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Apple Speeds Up Electric-Car Work (wsj.com)
119 points by psawaya on Sept 21, 2015 | hide | past | favorite | 151 comments


The more I hear about Apple making a car, the more it seems inevitable.

Apple's revenue is 180 billion dollars. If they enter a new market, it has to be big. How many high margin billion dollar industries are there? The entire watch market is just around $50 billion dollars a year. If Apple wants to continue growing like it did in the past, the watch is a distraction. They need to aim for something much bigger.

Besides the financial reasons, I think it's the perfect time to break into the market. The switch to electric motors levels the playing field, giving newcomers an edge if they can move fast. But the most important part is the integration of all the systems in the car, most importantly the digital user interface. Todays cars have horrible interfaces. Manufacturers are too busy covering every possible niche with dozens of models, which makes it impossible for them to make a single great car. And even if they tried, they are too dependent on component suppliers to create a single, integrated experience of the kind Apple does.

There are two questions I wonder about:

1. How will Apple be able to make use of their experience in electronics when they move to a completely new industry?

2. What are the technical tricks Apple has up their sleeve? The iPod had hard drives and the click wheel, the iPhone had multitouch and a SoC that enabled a real browser, the watch had force sensitivity, haptic feedback, and a pulse meter. What will the car have?


"How will Apple be able to make use of their experience in electronics when they move to a completely new industry?"

Completely new industry? Who is the biggest user of lithium batteries in the world? Hint: It is a company with a fruit as a name.

They started talks for collaboration with Tesla because if Tesla creates a Megafactory they HAVE TO use it or their battery prices will be higher than Tesla's. If they can't use it, they will create their own Megafactory.

The electric motors in a electric car are incredible simple compared with internal combustion engines.

The batteries are the most expensive item in a car by far.

"What are the technical tricks Apple has up their sleeve?"

They know abut batteries, they know about recharging batteries. More free capital than any other company in the world, access to the best electronic components and battery manufacturers, very important for power electronics.

"What will the car have?" A good price. It will be expensive, like anything Apple does, but a very good price because of mass production that only Apple could afford(because they can invest billions on factories).

Think on aluminum Apple computers, they sell at $1000, other companies compete with aluminum computers with a similar price. Apple earns 30% margins or more but competition could barely survive, because Apple was the first to sell those and sell in the millions and competition in the thousands.


The broader point is a legitimate one, however Samsung is a bigger user of lithium batteries than Apple.

Samsung has 21% of the smart phone market globally. Apple is at 14%. Samsung also sells a lot of feature phones using lithium batteries.


Car interiors are full of plasticky knobs that remind me of cell phone keys from 1995-2006. I think that Apple will have a lot of fun creating a new interfaces for everything inside the car, and I think they're wise enough not to try to replace all physical controls with a gigantic touch screen, unlike Tesla.

I'm hoping that many functions won't need a UI any more, such as adjusting the mirrors: http://ieeexplore.ieee.org/xpl/login.jsp?tp=&arnumber=118796...


Well, if it’s fully autonomous as many suspect, the UI would be dramatically simplified compared to Tesla.

Passengers would only need direct access to comfort controls, media playback, and an interactive map. I wouldn’t be surprised to see just a single large touch screen on the dashboard, with Siri listening for your directions.


Tesla has physical controls on the steering wheel that access a lot of functions also available in the touch screen. HN posters who don't own Teslas often complain about the touch screen controls, while owners use the steering wheel controls.

BTW, mirror adjustment on a Tesla doesn't use the touchscreen.


You got me, I've never been in a Tesla. A quick search shows that while the Tesla S has physical controls on the steering wheel, the Tesla Model X uses touchscreen (http://www.teslamotorsclub.com/attachment.php?attachmentid=6...).


I assumed that the "gigantic touchscreen" referred to in your comment is the 17" monster on the right. The Model X hasn't shipped yet, so I don't know if that photo is the final configuration.

If it is, and by "gigantic" you meant "The small, 2 inch touchscreens on the steering wheel which might be as easy to use as physical controls", then sure, we could talk about that. Seems premature right now, when the public can't try it out.


Sorry didn't mean to start an argument. You brought up the steering wheel, that's why I looked up the controls. Seems like you're right about the Model S.


>> The switch to electric motors levels the playing field, giving newcomers an edge if they can move fast.

It doesn't exactly level it. Any new player in the auto industry will have an enormous learning curve and spend billions just to bring their first car to market (I hear Ford spends a billion to bring a brand new model to market and they're established) and get production going. The shift to electric cars may be significant enough to consider it a new industry (replacing the old) where a new entrant could become a dominant player and hold that position even as everyone else slowly migrates. I guess in that sense it is a level playing field.

I originally wondered why Apple would want to do a car until I thought about the above opportunity. That, along with the enormous amount of cash they have, go together. They need to aim really big to have a meaningful impact on the company. They could have bought Facebook, Twitter, or other startups all day long and it wouldn't have the same impact on their bottom line as becoming a dominant auto company. In fact Apple and Google DO buy small tech companies and I have yet to see one have the impact they could get from going big in electric cars (assuming those become a thing, which is not an unreasonable gamble IMHO).

>> What are the technical tricks Apple has up their sleeve?

