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Apple to wind down electric car effort after decadelong odyssey

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511–520 of 992 posts

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

#511
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…

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.

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

#512
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…

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

Car manufacturers have ISO standards for symbols/icons on controls: https://cdn.standards.iteh.ai/samples/68409/6480e873c14b4e56...

One of the pain points that CarPlay and Android Auto solve for is that any car I rent or buy has the same media controls and all of my presets. When I travel for work, I try to always pick a rental vehicle that is compatible with my phone in order to reduce cognitive load of learning a new vehicle's unique controls.

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

#513
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…

>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.

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

#514
post #476

I know somebody on the project. The cancellation makes sense, they were years from release and every new VP pivoted the project and lost progress. If they had committed to their original project (a bus) or the first revision (a very high-end car) they could have released on a timely schedule. But they're far too late to the game.

> But they're far too late to the game. Not so sure about that. You need battery and 4 x electric motors to wheels. The idea is much simpler than regular combustion engine car. Less parts that wear out. Idea is actually so simple that all the manufactures compete on putting as much nonsense into cars as possible, insted of making easily replaceable battery and car which would last 50 years and accelerate like Ferrari…

If it's so simple why don't we see regional manufacturers popping everywhere?

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

#515
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…

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.

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

#516
post #59
post #29

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

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.

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

#517

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I feel Microsoft's desperation to put LLM's into every product suggests mismanagement. Same as Microsoft's past efforts to Bing everything. Adobe seems to be the only one with an empowered product team that's consistently finding sensible and profitable uses for machine learning.

It is hilarious that people are trying to portray MSFT's moves in AI as "desperate" lol

They are oversaturating their products with internet-based LLMs. It is a desperate attempt to milk all possible potential value from their smart investment.

A careful plan for a product would be less hamfisted and include more flexibility to deal with the backlash.

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

#519
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.

I mean, Toyota, Ford, Dodge, Honda, Hondai, Tesla, the list goes on... have all had that picture already, and they seem to be doing fine?

I think it's different when the brand started out as a car company. As grim as it sounds, the public is aware and mostly unconcerned with the idea that vehicles made by the Ford Motor Company are sometimes involved in accidents that kill people.

I don't think that awareness is built in to every consumer brand.

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

#520
post #199

Earlier quoted context omitted.

A self-driving car is not something that Apple has any relevant expertise at building. They can't even make siri work well. They had zero hope to make a self-driving car.

That's far from true. They have world class expertise in design and supply chain management. That would transfer over to the car market a lot easier than it would to pretty much any other trillion dollar market.

What AI thing (I can't think of a single one) does Apple excel at?

Waymo and Baidu can credibly claim they have the people and track record to do this thing. Apple isn't anywhere close.

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