
Apple Car Challenges: Sobering Thoughts - nichodges
http://www.mondaynote.com/2016/01/18/apple-car-challenges-sobering-thoughts/
======
phkahler
I hate the term "range anxiety". The industry used to throw it around all the
time. That term shifts the blame from the product to the customer. The issue
is that a vehicle with a range under 100 miles is not that useful. I could
drive a car like that to work most days, but I could not make a significant
deviation - to go to another work facility, customer or supplier site, or even
to see a friend for dinner after work. That is not MY anxiety, it's a problem
with the car. You don't overcome "range anxiety" by doing anything with the
customer, you do it by putting a big battery in the car like Tesla. You can
take a Tesla on a pretty long trip, or you can drive it around town all damn
day with no worry.

~~~
kozak
I live in a climate where you can potentially get stuck in the snow for few
hours when going between cities (that happens maybe once per year, but today
is exactly such a day, for example). In a gasoline car you would at least stay
warm while waiting for the road to be unblocked. With an electric car, this
might easily turn into a survival situation.

~~~
gfodor
Being stuck in traffic barely drains the battery. It's range anxiety, not time
anxiety.

~~~
beambot
What about running the heater to stay alive and defrosted?

~~~
recursive
10 horsepower is more than 7 kilowatts of output. I think a typical car heater
uses much less than this. Perhaps someone knows more precise figures.

~~~
dangrossman
An EV essentially runs electric space heaters, since there's no engine block
to steal waste heat from. It doesn't take a lot to heat a small enclosed space
like a car interior. My Leaf uses anywhere from 1000 to 3000 watts to run
heat, mostly towards the low end after it's warmed up.

[http://imgur.com/smzvL8C](http://imgur.com/smzvL8C)

For reference, the battery pack is 24kWh, so it could theoretically run the
heater while stuck on a road for 24 hours straight. A Model S with a 85kWh
battery pack could keep the heat on for over 3 days.

~~~
falcolas
A fully charged Model S, operating at peak capacity. When it has to heat the
battery pack, the interior, and has already been driven for upwards of 100
miles (plus heating), those numbers will significantly smaller. Worse would be
the anxiety of retaining enough charge to get the car the remaining miles to
your destination once un-stuck.

~~~
dangrossman
After 100 miles plus heating, it's got 50 kWh left in the battery. That'll get
you another 147 miles driving with the heat on. Sitting in traffic, for hours
upon hours, is really not a problem for an EV. The interior and battery pack
heaters only use 1.5 kilowatts per hour or so. If you drive 100 miles with the
heat on, get stuck in the snow for an epic rescue time of 8 hours, your range
is only decreased by 35 miles to 112. Having 112 miles left in your tank is
not an anxiety-inducing situation.

~~~
falcolas
It is, if you still have 80 miles to go in weather which got you stuck in the
first place.

I live in Montana, so such trips are common, not exceptional. Having a pass
close in front of you (or while you're on it) is not terribly exceptional
either.

~~~
dangrossman
Is it? Then you definitely wouldn't want to make this trip in a traditional
gasoline car.

Two drivers leave on this trip you described with the same fuel in the tank
(250 miles worth), one in a Tesla and one in a Toyota. Both travel 100 miles
before getting stuck. Both have to wait 8 hours in the cold on a closed road.
Both have 80 miles to go.

The difference is, the Tesla has 112 miles of range left at that point, and
the Toyota only has 86. It consumed 2.56 gallons of gas idling to run the
heat, a much larger percentage of its overall fuel than the Tesla.

Assuming neither driver planned to run out of fuel on this trip (since 360
miles is beyond the range of either vehicle), both are within range of either
a gas station or a charging station. They're all along the length of I90 and
I15 in Montana. The Tesla has a larger margin of error for detours and closed
roads on the way.

~~~
falcolas
Refueling a gas powered vehicle at a small town is much simpler than looking
for a supercharger or spending the night waiting for a normal outlet to
recharge your battery.

Small towns (which for Montana I'll define as towns with a population of
around 1,000) with gas pumps are plentiful. Small towns with hotels, a bit
less plentiful. Small towns with superchargers are nonexistent.

> You wouldn't have left if your destination wasn't within 80 miles of I90 or
> I15,

Bozeman to Great Falls, 180 miles. A supercharger on one end of the trip, a
hotel on the far end, and lots of nasty winter driving in-between. Also known
as Tuesday for many folks I know.