At this point they don't need any. Make an affordable electric car and they win. If the price is right, people will buy every iCar they can produce. What apple brings to the table is money. IMHO all the other ones (except Tesla so far) have failed because they didn't have deep enough pockets to go all the way.

That said, if it is a car, why the hell do it from CA instead of MI? That's the part I don't fully understand. I have some ideas, but I've never heard an official explanation. Of course they never actually said they're making car either have they?


The apple car will happen. That doesn't mean it will work in the long term. And it doesn't mean that Apple will be a market leader. See the iWatch, AppleTV and the iMac. Not all of their products are market-changers.

Watch the car companies. If they thought the days of personal car ownership were over they would be in total panic. There is a strong Freudian association with cars ownership in north america. People are very proud of their cars. That isn't going away anytime soon.

As I have said in other threads, if everyone wants diverless cars, why is there not a single car on the market hardwired to obey speed limits? I'll believe people ready to have their steering wheels taken away when I first see them give up control of their accelerators.


With the Watch it's too early to tell, and they didn't really try on the TV until a few weeks ago. I'd say the Mac is doing pretty well :-) it remains profitable and even growing a little while competitors fight over breadcrumbs and try to post the smallest losses.

And even if the Apple Car doesn't win on market share (it probably won't), it will lead the car industry in design like the Mac does for computers: Not everyone will own an Apple Car, but everyone's cars will be better because of it.


I wouldn't be that sure about Apple's design savvy. Making a fashionable computer was relatively easy. Nobody else was even trying before Apple came along. But cars? Thousands of designers have been working for decades on that one. BMW, Ferrari, Porsche, Honda ... billions of dollars and countless careers have been spent playing with every little detail. There isn't much that hasn't been tried before.

This is what I see when someone mentions an "apple car": http://oldconceptcars.com/1930-2004/citroen-karin-concept-19...


> "Manufacturers are too busy covering every possible niche with dozens of models"

I agree. It amazes me how many models and variants there are. Look at Volkswagen, they have ~20-25 active Basemodels (Polo, Golf, Passat...) with each Basemodel having a addtional 15-20 variants. You can buy a Golf anywhere from 15k Euro to 40k Euro. But even a much smaller manufacturer such as Porsche has 9 Basemodels with nearly 200 variants.

Who _really_ needs that?

Granted, i never worked in the automobile industry, but the overhead with producing, developing and maintaining so many different models really seems insane.


Speaking of a high margin billion dollar market, I'm surprised Apple doesn't get into high speed fiber. Maybe Apple feels they are mostly product development, idk.


Last mile fiber is extremely capital intensive and not that profitable.


And attempting to make it profitable would hurt their brand. Think about how much people hate Comcast and TWC.


This seems like a weird market for Apple to be pursuing because they’re such a consumer oriented company, but it seems likely that the future of transportation will be less oriented around individual car ownership.

Additionally there’s a good argument to be made that we hit “peak car” several years ago, so consumer oriented automobiles may not be a real growth industry.

I’d seriously question any business plan that assumes that the transportation mode share of cars, especially individually owned cars, will be greater than it is now.

Maybe I’m thinking too long term here.


Not at all. By the time Apple gets any traction, this indeed may be the reality.

That being said, people will always want to travel in style, whether they own the car or not. Think black car versus beaten up taxi. Apple wants to be the luxury brand intersected with technology. Who else does that as well as they do?

Also, as per below, Apple's model of making things which can't be serviced by the owner fits the idea of no ownership.

Finally, this new business model is going to obliterate all the old car makers that can't evolve fast enough. When significant disruption vectors clearly exist that can only be leveraged by the extremely well capitalized... well, this is really a no brainer for Apple.

The only really question is, can Tim Cook create the tech? Google is struggling with it and they are by far the most skillful at AI.

In the end though, we'll all be better off with Apple in the race than out of it.


Apple wants to be the luxury brand intersected with technology. Who else does that as well as they do?

Honestly, in terms of car manufacturers, I think there are a lot who do luxury better than Apple. Agreed their technology intersection isn't so great, but I'd rather own a BMW outfitted with Apple software than an Apple car.


Maybe the Apple car will be a BMW outfitted with Apple software. Tim Cook visited BMW premises last year, allegedly there has been at least another visit from an Apple delegation since then.


That makes a lot of sense. It also makes sense that Apple would start out there.


...just like the Motorola ROKR


in terms of car manufacturers, I think there are a lot who do luxury better than Apple.

What does that even mean? Are you from the future?


Apple has a brand. I can imagine that brand applied to a car.


I think that sounds like a good idea, but in practice it's not a product you'd want.

Motorola used to be at the cutting edge of phones (e.g. Razr) but when Apple slapped their software onto a Motorola phone, it was a terrible product (Rokr).


You know, the same can be said for Tesla, which has a massive headstart in disrupting the car market. The main difference, is that Apple has much MUCH deeper pockets to draw from.


I'm still confused as to why Apple hasn't considered purchasing Tesla.


For a long time I thought the Apple va Android rivalry was invented by the two companies so that all the press would be about them, rather than Microsoft being given the default position as the incumbent.

I think I was overestimating them, but once again think that's a feasible strategy, Tesla vs Apple fanbois arguing on the internet could be the best thing to ever happen to all-electric vehicles, and leave petrol and hybrid cars looking archaic, rather than the current paradigm where its Tesla vs the old industry.


