It's amazing to me how short-sighted many views on Apple Car are. Service is key.
Apple won't be following the model of the existing car makers. They WILL NOT sell cars direct to consumer. That's the key insight. They will not have showrooms, sales teams, or public service centers. You won't buy their cars directly at all.
Instead, they are going for the end goal: Fully autonomous electric vehicles on-demand. This is the holy grail Tesla and others are going for. I don't know why this isn't obvious to everyone. Most of us are still stuck in the old paradigm. Apple is thinking bigger.
The Apple Car will not have a steering wheel. Complete Level 5 autonomy is not some add-on feature, it is the key enabler that allows the entire product the exist. You don't need public service centers, because Apple will manage their own fleet, manage their own charging infrastructure, etc.
The user experience is simple. You tell Siri I want to go to X by X time. The car arrives, it drops you off. That's the end. No bullshit. Fewer features. Less hassle. And in the end, less cost for the end user. The perfect UX. That's the Apple vision.
Note, this is also Tesla's vision. But the other makers don't see this yet, and as a result will likely be bankrupt within 10-15 years.
You don't need to keep spamming your comment in multiple places.
It's not that we are all "short-sighted" when it comes to views on an Apple Car. It's that many of us have come to the realization that level 5 autonomy as you describe it will require something very close to AGI, and it ain't coming anytime soon.
While I don't know if anyone can build L5, it's worth noting that Apple products seem to have more ML per square inch than any other products in the world. The fact that most people aren't aware of how much ML they are using on a daily basis is really just an indication of how good Apple is at it. If (big if) the future of the automobile is ML-centric, I think Apple is probably of the top players.
Re: Apple Maps - I don't use it. However, it's safe to say the only two players in maps are Google and Apple. Same for ML, generally, and probably autonomous cars.
Apple won't be following the model of the existing car makers. They WILL NOT sell cars direct to consumer. That's the key insight. They will not have showrooms, sales teams, or public service centers. You won't buy their cars directly at all.
Instead, they are going for the end goal: Fully autonomous electric vehicles on-demand. This is the holy grail Tesla and others are going for. I don't know why this isn't obvious to everyone. Most of us are still stuck in the old paradigm. Apple is thinking bigger.
The Apple Car will not have a steering wheel. Complete Level 5 autonomy is not some add-on feature, it is the key enabler that allows the entire product the exist. You don't need public service centers, because Apple will manage their own fleet, manage their own charging infrastructure, etc.
The user experience is simple. You tell Siri I want to go to X by X time. The car arrives, it drops you off. That's the end. No bullshit. Fewer features. Less hassle. And in the end, less cost for the end user. The perfect UX. That's the Apple vision.
Note, this is also Tesla's vision. But the other makers don't see this yet, and as a result will likely be bankrupt within 10-15 years.