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How Apple Scaled Back Its Titanic Plan to Take on Detroit

bloomberg.com

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Re: How Apple Scaled Back Its Titanic Plan to Take on Detroit

#61

Post by Fricken »

hodder wrote: post #6

As an Apple shareholder, I am thankful Apple has shelved plans to dump billions into a cyclical, low margin, low return business.

Low margin? Uber collects ~20% from the cost of every trip taken. Given the hypothetical that full autonomy is a solved problem, A premium robotaxi service could readily command Apple-grade profit margins.

The barriers to entry are insanely high, of course, and that places Apple amongst a handful of companies with the resources to clear those barriers.

Autonomous vehicle pioneers have recently amended their expectations for when autonomous car will be fully realized, claiming it will now be more than 20 years. This is a far cry from conventional expectations in the self driving car world 3 years ago, when it was assumed that one or several big industry players would be mass producing robotaxis by the mid-2020s.

Re: How Apple Scaled Back Its Titanic Plan to Take on Detroit

#62

Post by snowwrestler »

TheOtherHobbes wrote: post #19
csydas wrote: post #12

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I can name a few differences, even if I don't think it's impossible. Phones were ready for a natural complete upgrade from brick phones to smartphones. The mobile environment was there, all the network components were coming online to make it a really useful device, processors were getting to a good stage for mobile usage where it made sense to make the jump and the jump was right into what Apple already knew pretty…

Apple Car was and is a fundamentally bad idea. Limited/no cross-sale synergies with other products Massive up-front costs to establish a manufacturing network Massive up-front costs to establish a dealer and maintenance network Strong existing competition which will only get stronger with time No clear USP ("Made by Apple" is not a USP) The only way to crush the market would be to make a car that flies and to set up…

Apple is undoubtedly looking to change the car market.

If you imagine that people will buy, own, and sell cars the same way they do today, forever, then sure--an Apple car makes no sense. But it's pretty likely that the relationship between cars and people will change at some point, and that is the point at which Apple wants to be ready.

Or rather, just beyond that point--when the new direction is clear, but the early products still suck. That's when Apple likes to get into new markets.

Re: How Apple Scaled Back Its Titanic Plan to Take on Detroit

#63

Post by bitsoda »

rdlecler1 wrote: post #2

Making cars, while a hard problem, isn't as hard as making cars self driving. Seems sensible to master the second first.

Agreed, but do we even trust Apple to nail down autonomous software when Siri and anything cloud, mapping, or machine learning-related is always a few steps behind Google's offerings?

Re: How Apple Scaled Back Its Titanic Plan to Take on Detroit

#64

Post by CPLX »

Fricken wrote: post #61
hodder wrote: post #6

As an Apple shareholder, I am thankful Apple has shelved plans to dump billions into a cyclical, low margin, low return business.

Low margin? Uber collects ~20% from the cost of every trip taken. Given the hypothetical that full autonomy is a solved problem, A premium robotaxi service could readily command Apple-grade profit margins. The barriers to entry are insanely high, of course, and that places Apple amongst a handful of companies with the resources to clear those barriers. Autonomous vehicle pioneers have recently amended their expectati…

> Given the hypothetical that full autonomy is a solved problem

lol

Re: How Apple Scaled Back Its Titanic Plan to Take on Detroit

#65

Post by smelterdemon »

qeternity wrote: post #51
adamio wrote: post #47

I think Detroit and other manufactures are fearful of automation. If you ask them what the future looks like its driving assist technology. Fully automated driving kills the emotional experience that is used to sell cars.

The bigger issue is that autonomous cars make it extremely easy to massively boost utilization: driver assist still means your car sits at home, work, etc when not in use. This in turn means more cars are required by society. Autonomous cars can achieve much higher levels of utilization. This is the real reason legacy car makers don't want fully autonomous vehicles.

A car being driven all day (especially in cities, where the demand will be highest) is going to wear cars down incredibly fast. Manufacturers won't see that big of a hit if fewer people buy cars, if those people will replace it every year or two.