My take would be that Musk simply wouldn't sell. We know that they have spoken, and that Apple is an investor in the Gigafactory, so regardless, they'll be paying Tesla for iDevice batteries in the long run.

Competing against them on a car is a really interesting play though. Not sure what to make of it just yet.


I'm sure this must have come up, but the two companies have pretty different manufacturing styles, and integrating them could kill the momentum needed to pull this off. Unless Apple is willing to use Tesla's US operations for version 1 and re-evaluate after that.


Maybe they have and Elon won't sell.


Apple is getting more into services with Apple Music, so maybe Apple Car as an automated car service isn't so unreasonable.


they are by far the most skillful at AI.

I'd submit they are the best at getting people to believe they are the best, but are they _actually_ the best? Assumes facts not in evidence.


What services backed by A.I. would contend with Google's?


I don't think Tim Cook can create the tech.

Tim Cook can't even keep apps made with hacked versions of Xcode out of the app store. He can't keep obvious, infuriating bugs out of iOS or OS X. (I found a few within hours of downloading the public release.)

A self-driving car would be - to mix a metaphor - a legal minefield, and would demand a level of corporate and personal responsibility and reliability that only a handful of organisations, most in med or aerospace, have ever been able to approach.

As a project it's almost literally a moon shot, and a very risky one because industrial car making is a difficult industry with problematic tooling, logistics, and distribution, and very high capital costs.

I think Musk is in with a better chance, because he's a careful, thoughtful, engineer. At Apple, engineering has always had trailed slightly behind branding and design, and the gap seems to be widening. That doesn't bode well, because a project like this needs world-leading engineering before everything else.

Design and marketing are worthless if the product isn't seven or eight-nines reliable and better than human.


Reminder: companies aren't just the CEO.

As a project it's almost literally a moon shot,

Not even close. Tesla exists. They built a new car infrastructure from nothing. Apple can steal their senior engineers all day long.

if the product isn't seven or eight-nines reliable and better than human.

People are influenced by style and sex appeal, not so much data sheets. Nobody even knows how much memory ships in Apple iOS devices; it's not a performance game—it's a mindshare game.


But he's not talking about the performance of the car, rather its reliability. And an unreliable car is flagged as such pretty soon.


I agree, I have concern about Apple's technical chops. That being said, they are masters of the aquihire.

Also - you have to separate electric car versus self driving car. I think electric car is pretty easy to do (relatively speaking), but I don't think it's a particularly exciting business to get into. Way too low margin and you're fighting against an establishment that will getting into the electric car biz as well. And I agree with comments above, that they all probably do better than Apple.

Whereas self driving cars, done right, will be extremely high margin. It will revolutionize the world and change everything - much like the PC and Smartphone did.

I think self driving cars have the potential to be iPhone versus Android all over again. Apple does the high end luxury market, and Google does the race to bottom, solution for the proletariat market.


Tesla tried to snag Ive.. Apple retained him...

I have to believe (car guy) Ive gets what he wants at Apple?

edit: Which would hurt the stock (ie Cook's #1 goal) more in the short term? Announcing a car in 2019 or announcing Ive leaving in 2015? I'm thinking was part of an earlier deal to keep Ive.


Jony Ive was "promoted" to Chief Design Officer a while ago. I say "promoted" with quotes because many people believe he was moved to a position where he can do less damage. Jony is no longer in control of Industrial Design or User Interface Design at Apple. Those disciplines now have new heads: Richard Howarth and Alan Dye and they don't report to Ive. So to answer to your question, Jony leaving Apple will have zero impact.


I think there is a public image component to Ive as well. The image of Jobs' era at Apple is Ive and him running the show. As great as Tim Cook is doing in the CEO position, Ive is still seen by many as the remaining influence of Jobs. Regardless of his day to day responsibilities having him at Apple in some design role allows them to keep that perception. If he were to leave I think it will have a very negative impact on stock.


What damage did they think Ive was going to do?


Good question, Caprinicus. The answer is, the kind of damage Jony has done since Steve Jobs' passing.

Let's consider Jony's performance on software design first. This is what some prominent people have said about iOS 7: The Verge wrote in their review: "iOS 7 isn't harder to use, just less obvious. That's a momentous change: iOS used to be so obvious." In iOS 7 basic usability features such as making buttons look like buttons are now stuffed under Accessibility options. About this, Tumblr co-founder Marco Arment wrote: "If iOS 8 can’t remove any of these options, it's a design failure." (And iOS 8 hasn't.) Michael Heilemann, Interface Director at Squarespace wrote, "when I look at [iOS 7 beta] I see anti-patterns and basic mistakes that should have been caught on the whiteboard before anyone even began thinking about coding it." And famed blogger John Gruber said this about iOS 7: "my guess is that [Steve Jobs] would not have supported this direction."

And what about Jony's other responsibility in the last few years, industrial design? The iPod, iPhone, iPad, MacBook Air and other Apple products are all amazingly well designed and breathtakingly beautiful. But these products weren't designed by Jony Ive all by himself. He designed them under Steve Jobs's guidance and direction. Steve was the tastemaker. Apple's post-Steve products are nowhere near as well-designed.