Limiting yourself to 100 miles from a Supercharger knocks out a lot of space
in Montana. Most of the interesting parts of Montana are well over 10 miles
from a supercharger. Yellowstone, Glacier National Park, the reservations, the
feed lines into southern Idaho, Wyoming and North Dakota... No southern Idaho.

There's a joke that says that on the east coast, 100 miles is a vacation, but
in Montana, 100 miles is a grocery trip. That applies to a lot of the non-
coastal US as well. Have a look at
[https://www.teslamotors.com/supercharger?redirect=no](https://www.teslamotors.com/supercharger?redirect=no),
and look at how many huge open spaces exist.

------
gfodor
The big flaw with this article is that the reality is there really is only one
great electric vehicle on the market, the model S. And the model S is a luxury
car.

So, an interesting number would be the % of luxury car purchases that are
electric over time. I would imagine this is probably trending up, and that's
just due to a single model from a single manufacturer.

------
iambateman
I think people forget Tim Cook's background in supply chain. He is one of the
most experienced "process-oriented" managers in the world, backed up by $203
billion in cash, with a reputation for lifestyle products and a strong team.

I don't think he has underestimated the challenge.

~~~
ploxiln
While that's true, this blog post points out that to make a dent in the
market, you need some factories. You can't just have Foxconn assemble your
cars with key parts from Samsung. I don't think Apple can pull a rabbit out of
a hat with a surprise "special announcement" of an Apple Car, nor can they
make a surprise pre-announcement 6 or even 12 months before availability of a
car... it's going to be pretty obvious that they're building a car factory a
couple years before anyone can buy one. And we don't see that yet.

------
saosebastiao
Starting from scratch is such a monumental feat. Why wouldn't Apple just use
it's cash reserves and buy out an existing car maker? They could literally buy
pretty much any automaker they want, why not start with something like Fiat
Chrysler, for a bargain basement price of $10B?

I'm a supply chain guy. I work for a company with one of the top peer-rated
supply chains in the world and Apple is still so far ahead of us that it isn't
even funny. Apple could, with minimal comparative effort (as in, easier than
any other company, not _easily_ ), translate their manufacturing supply chain
knowledge towards automotive manufacturing and optimize it to the point of
absurd superiority over every other automaker out there. That alone could
change the profitability of the company significantly toward self-
sustainability within a matter of a 3-4 years. Throw in a well funded software
and hardware research division, poach the top specialized auto manufacturing
talent, and you have a recipe for the next Toyota or (forgive the faux pas)
VW.

But if you start from scratch, you are going to be 10 years away from making a
dent in the market, regardless of how much expertise you have.

~~~
primrosepath
Because the auto companies are far, far behind on software and, now in
comparison to Tesla, hardware.

I was told by a GM employee in their tech center in Warren, they have COBOL
running in VMs on modern servers whose terminal screens get scraped into excel
spread sheets. This is one of many examples I could give you. I could
literally spend hours telling you the horror stories. It's government levels
of inefficiencies and leadership has little or no visibility into the system.

Everyone in Metro-Detroit knows of the problems in the auto industry. The
leadership lacks vision and workers find their niche and retire hoping to do
the same things with maybe a promotion to management. There is not a constant
drive, at least in the software side of things, to constantly improve and
learn like in there is in Silicon Valley.

The above is applicable to GM and Ford. Chrysler, on the other hand, is a
whole other level of screwed. There's a reason they've been bailed out 2 times
by the government and now bought/merged by a foreign car company, AGAIN.

