A full Apple Car has always seemed unrealistic to me. Cars are a fundamentally different industry then consumer electronics and software. Apple would be starting from scratch, and facing a lot of entrenched competition with huge budgets and infrastructure.
And for what? What could Apple do that GM, Toyota, or Tesla couldn't? Maybe a better UX for the dashboard. And while many car UXs are absolutely terrible, improving them isn't some insurmountable challenge for existing manufacturers. And besides, Apple could just expand carplay and partner with car manufacturers, which seems like it would work better for everyone involved.
As if Apple is just a tiny little startup looking for VC funds to get into the automotive industry and couldn't possibly compete with Ford.
>And for what?
Control over the entire driving experience. Just like they are obsessed with controlling the experience of a phone or a tablet and refuse to relegate aspects to partners.
>improving them isn't some insurmountable challenge for existing manufacturers
You say this but yet car manufacturers continue refusing to do so. It's been years already and sluggish screens are still normal, a bunch of weirdly placed knobs that offer no substantial tactile feedback, wheels that are horrible to hold, here are 3 different screens for some ungodly reason, and list goes on. Now this doesn't mean Apple will get everything right, but their attention to detail isn't something to overlook here and it's a huge advantage in a field where manufacturers have largely gone stagnant.
Apple can expand carplay while also manufacturing their own car. Actually, that would be one of the greatest forms of advertising their own car. Here's the pure experience, whereas you're using something tainted by GM.
To note, I'm not convinced the Apple Car will happen, but I'm frankly confused by people with the perspective that they have no leverage and nothing to offer here. A car with the Apple brand and nothing new will likely push more units than several new carmakers.
> As if Apple is just a tiny little startup looking for VC funds to get into the automotive industry and couldn't possibly compete with Ford.
Ford's market cap is $47b. Apple has more than that free cash on hand. I suspect Apple would 'partner with', then eventually just subsume, an existing card company, if they really wanted to get in to this. You're buying a lot of existing infrastructure (dealers, parts, distribution, warehouses, etc) that would take a long time to replicate.
> I suspect Apple would 'partner with', then eventually just subsume, an existing card company
Apple will likely string along a partner while they pull off another Motorola Rokr - i.e. get their feet wet on manufacturing/regulatory environment, mine for information and get the names of key employees to poach for an independent follow up project where the manufacturing is contracted out to Magna Steyr or Foxxcon
Impossible. The driving experience is also controlled by other road users and traffic laws, for example.
> To note, I'm not convinced the Apple Car will happen, but I'm frankly confused by people with the perspective that they have no leverage and nothing to offer here.
The Apple Watch looks sexless. Most people don't want a car like that.
The Apple Watch is a great example. People said that it looks too nerdy, until they adopt a round screen women won't wear it, etc. But it's been a massive success.
All I hear is people complaining about how all cars today look exactly the same, so it doesn't seem to be a huge impediment.
> You say this but yet car manufacturers continue refusing to do so. It's been years already and sluggish screens are still normal, a bunch of weirdly placed knobs that offer no substantial tactile feedback, wheels that are horrible to hold, here are 3 different screens for some ungodly reason, and list goes on.
The laziness of auto manufacturers is so apparent these days, seeing reports of auto features being turned into subscription-based offerings. I just bought a brand new car that has a fair amount of sensor tech, which makes it difficult to mount 3rd party devices to the windshield because they obstruct the optical sensors. A service I would absolutely (and begrudgingly) pay for would be a built-in dash cam with a cloud integration. They already have all of the tech and expertise in-house. They would make a killing and I'm sure insurance companies would get on board too. But no, let's attach a monthly fee to heated seats instead.
They already showed off giant carplay updates at WWDC this year. They showed a car where the entire dash was a giant wide screen, where it even handled the speedometer, odometer, fuel level, etc
Wow, congratulations, Apple managed to hotglue a screen to the dash. But how about the rest of the car?
What's the seating like? Is the suspension firm or soft? How big are its blindspots? Can it make it over a grass median without bottoming out? What about a snow bank? How well does the frame cope with rust? Can you manipulate its doors with a hand full of groceries? Do the brakes fade when fully loaded? Does it oversteer or underwater under hard cornering?
There's so much more to a car than its dashboard and powerplant, but I feel like 90% of SV think all you need to do to disrupt the auto market is bolt an iPad to a motor
I'd rather see standard APIs and hardware mounting systems that let me slot in different hardware to upgrade my cars software + screens + CPU + etc. without having to buy a new car
Isn't the point of CarPlay and Android Auto to make this possible, without needing to actually replace hardware? The idea is to make it so the hardware in your car is just a dumb terminal that doesn't ever need to be upgraded. Your infotainment system gets upgraded every time you get a new phone or iOS/Android upgrade.
Sort of, but they don't let you control things like... climate control, etc.. There's no real reason those APIs can't/don't exist as long as they have proper safety mechanisms in place.
There have long been CarPlay and Siri intents for things like climate control but no automaker has wanted to give up more control inside their dashboard.