Consider iPhone 5c, for example. The colors are horrid, and when you add those Crocs-like cases it looks more like a Fisher-Price toy than like a device an executive would want to be seen holding. Then they released some ads for the 5c, and I kid you not, one of the ads had sounds of bleating farm animals. (It was titled "Every color has a story", published on tumblr.) That the 5c didn't do well in the market shouldn't surprise anyone.


Not everything Apple does is for executives. The iPod Mini came in crazy colors too and Apple sold woolen "socks" for people to carry them in. This was under Jobs. They also did animal-print plastic for the early iMacs and iBooks--the products that cemented the Ive/Jobs relationship and defined the new Apple.

Steve Jobs once held a mock funeral for OS 9 with organ music and a coffin. Apple produced plenty of crazy / weird stuff under his leadership. This is one reason that speculating about "this wouldn't have happened under Steve" is a fool's errand.


So, here's my take on the Uber-ification of cars:

1) Cars have a useful lifespan far longer than the car loan payment. This will continue to favor private car ownership until the maintenance and upkeep costs outweigh the marginal cost of calling an Uber (or whatever we'll have in the future). I'm not sure when that point will hit, or if it ever will. Electric cars are very low maintenance (battery packs are expensive, but that is fixable).

2) Cars have a significant delta between the high end and low end. You can easily see several hundred-thousand dollar cars driving on urban streets. They're a status/luxury symbol, and aspirational for a large number of people.

3) Cars-on-demand will, for some people, never replace the comfort of having a vehicle waiting for them in their garage/driveway. For the same reason hot desk-ing never caught on, it's nice to have a "home" where you can leave your usual creature comforts when on the road. I don't currently have a car (or car commute), but if I did, I can imagine it being a bit discomforting to have an unusual set of surroundings, lack of creature comforts (my gum in the cupholder, tissues in the center console, my phone already hooked up to bluetooth, etc.).

4) Busses, even if self-driving, are not going to replace dedicated vehicles (see the group shuttles from airports as to why).

It feels like the car as a status and convenience symbol is here to stay for the foreseeable future (certainly our lifetimes). And making cars for upper-middle/upper class folks is very profitable. Sure, Apple wouldn't make a $5000 car no more than they'd make a $50 mobile. But a $40k-100k car? I think they could hit that one out of the park.


Garage / driveway? What's that? Hum. Clearly you don't live in a densely populated city, where, you know .. the vast % of the population does and is migrating to.

I think if you lived in a condo, and there was always a queue of Apple luxury vehicles waiting at the bottom of the elevator, you'd be good to go.

The reason this hasn't taken off before is because people are bad drivers. Borrowed cars get very roughly treated.

Also, try parking in a big city. It's insane. Much better to just get dropped off.


>This seems like a weird market for Apple to be pursuing because they’re such a consumer oriented company, but it seems likely that the future of transportation will be less oriented around individual car ownership.

Apple is a company that wants to make money. They'd go into turkey farming if they thought they could make more money there than in phones.

If individual ownership is on the out (it isn't imho and that is a totally separate question from driverless tech) then apple wants to be the company that owns/leases/copyrights/patents the cars, the software and absolutely everything else. Dominance of specific markets is apple's game.

There is a synergy between apple's customer base and driveless tech. Apple owners are generally early adopters with cash to spend on fashion items. As with any new tech, the first few iterations of any driverless car scheme will be short-lived and expensive. Apple knows that its fashion-chasing users will be all over these things. Requiring "drivers" to control cars via iPhones would just be gravy.


> They'd go into turkey farming if they thought they could make more money there than in phones.

They'd return all their cash to their investors before they did that.


You're misunderstanding Apple's strategy. There's a good argument we hit "peak PC" several years ago, and yet the Mac business has been steadily growing.


I think there will always be a place for individual car ownership, mainly because of morons. I am a member of a car coop which has 400 or so cars in its pool. When it was a lot smaller it was great. Most people were the kind who do things differently. The cars were left clean with seats returned to normal positions. Now that the coop has grown, I find partly emptied soda cups in the cup holders, seats left in cargo configurations, dirt tracked in with no effort to clean up, dogs in allergen free cars, etc. Masses ruin special things - they are not part of the initial culture. Also costs have risen to the point where I am dusting off my almost 20 year old car (which incidentally feels just as current as the newer coop cars, except for the electric ones which feel like I am driving in the future).


You're basically saying "I've seen it fail so it's impossible" which seems shortsighted to me. Do you really believe soda cans and dirt are an insurmountable problem for car sharing?


First ,even if individual car ownership would be dead , Apple can still sell premium car subscriptions offering some social status.

Second, Apple could lead the half-automated cars market(using Siri, see my comment down) and use it as a base of cars that would build Apple some self-driving brand, could be upgraded to full self driving gradually, or could be used to collect data to train full self driving.


I had similar thoughts, but there's still plenty of low-hanging fruit for Apple to snap up human-driven car marketshare even if it isn't a growing market. By the time they might plateau, they'll have experience under their belt as they adjust to a fleet model.

And Apple is not purely consumer-oriented, of course. If they can work with IBM, they can work with any company that wants a fleet.


