
Apple receives permit in California to test self-driving cars - weaksauce
http://uk.reuters.com/article/us-apple-car-idUKKBN17G1CJ
======
11thEarlOfMar
In some markets, it is more about getting it right than getting in at the
right time. We've seen many carcasses of products that were ahead of their
time, not because they were bad ideas but because they were not formulated for
mass adoption. Apple's own Newton is one example. It took the iPhone
formulation to make the product features successful in the market.

A more recent example is the telepresence robot. Many entries, but still more
Newton than iPhone.

With Apple, it's easy to pick out their winners and losers: iPhone, iMac,
MacBook, ... vs, Apple TV, Lisa, Newton, ....

At their current scale, Apple needs to enter really big markets in order to
move the needle on sales and profits. There aren't many really big tech
markets left. Cars are an interesting play in that it combines robotics and
consumer tech, and puts them into a market that has room for multiple large
players and plenty of opportunity for disruption. The transition to an
electric drive train and autonomous navigation presents an entry point. There
will be multiple winners.

~~~
charlesism
Your reasoning is excellent. The only problem is that Apple doesn't have
sufficient drive, talent, or reputation, in the auto industry to actually make
and sell a good car.

No employee wants to leave Tesla to work at Apple. No consumer wants to buy a
car made by Apple. Hopefully Tim and the gang won't blow through too much
money before they accept that.

They're pretty good at making phones and computers. They might want to focus
on keeping that reputation in the meantime.

~~~
jedberg
Your reasoning is excellent. The only problem is that Apple doesn't have
sufficient drive, talent, or reputation, in the cell phone industry to
actually make and sell a good cell phone. No employee wants to leave Motorola
to work at Apple. No consumer wants to buy a phone made by Apple. Hopefully
Steve and the gang won't blow through too much money before they accept that.
They're pretty good at making computers. They might want to focus on keeping
that reputation in the meantime.

~~~
fgonzag
I mean from a computer to a mp3 player to a phone is the same ballpark.
Electronics. Moving to mechanical systems is a whole different thing.

I'm not saying it won't work out, but I don't think their plan is
manufacturing cars. Maybe it's just licensing the self driving tech along with
the infotainment system.

~~~
briandear
Yet somehow Elon Musk went from internet payments to building rockets and
cars. Musk had zero background in rockets or cars. Remember Apple is a company
that has more cash in the bank than the entire value of Tesla. It's foolish to
think that Apple can't execute. Remember Apple has a long history of the last
mover advantage: they take promising but cumbersomely executed tech and expand
on it.

------
falcolas
Dear Car Companies:

If you would really like to advance the state of the art for self driving
technology, I invite you come up to the mid-west, especially in the winter
months, and make your toys work under those conditions.

Working up here will push your technology quite far, with snow, slush, worn
away lane markers, cold temperatures, wind, potholes, washboard roads, ice,
clogged sensors, blocked GPS, and any number of the above challenges thrown
together in random and unpredictable patterns.

If you can get to level 4 or 5 automation in those conditions, making them
work in the eternally sunny portions of CA will be a snap.

Sincerely, a Montanan (who is annoyed they had to deal with snow, ice, blocked
sensors, and cold temperatures just this morning)

~~~
awalton
Dear falcolas,

If you really need to understand why car companies will not take your advice,
you should look at their sales numbers. Car companies don't sell many cars in
Montana. They sell a lot of cars in urban concrete jungles and suburbs like
those that exist in California and basically every major city. Solve one major
city (especially one with hills like San Francisco), and you've likely solved
_most_ major cities, worldwide.

California has 14.5 million cars registered and 2 million new cars are sold in
the state each year. There aren't even 14.5 million _people_ in Montana. It's
an incredibly easy market to "disrupt" as it were, and they have people in
California that are known early adopters to lean on for buying, testing and
validating their product. The people of countryside and similar locales are
recalcitrant and will see products like these as extraneous, "taking their
jobs" and "killing their freedom of driving."

So once they've tackled the low hanging fruit market of California, maybe they
might consider expanding into the harsher wilds. But, similar to public
transit, the infrastructure worth investing in is infrastructure _most_ people
will use, and unfortunately that is not a self-driving Ford F-150.

Signed, Common Business Sense.