Apple, Google, Tesla and Uber will crush all but a few existing automakers,
around the globe, and leadership has just now come around to acknowledging the
threat. The regular Metro-Detroiter has no idea.

~~~
saosebastiao
> Because the auto companies are far, far behind on software and, now in
> comparison to Tesla, hardware.

It's a good thing that Apple is a software company.

> Apple, Google, Tesla and Uber will crush all but a few existing automakers,
> around the globe, and leadership has just now come around to acknowledging
> the threat. The regular Metro-Detroiter has no idea.

Of those four, only Tesla has actually produced cars that can be sold to the
general public. Tesla is a 13 year old company. It has well known reliability
problems, and it is supported by a luxury-only price point and market. It's
market share is sub 1%.

That is exactly my point. Apple could, if they wanted, start from scratch and
it will take 10 years _absolute minimum_ before they are even remotely
relevant. Or they could buy an existing car manufacturer with actual market
share, and in the course of 2-3 years make it extremely profitable, and in 3-5
years make it into something Apple would be willing to put their logo on.
Starting from scratch might be reasonable when you are talking software, but
building an automotive company takes decades.

It doesn't even have to be Fiat Chrysler or domestic for that matter...any
existing automaker with more than 20 years experience could be on the table
when you have $200B in cash on hand. They could buy BMW for ~$50B or Daimler
for ~$70B. Hell, they could buy Toyota at ~$175B.

~~~
primrosepath
> Apple could, if they wanted, start from scratch and it will take 10 years
> absolute minimum > but building an automotive company takes decades > Tesla
> is a 13 year old company.

Like you said, Apple has $200 billion. That can buy some speed but Apple
doesn't have to rush.

Tesla did. From Tesla's founding to the first Model S being delivered took 9
years and they did it with under a billion dollars. They also spent time
proving electric cars were viable with the Roadster and secure more funding.
Apple doesn't need to take this first step.

So a crappy guess would be 5-7 years to make a car. This is not worth the risk
of spending $40-70 billion, especially when you can get away with spending $2
billion and get better results than Tesla.

My main point was the auto companies are so bogged down with legacy (legacy
software, legacy manufacturing, legacy thinking, legacy costs, legacy habits,
legacy dealerships) that starting from scratch is the better option, even if
it does take 10 years.

> and in the course of 2-3 years make it extremely profitable, and in 3-5
> years make it into something Apple would be willing to put their logo on.

What your suggesting is, essentially, to unravel 50-60 years of legacy. People
have tried and failed. This isn't just a company like GM, a massive
institution in its own right, it's all the 3rd party suppliers. I think you're
underestimating the work required, even if you assume no worker revolts.

I also don't think Apple wants to manage or take on the liability of car
divisions from around the world.

~~~
saosebastiao
Quality in auto manufacturing is an iterative process. It took well over 20
years of Deming's iterative process improvement to bring Toyota's production
quality up to the standards of _GM in the 1970 's_...as pathetic as those
standards were. It took 40 years of protectionist subsidies, tariffs, and
hundreds of billions of dollars in Korean government investment to get Hyundai
to the standard where they could actually export their cars without being
laughed at.

Tesla has taken 13 years to ramp up production to 55k per year, and that was
even after lucking out with a down-on-their-luck Toyota manufacturing division
complete with experienced management and auto workers getting dropped from
Toyota's production portfolio. You hold them up as a standard for progress,
but they are literally a toy car company. Ford started producing cars in that
quantity in 1911. 20 years from now, Tesla will still be paying high priced
consultants with global manufacturing experience for their experience building
cars at scale. Tesla will no doubt succeed if they can keep up that pace, but
they have an _extremely long road_ ahead before they can even compete with
Nissan or Hyundai in the US in terms of production capacity, reliability, and
production costs.

That legacy culture that you deride has another name: knowledge and
experience. The same Tech-industry "we can do it better than you with no
domain expertise" arrogance is exactly the reason why Silicon Valley hasn't
made any dents in Health Care, Finance, or Energy, despite the untold billions
that their VCs have dumped into those exact industries.

~~~
primrosepath
> It took well over 20 years...

In the 80's people were still designing cars on paper on top of desks the size
of a kitchen table. Imagine pulling out an eraser or creating a fresh copy
manually if your drawing was too messy. It was so ... damn ... slow. People
got paid to drive from one side of Metro-Detroit to another delivering a large
cylinder of drawings.

> to bring Toyota's production quality up to the standards of GM in the 1970's

Now cross an OCEAN and do that.

Things get exponentially faster and everyone around the world is now talking
to each other instantly. Its hard not to learn from other car manufacturers.

> even after lucking out with a down-on-their-luck Toyota manufacturing
> division complete with experienced management and auto workers getting
> dropped from Toyota's production portfolio

This is a failing on Toyota's part and a successful use of this talent on
Tesla's. It's a sign of things to come. Not unlike Apple's hiring of A123
System's battery engineers from Detroit or Uber's hiring of Carnegie
University PHD students out from under a GM funded research project.