You are not alone. I like the idea that gauges are connected directly to the thing they are measuring. However, I may be disconnected from modern reality in that what might look like a "traditional" gauge might already be connected to the car's computer rather than direct measuring. I'm just not a grease monkey to know the inner workings.
Yeah no gauge in a modern car is directly connected to anything, except maybe the fuel gauge in a cheap car.
Everything is being run the cars ECU, all of those gauges are servo driven, all of them are getting their data in the form of discrete digital values. That’s assuming your car even has physical gauges, and not just digital gauges on a screen.
Yeah nothing in the UI is connected directly to a sensor these days. The UI is just a display for relevant data on the CAN bus.
Sensors have redundancies and detections in both sensing and communications so that the receiving end knows when there is an issue and doesn't display false information, resulting in an error code being thrown and displaying a "check engine light".
While my Honda Passport does have a reasonable number of physical buttons--which probably are still fly by wire--I'm pretty sure all the gauge displays are all just digital readouts of readings coming off the bus.
Of course, like it or not, you're describing how Tesla does it and again, like it or not, it's probably the direction that a lot of car controls are headed.
Which is why I'm torn. I love all of the safety features, quiet interiors, etc that modern cars have, but I really like the simplicity of older cars (especially their lack of privacy invading add-ons).
Tesla interiors are awful (for a car, not just for a luxury car) so I'm in the "or not" category there. It's not just about the lack of physical dials (although that's a factor). Everything about Tesla interiors screams "cheap and no QA"
I think it's looking at Tesla's 875 billion dollar market cap and saying "I can do that". Which I think they can. They'll sell a ton of cars on brand alone so long as they don't mess it up.
It's kind of an interesting dichotomy. You can look at Toyota, GM, Tesla, etc. and say why would Apple be interested in those profits. But then you look at Tesla's market cap and then it's obvious why Apple would want some of that.
Ultimately I think the Apple car (and Tesla) is a long term bust. Automotive manufacturing is a well trod industry with, frankly, too many companies as is. I don't see how they could ever generate the sort of profits long term that the market caps imply.
Tesla definitely has some smoke and mirrors going on and is clearly overvalued but I feel like calling them a meme stock at this point is pretty inaccurate. Teslas are on the road doing things and the company is selling them in pretty serious quantities... all against the seemingly iron willed determination of Elon Musk to bankrupt the company by creating a PR nightmare and wasting money.
If they are priced like a startup and growing like a startup, that might indicate something crazy about how startups are priced, but it isn't unique to Tesla.
Yes, but as a counter point they are grossly overvalued. If you can get the same gross overvaluation, which Apple probably can, then why not do it? Especially if you can goose the stock price long enough to hit your bonus metrics and cash out.
The markets aren’t going to value Apple like Tesla just because they enter the same industry. Tesla has an earning multiple right now of 99.52x compared to Apple’s 25.3x.
Adding another 4 billion in profits when it already makes around $19.44B is not going to get the market to value its stock higher anymore than Disney adding streaming helped it to be worth the multiple that Netflix was.
But the market can stay irrational longer than most people can stay solvent
The biggest reason that cars have horrible UX is that consumers don't care about it. No one is buying one for how good the speedometer looks. Give me a good performance and MPG. Make the components last long and be serviceable. Make it look good on the outside. Put advanced safety features. Perform well in crash tests. A hundred more of these and maybe the car will be worth buying.
People here are delusional when they go oh, Apple can make a better Carplay integration and easily outsell Ford and Tesla.
> People here are delusional when they go oh, Apple can make a better Carplay integration and easily outsell Ford and Tesla
OTOH, why do most people buy a Tesla right now? "How good the speedometer looks" is a pretty good description. Performance is good, reliability awful, UI usability awful unless you like fancy computer graphics. As a car, a Model 3/Y has a lot of compromises and lacks many features other cars have. But that computer screen...
To be fair, "image seekers" (traditional automotive terminology) most likely comprise the vast majority of Model 3/Y buyers at this stage. This is an area where Apple has a strong history of success.
But I don't think it's a good fit, making cars is expensive and completely different from everything else they do.
But your list of good/bad didn’t include a single word about the Supercharger network, which is the #1 reason people who want electric vehicles choose Tesla, in my experience.
I agree that the big screen is annoying, but I put up with it so I can go on road trips and not rent a car or limp around searching for charging.
1. The Supercharger network means you can take them on road trips without worrying. This isn't the case for other EVs which use the Electrify America charging network.
2. They're basically iPhones on wheels.
Unlike every other car manufacturer, you get constant software updates and improvements. Since I bought my car, software updates have increased its power by 5%, improved its range estimation, increased charging speeds, and it now drives itself on surface streets (originally it only self-drove on freeways). The UI has also been improved. Similar to iPad OS's dock, frequently-accessed apps are automatically shown in one area. I can also pin apps (or menus within some apps) if I want. A ton of new features have been added. I much prefer the current UI to the version that my car shipped with.