~~~
selectodude
Car companies sell plenty of cars in Chicago, New York, Toronto, Boston,
Montreal, Minneapolis, Philadelphia, Detroit, Denver, Baltimore, and
Pittsburgh.

~~~
ewalk153
Exactly! And Montana is a safe place to develop the tech in a lower
density/risk environment.

~~~
dmix
It is not necessary for them to operate at full Montana conditions to have a
successful initial business. The nice thing about machine learning is that it
gets better and better as more data is collected.

So the rational path here is to launch in moderate temperature areas with beta
software and eventually refine the tech to operate in adverse condition areas.

Pushing or expecting perfection from the beginning is how thousands of
products have died before launching.

The best way to do product development is getting it out of the door as early
as possible (in a reasonably safe state) with a competent subset of early
adopter users and if possible in an idealized environment/use case. From there
you expand and heavily capitalize marketing.

This is what Facebook did when they launched in Harvard and restricted it to
only Ivy-league schools. Before slowly expanding to other universities and
then the public at large. They called it the bowling pin strategy.

"If your project doesn't experiment first your entire project will be an
experiment" \- Joe Armstrong (creator of Erlang)

------
salimmadjd
Of all the SV tech giants (obviously Tesla excluded), Apple has the best DNA
to build cars.

They know how manufacture in scale. They know how build a vertical product.
They have the cash to do it and they have a strong brand.

But most importantly, if the world moves to a car-sharing car-hailing model of
autonomous cars. Ultimately, it becomes a consumer mobile play. This is where
both Google and Apple own that experience. Siri will know where you are and
when you need a car. This is something both Lyft and Uber wont be able to
compete with.

~~~
dcwca
> Apple has the best DNA to build cars. They know how to manufacture in scale.

Something tells me shipping your phones off to be built by other people in
China and building your own auto assembly factories from scratch are two
completely separate things.

~~~
chickenbane
> Something tells me shipping your phones off to be built by other people in
> China and building your own auto assembly factories from scratch are two
> completely separate things.

This is the question. Indeed, an electric auto is far simpler to manufacture
than a legacy auto. Drastically less parts. Similarly, Tesla has demonstrated
huge value in software component of the car, from the app, dashboard, OTA
updates, not to mention fleet-wide machine learning.

Don't also forget Apple is extremely good at creating electronic devices.
Apple has less than 20% of the phone device market but makes well over 90% of
the profit. They hardly ever have supply issues (such as Google's Pixel) or
quality issues (such as Note 7). Apple is known for their cachet and design
but the reason Tim Cook is now the CEO of the largest company in the world is
because their supply chain is, by far, the best in the world.

If a company is well placed to make an amazing electric car, it's Apple.

~~~
jacquesm
If there is any company well placed to make an amazing phone, It's BMW.

~~~
hkmurakami
Well Denso did make a phone in the 90's...

------
notliketherest
Is it just me, or have folks living in the bay area noticed a huge increase in
the number of "self driving" cars driving around? I've even seen a minivan
with what looked to be a hastly assembled lidar driving around Sunnyvale. The
space seems to be really heating up.

~~~
username223
It's tempting to strap random hardware to your roof to make other drivers fear
you and give you more space.

~~~
gregschlom
It may result in the opposite effect though: pedestrians more willing to cross
the street in front of you, and other cars trying to mess with you. (A friend
of mine was telling me how he tried going really fast then braking hard behind
a self driving car in front of him). The car swerved into the bike lane and
almost hit a bicyclist before the driver regained manual control of the car)

~~~
tsomctl
Good thing California requires license plates on the front of vehicles. That
way, if the bicyclist was hurt/killed, the video recorded by the self driving
car would show your friend was the one liable.

~~~
jacquesm
I'm not sure that's correct. The self driving car should have stayed in its
lane because an accident between two cars is preferable to an accident between
a cyclist and a car, especially if the cyclist is not otherwise involved.

Self driving cars should _protect_ the weaker traffic participants, not use
their space as a 'get out of the way' option if that space is occupied.

~~~
tsomctl
Not entirely sure, but my point was that the accelerating and sudden
deacceleration was a dick move.