Auto is a marketing game. The words used to sell the same BMW in the West are different, from the words used to sell it in Asia. And Apple, all said an done is the worlds best marketing company. Cant wait for Jony Ive's superficial bullshit to go where its never gone before.


It's interesting to see new entries into such an established and manufacturing-heavy industry. Tesla had a fairly slow and methodical strategy, that they're still executing on before they can really hit a mass audience (I'd say the Model 3 is the next evolution in that). Apple has not, at least since Jobs took over again, really been slow and methodical in entering big markets. However, with the iPod, iPhone, and iPad, they were the first to try and align those device types with a mass audience that hadn't really been addressed yet. With cars, that audience has been well addressed for over a century!

I'm curious to find out what price range Apple is coming in at, what makes the Apple car better than alternatives, and how/where they're going to manufacture it at a cost similar to competitors.


One guess about what the car could offer: The main issue with current technologies is that they only drive automatically in specific situations - and that they legally require you to always stay alert and don't let you play with your phone , etc. But this is extremely boring , hence hard. So this reduces a lot of the value of half-automated driving.

But let's say we have a fun interesting friend in the car, talking to us whenever we want, but knows when to shut up or to simplify the conversation when the road demands more of our focus.

Suddenly half-automated driving becomes much more valuable. And possibly ,if you control that and have a large customer base with half-automated cars ,you have a very good path to full self driving.

Well, Apple wants Siri to be that friend.


I would guess they're specifically targeting the brand new market of autonomous cars specifically.

Edit: Nevermind, it sounds like it will not be autonomous starting out, so they really are entering the mainstream car market.

Maybe the same thing is happening that happened with phones: Apple software on other phones sucked, just like Apple software in existing cars sucks. It's ambitious, but they have the resources and the market is clearly ripe for disruption... why not.


> Apple has not, at least since Jobs took over again, really been slow and methodical in entering big markets.

Depends on how you look at it:

- They've been fairly slow to enter the TV market.

- Homekit is out there but hasn't received a lot of attention in recent keynotes.

- Healthkit and related medical technology isn't something they have been extremely quick on.


You're right about these. I think the distinction I should have made was about how much effort they put into the different products. I think the three you mention have not have a ton of Apple's resources put into them like their other products. If they're going to actually produce a car from soup to nuts, there is no real way to half-ass that like they have the TV.


That was an inclusive "and". I think that by "slow and methodical", the author was going for the tank approach rather than just slow like a slug, which doesn't do much good.


How about "Methodical and successful"


I really doubt Apple is going to build a full car. I'd imagine they are going to slap an Apple interior on an existing Toyota or Ford platform.


Really? That wouldn't be very Apple-like.

I could see them potentially working with BMW though.


Mercedes would be my bet, luxury brand, steeped in history and tech long before the BMW ix series.


There's an old thing, from Bob Young, founder of Redhat, about proprietary software being like a car with the hood welded shut. Perhaps the latter will actually become reality.


John Deere is already moving in that direction:

>John Deere—the world’s largest agricultural machinery maker —told the Copyright Office that farmers don’t own their tractors. Because computer code snakes through the DNA of modern tractors, farmers receive “an implied license for the life of the vehicle to operate the vehicle.”

>Several manufacturers recently submitted similar comments to the Copyright Office under an inquiry into the Digital Millennium Copyright Act. DMCA is a vast 1998 copyright law that (among other things) governs the blurry line between software and hardware. The Copyright Office, after reading the comments and holding a hearing, will decide in July which high-tech devices we can modify, hack, and repair—and decide whether John Deere’s twisted vision of ownership will become a reality.

http://www.wired.com/2015/04/dmca-ownership-john-deere/


Automated tractor is not as complex as automated car since the environment is much simpler. I think it's closer to iRobot Roomba rather than self driving car.


Yes, but farmers already start to complain. When a machine breaks down they now have to wait for a specialist to come and fix it.


This might already be the case. See for example http://www.wired.com/2015/02/new-high-tech-farm-equipment-ni...


This is a story in itself, should be submitted.

But in the end, farming will go fully robotic. In contrast with consumer cars, which will always require a human driver.


> In contrast with consumer cars, which will always require a human driver.

Always is a long time, brother.


This was submitted previously:

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=9414211


> Perhaps the latter will actually become reality.

How far is it from the reality now though? I buy cars with very high reliability (usually Honda) just so I don't have to deal with it.

I grew up fixing cars, motorcycles, and snowmobiles with my dad, but these days much of what we did is no longer possible to fix (or even necessary with the case of fuel injection).


Perhaps the latter will actually become reality.

Let's not call out Apple as some evil locked down hardware platform company. How user serviceable or after-market modifiable is a Model S? Tesla cars get over-the-air software updates and you sure as hell can't modify it yourself in any non-"illegal hacking" capacity.


> Let's not call out Apple as some evil locked down hardware platform company.

They have always wanted to own and control both the hardware and the software, though.

Just because Teslas aren't very hackable doesn't mean it's a good thing.


I would gleefully welcome that! I cringe every time I have to pry open a breaker box, car hood, or wireless router config.


Presumably, you can pay someone else to do it. And as long as the thing being worked on follows some reasonably open standards, there is a competitive market for those workers, so you can pick and choose.


