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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

#551

Post by pyromaker »

Was 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...

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

#552

Post by tumult »

not2b wrote: post #489
tumult wrote: post #487

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Even 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)

Electric cars make sense. Having Apple build electric cars, when they've never built anything like that before? That's far less clear.

I also agree with this.

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

#553

Post by pavon »

acaloiar wrote: post #522

> 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 work…

> "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 would expect the majority of the people on that team to be working on autonomous driving. So the software folks would be a good fit for genAI and most of the remainder would be mechanical and electronics folks working on the sensors who also have very transfer skills in a company that builds their own hardware.

From all the rumors I've heard Apple was never planning on building this car from scratch, so most those 2000 employees weren't focused on designing a car.

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

#554

Post by JKCalhoun »

evan_ wrote: post #490

If 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.

People are taking issue with your comment (by more or less excusing other car companies) but I get what you are saying.

Working in software I didn't sign up for something that people will put their lives in the hands of (awkward wording, but you know what I mean).

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

#555

Post by meowtimemania »

chucke1992 wrote: post #233
TheOtherHobbes wrote: post #185

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Apple 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 att…

The problem with Siri (and with Alexa) is that Apple was not able to provide enough value for people to make it mainstream. Alexa at least worked for home appliances but using Siri for Macbook or iPhone? Why? Not to mention Apple was not able to monetize it.

When driving I use Siri to control Spotify and to call people. At home I use google home every day to know the weather, to set alarms and to play music. I'd use Siri for those functions but it responds way slower than google home.

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

#556

Post by zemvpferreira »

fiskeben wrote: post #538
coldtea wrote: post #506

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That'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.

At least here in Norway, if a Tesla is involved in anything, the headline will make sure to mention it.

True, but still, Tesla is as popular as a car brand can be, which confirms the original sentiment.

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

#557

Post by kube-system »

ActorNightly wrote: post #222
MBCook wrote: post #19

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, bu…

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…

> 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.

I don't disagree with what you're probably trying to say here, but I disagree with how you're stating it.

First, "car enthusiast" != "performance enthusiast". There are plenty of people who like cars for reasons other than going fast, and sub-interests in the car enthusiast community that are not performance oriented.

Second, people who actually do enjoy the art of performance driving don't have to do it on the road. There are hundreds of thousands of people in the US that have driven on race tracks.

Third, there are certainly performance cars that people do take to the limits on the streets, often in violation of some traffic rules. Not every performance car is a 911 GT3. Probably a very high percentage of Miata owners have approached cornering limits on the street on cloverleafs.

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

#558

Post by JKCalhoun »

MBCook wrote: post #19

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, bu…

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).

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

#559

Post by pquki4 »

tibbar wrote: post #545
acaloiar wrote: post #522

> 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 work…

There 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…

The question is: does Apple actually need so many people working on GenAI? Would a team with 300 people be twice as good as a team with 150 people for what Apple is going to release as products? I wouldn't be surprised if Apple is going to lay off most of them.

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

#560

Post by MBCook »

borski wrote: post #516
MBCook wrote: post #59

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 n…

> The carrier thing was true, but they could have launched outside the US. Instead they found a carrier desperate enough. That’s not quite how that happened. They were turned down and laughed out of the room by nearly every carrier they approached. The only one that didn’t was AT&T; but they definitely weren’t “desperate” at the time. They had lots of leverage, which is how they got exclusivity.

Sorry I meant the carrier was desperate, not Apple. That was the case with AT&T (Cingular when the deal went down). They wanted customers so bad they were willing to give up everything for a possible hit phone.

And it worked out.

You’re right Apple was riding high on the iPod, they weren’t in any danger of going under. They could have waited longer.

I think it would have been funny if they released it in Europe or something where the carriers weren’t in control and then told Americans “call your carrier, sorry, they wouldn’t let us”. Not that that would have ever happened.

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