~~~
jacquesm
Absolutely but your friend may have exposed a pretty dangerous bug in the
software of that self driving vehicle.

------
ChuckMcM
This is pretty exciting but it is also the worst kept secret in the Bay Area
:-) I suppose they could have surprised us and filed for a rocket launch
license.

I'm not sure what Apple expects to bring to this party but I know if you're
getting a masters or PhD right now make sure your thesis topic is machine
learning autonomous action in health/life/safety situations :-). I expect you
will be recruited heavily.

------
jcfrei
I doubt Apple will ever launch its own car. However it seems that quite a few
large IT firms consider DaaS (Driving as a Service) a viable B2B market. If
you can create a superior suite of machine learning tools (including always
up-to-date road data) that successfully drives passengers and goods from point
A to point B then you can secure big revenue streams from automobile companies
for years to come.

~~~
CharlesW
> _I doubt Apple will ever launch its own car._

It's a large consumer market that's changing rapidly and ripe for disruption.
Why would you doubt that Apple will enter it?

~~~
jcfrei
Because manufacturing your own car in large quantities is very difficult.
Tesla is a good example on how difficult it is to scale up production numbers.
And even though the market / products themselves are changing rapidly the
required expertise for a mass production of cars remains the same. I think an
acquisition would be slightly more realistic. But has Apple ever acquired an
entire product line? I don't think that's in their DNA (EDIT: Beats being one
notable and recent exception...).

~~~
adamlett
I agree with your conclusion, but I think your analysis is dead wrong. I don't
think Apple would have problems manufacturing cars at scale. They have
virtually unlimited money to aquire people with the know how, and to invest in
factories. And they have lots of experience with manufacturing already. Sure,
cars are different from consumer electronics, but not in any insurmountable
way.

The real reason I think Apple would pull the plug on it's car project, is if
they believe we are about to move to a transportation as a service world. Ride
sharing and self driving cars are trends that point in that direction. Apple
is a (consumer) product company. Their internal structure is set up to make
the best consumer products and sell them directly to consumers. They are not
set up to be a services company. Being a (successful) services company is to
some extent antithetical to being a successful product company. Apple knows
this.

~~~
bigtimeidiot
> _Sure, cars are different from consumer electronics, but not in any
> insurmountable way._

Perhaps not "insurmountable"...

...but you realize that what Apple currently manufactures is equivalent to one
single, near-insignificant component of what goes into a car: the on-board
navigation system.

Building a car is hard. I don't think Apple _can 't_ do it, but I'm convinced
they won't find it "worth it".

~~~
adamlett
No, building a car is actually comparatively easy, as evidenced by the myriad
of boutique super cars. It's especially easy if what you want to build is an
electric car, because electric cars have an order of magnitude fewer moving
parts compared to an ICE car. What is difficult is _mass producing_ a car, as
evidenced by Tesla's difficulty in doing just that. But Apple has lots of
experience at mass production, and they have the means to acquire whatever
talent they lack. That's not to say that they are guaranteed to succeed, but
they have a much, much better chance than almost any technology company.

------
mikerathbun
So far all the articles I have seen are about Apple experimenting with
autonomous technology and most people assume that they are also building an
electric vehicle. Those are two very different and challenging projects. I
have been an Apple user since 2000 and a Tesla driver for four months and I
don't see the current Apple being able to pull off an entire new car platform
like that. This isn't a "one more thing" kind of reveal. Look at how long it
took Tesla to get to the point where they can mass produce a relatively
inexpensive electric vehicle with a basic self driving platform. I am a huge
fan of both companies and have stained teeth from all of the Kool Aid, but
just getting the battery manufacturing in place seems like an impossible feat
for a company that is going to take over two years to design and release a new
modular desktop computer for content creators.

~~~
Animats
_Those are two very different and challenging projects._

Exactly. Some self-driving projects have used electric or hybrid cars because
they usually have electric power steering, which is easy to control by
computer. But the technologies are unrelated.