That's the thing. the public actually believes that the hood welded shut is a good thing because they don't get these things, and immediately forgets that their "mechanic" won't be able to repair their stuff anymore.


Their mechanic wouldn't be able to repair an apple car with all the unlocked hoods in the world anyways. Take teslas as an example. Short of routine maintenance on suspension parts and brakes, regular mechanics aren't able to do much.


Audi A2 was a big step towards that. The hood wasn't sealed, but it wasn't meant to be opened by the owner either.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Audi_A2#Service_Hatch_.28Servi...


Let's hope that for once, Apple won't divert the market into its distortion field. Or ... maybe it will just be a different shade of proprietary.


I think the real question is whether the car will be gold or rose-gold. Place your bets.

Joking aside, I do think that under Tim Cook, Apple has changed how it thinks about its products from being "beautifully designed premium products" to being "fashionable", and I'm seeing this trend more and more in Apple products lately, which I find a little worrying (for the company's core values and culture, too).


Even though it's hard to imagine Apple making a car, there is an awful lot of smoke around this. There has to be a fire somewhere. Lots of people are wondering how Apple can differentiate in the car market - I think (surprisingly) it comes down to price. Few people may remember this, but when Apple announced the iPad, people were shocked at how cheap it was. People knew the iPad was coming and were predicting it would start at $1000, easily. It cost $500.

Leaving out driverless car tech, which I'm not sure whether Apple will have ready for launch, I think the Apple Car will look and function like a $100,000 car - but will cost significantly less. Say, half the price. Ive, in a recent interview, spoke about how he hated so many cars on the road. Not because they were cheap, but because they were poorly designed and put together with such little care. I think, unless he's gone off the deep end into the luxury market (which he very well may have!) he would want to produce a car that is really great - but still affordable enough that lots of people will be able to afford it[1].

All of that being said, and no matter how much Apple cares about the mass market, Apple will want to keep their high margins. They'll need to bring down manufacturing costs considerably. However, if anyone can do it, it's Tim Cook. He's well known for being a wizard at managing supply chains. Perhaps it'll be their first product assembled entirely by robots, who knows.

We'll see what happens but if Apple are able to produce a very high quality car at a reasonable price, I suspect that it will be extremely disruptive. In the UK at least, pretty much every car under £30,000 is utter garbage. I'd love it if Apple could change that.

[1] I suspect, as with Apple Watch, there will also be a high-end version of an Apple Car. It will probably have the same functionality (i.e. it won't just be a super-car) but will have extras, like a Hermès leather interior. I, for one, look forward to customising a car like a new Macbook - current car customisation screens are a pain (besides Tesla, actually, theirs isn't too bad).


> In the UK at least, pretty much every car under £30,000 is utter garbage.

What?

Modern cars are of incredibly high-quality, even at the lower end of the market.

Take a look at what taxi drivers in the UK use. Today, the taxi fleets are dominated by Skoda[0], Kia and ( in London ) Toyota. Those all cost under £30,000. Well under. Yet they hold up well in the daily urban taxi grind.

Mercedes, BMW and other 'premium' brands are notable by their absence from such fleets. That's because they don't offer any quality differential correlating to their price. They mainly occur in the higher-tier occasional-hire market, aimed at people who want image.

[0] That fact that Skoda is preferred over the same parts wrapped in an Audi or VW body is interesting.


Sorry, perhaps I should have been more clear - I'm not saying these cars are unreliable or will fall apart, I'm saying they're ugly and made of horrible materials. Unpleasant fabric, plastic that is textured to "look" like leather, fake leather and just awful, awful designs (e.g. The Toyota Yaris or the Nissan Juke - just dreadful). I'm sure these cars are very reliable, but from a design perspective they're ghastly.


Wasn't that Apples strategy, to leak higher price points so when they revealed the price it seemed cheaper?


I am very interested in what this car will look and behave like. Until Tesla, automobile interface design was pretty stagnant; Knobs and switches for everything!

Apple has been very focused on virtual interfaces lately, I wonder what their return to physical will look like.


Knobs and switches are not a bad thing when you need to keep your eyes on the road.


I didn't mean to infer that they were bad, only that they are used indiscriminately. Take a look at the fan control, for example. Toyota, it's a dial, Nissan is a slider, BMW is two buttons for increase and decrease speed. To open the trunk on a Toyota, you press a button, but other models, you pull a latch. On some BMWs, you unlock the doors with a button on the dash. Most cars have a button on the driver side door, but some will even have this as an on/off switch.

I'll stop there, but my point is that car manufacturers haven't been able to figure out a "universal interface". Apple was able to do this with the iPhone (touch screen), so I wonder now if they can do it with cars.


Car manufactures have figured out a "universal interface" (buttons) as much as iPhone figured out touch screen.

There is nothing universal about the iphone interaction except that you touch it, for example it doesn't have a back button which most other manufactures do. Behind that touch screen you have the same mess of buttons/sliders/dropdowns/checkboxes/toggles between different models, as in cars.


You mean, I will "slide to unlock" to enter my iCar?


Apple wasn't first to come up with that interface.


Which of course, isn't necessary when the vehicle drives itself.


For me, I find myself sitting at a stoplight with my hand rested on the volume and seek buttons/knobs while I look around at stuff. It's nice to be able to do both without having to hover your arm and look at a screen. Even more so when the road isn't totally smooth (pressing the wrong button is sometimes more annoying than not being able to quickly locate it).