This reminds me of the debate over physical keyboards on phones. For years after the iPhone came out, some people swore they'd never give up their physical keyboards. And yes, physical keyboards (just like physical buttons) do have a lot of advantages. But you can't change them with a software update, and you can't change them depending on context. For most use-cases, that flexibility outweighs the lack of tactile response.
You describe only one reason for choosing a car: utility. But cars are often chosen for other reasons: style, status, some cool factor or compelling feature. UX is generally not a dealmaker, especially since nobody outside the car sees it. But bad UX definitely can be a deal breaker.
For me, a good example of this is recent BMWs. The instrument cluster on 2 and 3 series models is hideous -- misshapen dials, poor color choices, bling where there should be understatement. The days of simply communicating only essential info elegantly are long gone. I simply would not buy a car with a dashboard that ugly. (These insights should matter to BMW since I've driven and loved their cars for 30 years, but oddly they haven't sought my opinion. Alas, it shows.)
This sounds like it’s written by a male engineer. Everyone in my life I’ve ever bought a car with/for has been focused on the shiny objects and features that were so ridiculous they appeared to be purely designed for marketing. People care. That’s why every surface is going digital, because people care. In fact, that’s a move towards worse UX, likely higher maintenance, yet only makes sense because it looks cool.
See smart tvs and good luck finding an old dumb tv these days.
That’s not to say I don’t agree with your conclusion. Apple has to do a lot more than make the best dash app ever to sell cars. But then again, they don’t manufacture anything themselves as is and do just fine. I’m sure they could find a Foxconn like partner in the automotive space.
They do at some point though, "does it have CarPlay" is actually a major purchasing decision now, when I bought our car I chose it over another very similar car mainly due to this one having CarPlay.
But comparing the UX of two cars' built-in systems when you're test-driving them for 15 minutes is hard, and reviews usually gloss over it, maybe mentioning how laggy it is or isn't and what whiz-bang new feature it has that nobody is going to use.
Unless you're Apple, it's hard to sell UX. But Apple is, well, Apple!
Personally, I'm waffling. "Gosh this is totally new hardware" could equally well be applied to the iPod launch or a dozen other devices - my personal doubt (that while we'll always have some cars the number of them is going to take a real nose dive sometime in the next two decades) is also kinda disproven by apple. Watches were on death's doorstop except for as weird wealthy status symbols - nobody was chomping at the bit asking Apple to make a watch but they made one and, while it isn't doing extremely well, it's certainly a market presence.
So I feel like they probably could throw enough money at the problem to come up with a solution of some kind but it also just feels like a waste to me.
> What could Apple do that GM, Toyota, or Tesla couldn't?
I think they filed some patent that revealed their competitive advantage was based on the premise they were uniquely capable of extracting range and charge out of batteries via optimizations and their experiences building consumer electronics. If they delivered somehow an electric vehicle with much better UX across the board they could build a healthy car business.
Apple or any other company that wants to step in the EV market can be huge, if they focus on build quality and user experience, and by user experience I don't mean just the UX dashboard.
There is a huge room for innovation in the automotive industry, I argue that we still haven't saw the next Model T 100 years later, and the industry grew a lot.
Give the people an affordable well build, reliable, easily serviceable car, and you might outsell Toyota Corolla.
Apple started from scratch with the ipod, iphone, watch. Can they do it and with a car, I don't know they certainly have the budget, they certainly can find the talent, the only question is do they have the vision.
Software companies don't have to manage production, inventory, shipping, or a heap of things that are crucial to physical products. Tesla do a heap of interesting things in software, but that doesn't make them pretty much a software company.
Apple does do this, just not for cars. They have a massive and fine tuned global supply chain for all their hardware devices.
I imagine some of that expertise would play well in the car market, but I'm certain much as Tesla did, they may hit road bumps along the way, however its not completely out of their DNA to handle this sort of thing.
I guess smartphones were also outside of their main field, they were the underdog and rapidly took over. They're probably seeking domains to replicate because phones won't sell forever.
It's funny how those are the same arguments people made when a company that built PCs started making phones. How could they compete with Verizon?! They were thinking evolutionary, but the iPhone had so many fundamental changes (technological, business, social) that upended an industry and made new ones. I'm not saying the car is a good idea, but Apple has overcome entrenched competition before with very capable competitors.
The winds don't seem to be blowing in the direction of true autonomous driving through. The hype cycle seems to have died down and the sense of reality is setting in.
I suspect that the next phase is some sort of "acceptance" around the limited conditions where full autonomy might be viable in the next decade+. E.g. limited access highways in x lighting/weather conditions. Which actually seems pretty interesting. It's just probably a very big gut-punch to anyone who thought they'd never have to drive/own a car outside of some very limited areas by about now.
And for what? What could Apple do that GM, Toyota, or Tesla couldn't? Maybe a better UX for the dashboard. And while many car UXs are absolutely terrible, improving them isn't some insurmountable challenge for existing manufacturers. And besides, Apple could just expand carplay and partner with car manufacturers, which seems like it would work better for everyone involved.