------
jakelarkin
been seeing Apple Maps marked vans with Lidar units in SF and East Bay for
months. Presumably theyre done building the base map.

~~~
zyang
comment from someone that works in maps.

------
ziikutv
Heres a question, I know a lot of companies are investing their time/money
into working on self-driving cars.. but from what I see, a lot of the cars use
the same sensor. LIDAR and cameras being the main sensors. Of course, we have
already seen Tesla perform well with these sensors.

However, my question: Is/Was this industry only held back by sensing?

edit: Restructure paragraph

Regards,

~~~
Animats
For testing purposes, today's clunky rotating LIDAR units are OK. For
deployment, something better will be needed. That's coming along well, but due
to lack of a market, nobody is producing in volume yet. I'd bet on
Continental, the auto parts company, which is using flash LIDAR technology
from Advanced Scientific Concepts.[1] That's known to work well, and ASC has
been selling it to DoD successfully. Space-X also uses their units for docking
the Dragon spacecraft.

Quanergy has been in "fake it til' you make it" mode for a year now; they
announced an impressive product 14 months ago and didn't ship. Their web site
looks as if they're shipping, but they're not. Now they're trying to get in on
the Trump border wall security business.[2]

[1] [http://continental-automated-
driving.com/Navigation/Enablers...](http://continental-automated-
driving.com/Navigation/Enablers/High-Resolution-Flash-Lidar) [2]
[https://www.forbes.com/sites/alanohnsman/2017/03/24/silicon-...](https://www.forbes.com/sites/alanohnsman/2017/03/24/silicon-
valley-lidar-maker-quanergy-angling-for-a-trump-border-wall-
contract/#64b69f81513f)

~~~
true_religion
Their logo is a curious mashup.

Tag-line "the future in motion".

Logo character: a horse.

Really?

It's as if they wanted to present themselves both as an old and respectable
company (hence the horse, and name), and yet still modern enough to define the
future.

The mashup though is so clumsily done it makes me believe the company is
either a _very_ early stage startup, or an utter scam.

~~~
cromulent
145 years old, 39 billion in revenue, 212000 employees. Quite the scam :)

[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Continental_AG](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Continental_AG)

~~~
true_religion
Let me revise my thoughts...

[http://www.conti-
online.com/generator/www/start/com/en/index...](http://www.conti-
online.com/generator/www/start/com/en/index_en.html)

Their main website has a splash flash page, which lead me to believe that they
didn't put a lot of effort into "public", but not customer, branding. That's
reasonable since they're a manufacturer.

However, I've also noted that they're German.

It's not very surprising that a German enterprise isn't spending a lot of
effort on its English-language portal.

------
gajeam
I guess you never know with Apple but it just seems like a really crowded
space for them to come into, especially if they insist on controlling the
whole ecosystem like they do with their other products.

First of all, it's a high price tag for them to get top talent in the area.
Waymo, Uber, Tesla, Ford (and a dozen other car companies), and who knows how
many start ups are all vying for the same pool of engineers. Even if they get
top talent, it's another story holding onto it. If you look at the LinkedIns
(Anthony Levandowski, Jur van den Berg, Chris Thrun, all the founders of Otto
and Argo AI), they change jobs every two years.

Their success I feel depends on how much control they are willing to give up
in partnerships and how good they are at choosing winners in the race to
autonomous vehicles. They already have $1B invested in Didi last year--it will
be interesting to see where they go from here.

~~~
CharlesW
> _I guess you never know with Apple but it just seems like a really crowded
> space for them to come into…_

The iPhone entered a crowded phone market and now controls the vast majority
of smartphone profits. There's really no such thing as market "saturation"
when you can grow the market and eat old participants.

> _First of all, it 's a high price tag for them to get top talent in the
> area._

Apple has $250 billion in cash, so this doesn't strike me as a huge concern.

> _Their success I feel depends on how much control they are willing to give
> up in partnerships…_

As with phones, their hypothetical success in this area will be due to how
much they _won 't_ give up. Apple learned this lesson with the disastrous
Motorola ROKR E1, a.k.a. the one where they tried to be a "good industry
partner" and play by industry rules.

