and current high ASP/muted demand, but at least there you can see the vision (pun unavoidable) of how it could eventually be an iPad-sized business or greater. A car only works if you do go after Tesla and Mercedes and BMW, etc.

I just don’t see any reason Apple would enter any business if not to take it on as a mass market player. Selling a $10,000 variant of a $500 watch is one thing (and that strategy failed, for what it’s worth), selling a low quantity machine that you still have to maintain and support that isn’t part of your core competency as a company is something else entirely.

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