Re: How Apple Scaled Back Its Titanic Plan to Take on Detroit

#66

Post by ibero »

applecarcont wrote: post #42
AppleCarThrowAw wrote: post #35

Earlier quoted context omitted.

From what I've heard (and take this with a pyramid of salt because it's an anonomous internet comment) Jony Ive is essentially on a sabbatical and hasn't been seen on Apple's campus since before Summer. If I had to guess, he wants to leave Apple, but is staying on either until some unspecified product reveal or because he has to wait-out stock options or something.

He wasn't at the Fall iPhone event iirc...

he was. you can see him chatting with Stephen Fry in the background of this product shot.

http://imgur.com/a/f8lt9

Re: How Apple Scaled Back Its Titanic Plan to Take on Detroit

#67

Post by Kluny »

qeternity wrote: post #51
adamio wrote: post #47

I think Detroit and other manufactures are fearful of automation. If you ask them what the future looks like its driving assist technology. Fully automated driving kills the emotional experience that is used to sell cars.

The bigger issue is that autonomous cars make it extremely easy to massively boost utilization: driver assist still means your car sits at home, work, etc when not in use. This in turn means more cars are required by society. Autonomous cars can achieve much higher levels of utilization. This is the real reason legacy car makers don't want fully autonomous vehicles.

I don't think the incentives quite work that way. When cars can be utilized at ~90% instead of >10% as they are now, that will make them useful for people who didn't previously use cars. Senior citizens who are too old to drive themselves, people who are too scared to drive or too bad at it, families that can only afford one used car, city dwellers who don't have parking spaces, probably more.

Re: How Apple Scaled Back Its Titanic Plan to Take on Detroit

#68

Post by mrfusion »

qeternity wrote: post #51
adamio wrote: post #47

I think Detroit and other manufactures are fearful of automation. If you ask them what the future looks like its driving assist technology. Fully automated driving kills the emotional experience that is used to sell cars.

The bigger issue is that autonomous cars make it extremely easy to massively boost utilization: driver assist still means your car sits at home, work, etc when not in use. This in turn means more cars are required by society. Autonomous cars can achieve much higher levels of utilization. This is the real reason legacy car makers don't want fully autonomous vehicles.

I'm not sure though. There would be the same or more total miles driven. So they'd have to replace the cars that much faster.

Tldr: It should be a wash.

Re: How Apple Scaled Back Its Titanic Plan to Take on Detroit

#69

Post by Retric »

aetherson wrote: post #46
hiringmanager wrote: post #45

Earlier quoted context omitted.

ICE cars are more complicated than phones, but I'm not sure pure-electric cars are that much more complicated. One of the nice things about the electric car business is the the part count is a lot lower, they are basically much simpler devices, and thus should be able to be made much more cheaply. We may see a Yugo level electric car for $10,000 in a few years. This would allow for margin expansion, especially if App…

The fundamentals of electric engines aren't very complicated. Manufacturing an actual all-the-bits modern luxury electric vehicle is way, way, way more complicated than making a phone, and also hard in a very different way than making a phone. One of the things that has made me never really believe in Apple's competitive advantage with cars is that beyond an ultra-high talking points level ("design!"), I don't see an…

Apple can flat out buy a huge car company. Ford is worth 47.26B, GM 50B apple could buy both with less than 1/2 of their cash on hand.

Now buying Ford is probably not the way to go. But, Apple can skip a lot of the 'ramp up' if they ever wanted to get into the car business.

Re: How Apple Scaled Back Its Titanic Plan to Take on Detroit

#70

Post by Fricken »

mrfusion wrote: post #68
qeternity wrote: post #51

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The bigger issue is that autonomous cars make it extremely easy to massively boost utilization: driver assist still means your car sits at home, work, etc when not in use. This in turn means more cars are required by society. Autonomous cars can achieve much higher levels of utilization. This is the real reason legacy car makers don't want fully autonomous vehicles.

I'm not sure though. There would be the same or more total miles driven. So they'd have to replace the cars that much faster. Tldr: It should be a wash.

There's a lot of steel in today's cars that won't be needed if they're optimized for moving commuters around cities one or two at a time.
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