If Apple enters this market, they'll play by Apple's rules and give up
virtually nothing. Any launch partner(s) will profit, but on Apple's terms.

~~~
gajeam
> _There 's really no such thing as market "saturation" when you can grow the
> market and eat old participants._

The car companies aren't making the same mistake that Microsoft and other old
tech companies made with smartphones. They all see that autonomous vehicles
are coming and they're doing their best to put out their own solutions. For
them to "grow the market," they have to do AVs far better than everyone else.
It's tough to imagine them doing that with Google working on this since 2009.

> _Apple has $250 billion in cash, so this doesn 't strike me as a huge
> concern._

It's an arms race to outspend in this area. Yes, they could muscle their way
through, but only at a huge cost. And even then, employees could leave to
start their own startups (see Faraday Futures, Otto, Argo AI, etc.)

> _If Apple enters this market, they 'll play by Apple's rules and give up
> virtually nothing_

There are way more parts in building an autonomous vehicle than a mobile
phone. This graphic [1] does a good job of getting into some of involved
industries. Shareholders won't stand for them to sink money into reinventing
the wheel (e.g. car components, vehicle to vehicle communication software,
AI.)

[1] [http://fingfx.thomsonreuters.com/gfx/rngs/SELFDRIVING-
SUPPLI...](http://fingfx.thomsonreuters.com/gfx/rngs/SELFDRIVING-
SUPPLIERS/010040KW194/)

------
pryelluw
Interesting how many toyota vehicles are used as development mules

------
uptown
I'm guessing if and when Apple enters the market, they won't be selling cars.
They'll be selling the service of transportation.

~~~
manmal
Idk, services have never been their primary product. It was always a hardware
product, and all the software and services around it were enablers of that
hardware. Sure, they could change and start a service product, but it just
feels awkward.

------
mvpu
Wow. Amazon is probably working on it too. Great that 10 years from now we'll
be seeing Teslas, Apples, Googles and Amazons on the road more than Fords,
Chevys, Hondas and Nissans. Interesting times.

~~~
ams6110
You think Ford, Chevy, Honda and Nissan are not working on self-driving
technology?

------
drawkbox
Uber and Google/Waymo do it in Phoenix quite a bit. The roads are perfect for
first iteration/testing, mostly 1 mile squares and less intense. I see many
Waymo and Ubers on the road here.

------
chrismealy
Apple decided making wifi hardware was too hard, but they can make cars?

~~~
icanhackit
My guess: they saw a flooded market with no brand loyalty because its a box
that sits unnoticed in an office or living room and said "We can leave the
scraps for Linksys and TP-Link" then saw Tesla's margins and said "Yeah,
_that_ looks nice."

~~~
elmar
Tesla burns cash, loses more than $4,000 on every car sold

[http://www.reuters.com/article/us-teslamotors-cash-
insight-i...](http://www.reuters.com/article/us-teslamotors-cash-insight-
idUSKCN0QE0DC20150810)

~~~
icanhackit
1.) That article is from 2015. 2.) Dividing operating losses by number of cars
sold is...not a very good way of calculating things. You're taking R&D, new
capital (Gigafactories, retail outlets, acquisitions like SolarCity) and all
other expenses and dividing by number of cars sold. It makes for a nice clean
Excel spreadsheet (A1 divided by A2) but a poor understanding of how emerging
businesses with huge growth potential work under the hood.

~~~
elmar
Why Investors Love Elon Musk, Even Though Tesla Is Losing Money (2017)

[https://www.forbes.com/sites/howardhyu/2017/02/24/why-
invest...](https://www.forbes.com/sites/howardhyu/2017/02/24/why-investors-
love-elon-musk-even-though-tesla-is-losing-money/)

~~~
icanhackit
It's a more recent article but doesn't invalidate the primary point: the cars
aren't losing money, vast capital investment results in losses. The stock
price remains high despite this because significant investments implies
significant future growth and innovation.

------
jes5199
Tesla has such a head start on car production, I don't see how Apple can catch
up.

~~~
adamlett
Are you kidding me? Tesla? Tesla owns _one_ factory, which they bought used
from Toyota. They have yet to demonstrate the ability to manufacture at
anything approaching the scale of other, more affordable car brands. Catching
up to Tesla's ability to produce cars will _not_ be the problem if Apple
decides to enter that market.

------
israrkhan
self-driving cars are becoming a crowded space. Too many players, with no
clear winner in sight. The real problem to solve here is not technical , its
regulatory.

Tesla and Google have some advantage, but it is still far from reality.