Of course everyone has different preferences and that's why they sell cars in more colors than just black.


I'm not sure I'd trade a very good, time tested interface for something that's both new and ostensibly worse in some ways, just because that new, worse way can now be accommodated.

That's like throwing away your physical keyboard for an on-screen keyboard because your company has adjusted their expectations downwards on your productivity. Sure you might be able to make it work, but that doesn't mean an on-screen keyboard is superior to a physical one.


True enough - at that point you'd get rid of nearly all UI. All that's left amounts to a charging station for your iTablet.


I agree, though I suspect the Apple car would rely on voice commands more so than touch. I haven't used CarPlay at all, but I thought I remember seeing that it was mostly controlled with Siri.


my 2016 VW has Carplay and it has Siri Integration, and it's pretty good.

Though having to use siri for everything like "set temp to 60" "Turn on defrosters" "use turn signal" would start to get irritating quickly.

Not to mention if you're havign a conversation.


And you want standardised controls before the late 20/30's cars had different layouts for gas clutch break etc.

A modern driver would have a hard time driving a Model T


Necessary yes, but interestingly legacy controls for a legacy practice.


I'm curious to see what Apple does with a car. It could be self-driving, a car I can talk to or whatever - but it doesn't matter to me if it is "just" an electric toy car.

Electric only is an option for some, but they are a long way off from working for everyone. Some people still live in places where gas stations are scarce - not exactly the place you want to try to find an outlet for your car.


This is fantastic news. I wish more companies would get into this. Google, Facebook, Microsoft. Every company that has a ton of cash should consider doing it. Tesla proved that it's viable, so the hard work has been done. And building an electric car from scratch is not nearly as daunting as an ICE car. The car companies are heavily incentivized to not do it, so to me it's a great opportunity to get in early in a high-growth industry.


I wish that some companies would get into making cheaper, smaller, better medical diagnostic devices. That would be revolutionary in treating people because the body is still a black box right now. Or treating age-related diseases because it affects so many people, not just the patient.


Microsoft would be crazy to get into this. They have enough to do right now with fixing their business.


Some sites are reporting that 600 people are working on the project and they will be tripling that number to 1800 people:

http://appleinsider.com/articles/15/09/21/apple-has-target-s...

[Update]

Actually, the WSJ also reported. Guess other sites are reprinting.


Even 1800 people working on the project wouldn't indicate that Apple takes the project seriously.

The number of BMW employees in R&D at the headquarter in Munich is about 20000. There are another 10000 contractors working onsite. This are the numbers for R&D only, not including production. The numbers also don't include the employees of the numerous suppliers.

In addition to that:

BMW is an established car manufacturer. They don't need to develop a car from scratch.

BMW is one of the smaller car manufacturers, I don't have numbers for VW or Toyota.


At the same time, apparently less than 3000 people developed the Tesla Model S [1], and less than a thousand developed the Tesla Roadster [2]. That might not be an entirely fair comparison.

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tesla_Motors#Overview

[2] http://www.statista.com/statistics/314768/number-of-tesla-em...


Tesla would have been a better benchmark than BMW. I believe comparison is not entirely fair for the following reasons:

The Tesla roadster was developed together with Lotus and there were only 1000 units produced. Producing a one-off small batch series is in another ballpark than real mass production.

For the later models Tesla partnered with Daimler and Toyota. Toyota produces more cars on a single day than Tesla in a whole year.

I'm enthusiastic about what Tesla does but if they want to play with the big guys they'll have to grow up.


I think it would indicate that Apple takes the project seriously. Apple has 115,0000 employees altogether, but I'm pretty sure that includes vast numbers of people in the Apple Stores. Certainly it's not going to put together a 30,000 person R&D group.

Now, maybe it means that Apple is kidding itself about its ability to make a good electric car. But Tesla didn't have 30,000 people in R&D.


I'm really at a loss as to why you would compare them to BMW and not Tesla. At this stage it looks like they are in line with an early Tesla.

http://www.statista.com/statistics/314768/number-of-tesla-em...


Fair enough, Tesla would have been a better benchmark.

I wanted to point out the huge R&D effort a car company has to undertake even to stay relevant. We are not even talking about the amount of innovation Apple or Tesla are expected to bring to the table.

Another difference between Tesla and Apple is that Tesla has strong partners in the traditional auto industry, namely Toyota and Daimler.


That doesn't mean a thing, because BMW is a dinosaur. In 2004-2007 Nokia spent nine times in R&D vs. Apple: http://blogs.wsj.com/tech-europe/2012/05/14/nokia-outspent-a...


>Even 1800 people working on the project wouldn't indicate that Apple takes the project seriously.

Depends which 1800 employees and how well paid they are.


"1800 people working on the project wouldn't indicate that Apple takes the project seriously"


I have a hard time believing that Apple would manufacture an electric car, especially one, according to the article, that had an initial design resembling a minivan.

It's well known that Jonathan Ive and Marc Newson are "car guys"[1], so perhaps it will be a vehicle similar to the Cube[2] - meaning it will have a very low production run - while the underlying technologies, such the batteries, are sold to other manufacturers.