~~~
chrismealy
The main problem is totally technical! Robot cars can barely deal with
following white lines on the road. How about rain, construction, poorly marked
roads, fallen trees, badly parked delivery trucks, emergency vehicles,
pedestrians, cyclists, etc? Can cars read roads signs and understand them?
We'll have full-on AI before self-driving cars are for real.

~~~
legolas2412
I've been parroting this on every self driving thread. I finally found one
person who agrees with my thinking that driving is as hard as general AI.

Why is this idea so opposed by everyone?

~~~
chrismealy
At least we have each other.

Honestly, I am completely baffled that people who write software think self-
driving cars are just around the corner. At this point I think it's basically
a futurist cult.

~~~
marze
99% of situations are the "easy" part. It is the last 1% that will take a long
time. Snow. Rain. Missing headlight. Etc.

~~~
true_religion
Can't we just accept that the car won't drive itself in the snow or rain or
with a missing headlight?

I'd find that totally reasonable, and get back behind the wheel to take my own
risks in a snowstorm (or ... you know... stay at home like the advisories
always tell you to).

~~~
marvin
I would absolutely not find it reasonable if my "self-driving" car won't drive
itself in the rain or snow, given that in my climate, it is raining or snowing
>270 out of every 360 days of the year.

Such a product would still have a large market value since there are nice
climates with dense populations in the world too, but not everyone lives in
California.

~~~
cmrdporcupine
What you said -- plus: the last thing you want is a car that 'self drives'
until the conditions suddenly change at high speeds and the half-aware driver
is forced to take over unprepared and unalert and convinced that his/her car
is supposed to be driving for them.

~~~
legolas2412
Exactly, if we are forcing drivers to stay focused on the road with hands on
the wheel. It's not "self driving", as in it's not level 5 autonomy

------
briandear
This thread is going to be golden in 10 years: a time capsule of cynicism.

------
nyxtom
See, it's not that hard Uber

------
skdotdan
Apple is good at UX and design. A L5 Self-driving car implies no UX at all,
and most people won't care of the design if Self-driving cabs become a
commodity. Apple is not about logistics.

So, Apple's opportunity will be L2-L3.

------
randomsofr
Autoplay video, closes tab.

~~~
geodel
Thanks for letting us know that you closed the tab.

------
free23a
First,who dies Uber think it is circumventing the medallion sytem that taxi
companies must abide by. Second, who does Apple or Google think they are by
imposing dangerous obstacles on us on our roadways.

------
shouldbworking
Does anyone care that regulatory realities will prevent driverless cars from
ever carrying human passengers?

Planes and trains have been driving themselves for many years but they still
have human pilots. The human need for somebody to blame is stronger than
market forces trying to eliminate human drivers

~~~
BillinghamJ
Do you have anything meaningful to back up your point? Any sources? Anyone
else who agrees?

~~~
mrbabbage
On the train point, humans have operated fully automatic rail systems for
nearly fifty years (the London Underground Victoria Line opened in 1968; BART
in San Francisco is similarly automated and open in 1972). The first
unattended train to my knowledge, the Vancouver SkyTrain, didn't open til
1985, or 17 years later.

My interpretation: it took a while—17 years—for people to warm up to
driverless trains on fixed routes with no at-grade intersections.

~~~
linkregister
Who is the person who sits at the front of the BART train? That isn't the
operator?

~~~
pvg
It is. What they spend most of their time operating are the doors, though.

~~~
gyc
Although it wasn't that long ago when BART workers went on strike, replacement
workers (former BART operators) stepped in to operate the trains, and then
promptly ran over and killed two workers performing track maintenance.

~~~
pvg
It also didn't really have anything to do with the train operators.

[http://www.nbcbayarea.com/news/local/BART-Responds-to-
NTSB-R...](http://www.nbcbayarea.com/news/local/BART-Responds-to-NTSB-Report-
on-Accident-That-Killed-2-Workers-299797051.html)