1: http://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2015/02/23/shape-things-co... 2: http://www.macworld.com/article/1153341/cube_10thanniversary...


Not just some casual "car guys" — Eddy Cue is on the board of directors for Ferrari.


The more real this becomes, the more it starts to feel like the R&D sprawl of the Michael Spindler years. Yet it's not: This categorically isn't sprawl because it's focused on one hugely ambitious thing, and unlike the Apple of the early 90s, even if Apple literally puts ten billion dollars into this project and it fails, they come out with 190 billion left to continue running a successful consumer electronics business. And if it succeeds, of course, Apple becomes a major player in a socio-technological revolution for the third time.


I'd recommend listening to this podcast from Horace Dediu about how apple can differentiate themselves.

http://www.asymco.com/2015/03/11/the-critical-path-143-movin...


I think Apple has jumped the shark. They're venturing into areas where they are going to get swamped down, lose tons of money, lose focus.

Without the vision of Steve Jobs, I'm afraid they don't have what it takes to pull this off.


The old Apple would set out to create a paradigm shift in how humans travel and view transportation (instead of just jumping on the EV bandwagon).


Do you have any information at all about what they are doing?


I have the information that is public, and nothing suggests they are doing anything different than what is already being worked on by others.


surely there are people here who personally know someone on the project...


Apple employees are contract bound to not discuss work on even the most mundane of product updates. As friends, we respect their obligations (though we do give them a hard time by sarcastically badgering them about upcoming updates)


Even within the company they are. I was speaking with 2 different groups at the same time from Apple and they had to ask me certain questions about their particular projects secretly while the other group was in the room. I had an NDA so I could know both sides but I could not discuss one groups project with the other.


It's surprising how well Apple does considering the lack of transparency within their company (or perceived transparency from my pov as an outsider).

I wonder if this can cause an issue when they begin to get into building products (like cars) that need a high safety factor?


What I was told by some former employees from years ago is that people in other groups, even if they're your best friend, many times you don't hear a word about what they're working on until you have to integrate it and even then they may just give you an interface or something small and tell you your stuff has to work with it.

So even someone working with someone on this project may not even know that person is on the project.

Though surely some people do talk amongst themselves...


I've heard this before. Teams that build components used in every Apple OS (aka under Core OS) can be told to support platform X without knowing what X is or does.

XNU runs on everything from their Digital AV adapter[1], to the Mac Pro, to (I assume) the car.

[1] https://www.panic.com/blog/the-lightning-digital-av-adapter-...


Apple is historically very secretive, no reason why that shouldn't continue to be the case. Other than who's getting hired I doubt you will learn more.


Hearing this, I have to wonder why Steve Jobs bothered designing a headquarters and talking about collaboration and having spaces to interact with others - moments of inspiration, unplanned discussions etc.

I would be very cautious talking about any of the problems I was trying to solve with my colleagues if I knew I might breach an NDA and be fired. Culturally, is there some sort of understanding / internal guide rails on this, or do you just kinda hope you don't screw up?


Will it have Retina Windshield?


I don't know, but you probably won't be able to put groceries from some stores in that car... unless said stores shell out 30% or something crazy.


Paywalled


Wanna give a non-paywalled synopsis for those of us without a WSJ subscription?

Edit: Mass-reply: Thanks all! Learn something new every day.

For those looking for the same thing, go here, click first link. Should bypass the paywall: https://www.google.com/search?q=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.wsj.com%2Fa...


Pro-tip: You can generally take any paywall blocked article, copy the URL into the Google search bar and click the first-result to get a non-paywall blocked version. Works for NYTimes, WSJ and a few others I can't remember.


Bookmarklet?

javascript:window.location="https://www.google.com/search?q="+window.location


Or better yet:-

javascript:window.location="https://www.google.com/url?q="+window.location


Lovely idea, if only it worked for WSJ... Not in Firefox or Chrome on my Macs. Nor in private/incognito mode.


Google the URL and access it from search results and the paywall disappears:

https://www.google.com/search?q=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.wsj.com%2Fa...


For some reason the article itself fails to load (only WSJ page w/ comments). FYI for anyone running into issues: Apple News works for me.





tldr: Shipping something by 2019, hopefully.

Also per the other comments saying "dump the link into google". You can fake it with something like https://chrome.google.com/webstore/detail/referer-control/hn...


Side question... when we use the Google search workaround, is Google paying WSJ for the view?


Not as far as I know. It's basically a compromise after sites began implementing paywalls, but then complaining when Google would stop listing the paywalled content. As long as a user coming from Google got to read the full text of the destination page for free, Google agreed to continue listing the site.


Colbert just had Tim Cook on his show (this past Tuesday) and put him on the spot about this very topic. Maybe related?


That was mentioned in the article:

> Asked last week by late-night talk-show host Stephen Colbert about Apple’s interest in a driverless car, Apple Chief Executive Tim Cook said: “We look at a number of things along the way, and we decide to really put our energies in a few of them.”


I can't imagine so. It's in the news so he probably knew he would mention it. They're not going to kick into spending billions because a talk show host asked them a question about a secret project. Though if that was the case we'd have to try and get Tim Cook on more shows! :)


No. Cook was on Colbert to talk about the new iPhones, iPads, and Apple TV.




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