> You hold them up as a standard for progress

Yep. ICE powertrains are complicated, expensive, more prone to wear, need more
maintenance and are part of an epidemic global problem. The only sticking
point of Tesla's plan is the expensive battery. They're working on that too.

And they are a standard. GM just copied them. From the huge battery at the
bottom of the car to Model 3 sticker price on the Bolt. Tesla is now setting
the standard.

> but they are literally a toy car company

We all gotta start somewhere. In one sentence you talk about how it took one
company 20 years, another 40 years. In comparison what they've done in 13 is
pretty spectacular.

> Tesla has taken 13 years to ramp up production to 55k per year

Do you mean to start a company, build the Roadster to prove it could be done,
attract capital then eventually sell 55k cars? Because that's way more
impressive than buying a factory in 2010 and hitting that goal 5 years later,
which is still really impressive.

And why are you only shitting on them? In only 3 years of producing the Model
S, its the 2nd best selling large luxury car. They did this with 0 ads and 0
dealerships with 0 dealership ads. Everyone in this country knows GM, Ford,
Toyota and Mercedes. They get slapped in the face constantly with TV ads. I
wouldn't be surprised if less than 10% of the country knew about Tesla. They
only have room for growth.

> That legacy culture that you deride has another name: knowledge and
> experience.

Good point. I mean bad legacy. To be successful you have to understand what to
ditch (ICE powertrains and SOAP protocols), have the guts to ditch it, and
know what to hold onto (rubber wheels and robotics). Automakers are not
ditching bad legacy fast enough. As of 5 years ago GM was running COBOL and
probably still is. I'll bet you $100 Tesla isn't.

> is exactly the reason why Silicon Valley hasn't made any dents in Health
> Care, Finance, or Energy, despite the untold billions that their VCs have
> dumped into those exact industries.

All 3 of those industries are heavily regulated and mostly hard problems.
Until recently, Silicon Valley has mostly been focused on low hanging fruit.
Starting a website is easier than starting a bank due to the shear amount of
compliance.

The reason the VCs are dumping tons of money into these spaces is due to their
difficulty. Facebook needs money when they buy data centers a few years in,
finance needs money right away.

> but they have an extremely long road ahead before they can even compete

Big things like starting a car company take time. Now add Google, Uber and
Apple into this mix. There all in the same place but without the COBOL. In
fact innovation and ditching bad old ideas are in their blood and Detroit is
still running SOAP and COBOL.

------
jobu
_" Tesla takes 0.15% while losing about $4,000 per vehicle."_

Other sources claim that Tesla is making 25% profit per Model S, and similar
for the Model X. Is this article cherry-picking numbers?

~~~
plorkyeran
It's making the mistake of dividing their operating loss by number of cars
sold and then concluding they're losing that much money for each car they
sell.

------
stcredzero
_there’s no Moore’s Law for batteries — their “power” doesn’t double every 18
or 24 months._

However, industry-wide figures for power density show a clear upward trend.
It's not exponential like Moore's law, but in just under a decade or so,
electric cars are going to have range parity with gasoline ones.

Also, the graph is misleading. If you combine Tesla EV and other EVs, there is
a very promising upward curve in the lower right-hand corner.

~~~
hueving
>but in just under a decade or so, electric cars are going to have range
parity with gasoline ones.

Only if investment and breakthroughs continue. Moore's law worked out well
because people kept buying computers constantly since they were useful even
while much slower. When it comes to electric cars though, there is little
incentive for consumers to buy them at the moment so there is a significant
risk of investment petering out.

~~~
stcredzero
_Only if investment and breakthroughs continue._

Investment and breakthroughs in lithium ion batteries were not and are not
only driven by electric vehicles. Far, far from it, as a matter of fact.

~~~
hueving
What else is the major use case for high-power batteries?

------
joesmo
If Apple doesn't do it or do it properly, someone else will. Who really cares
what company ends up making good, safe, reliable electric cars?

I think it goes without saying that they're not going to use the same
engineering techniques they use for their other software to develop the
software for the car. It's not about culture. It's about adopting very
stringent procedures similar to NASA, aeronautics firms, and other industries
that need to build software with extremely low rates of error. This has
nothing to do with culture. These processes exist because culture fails when
such low error rates and resiliency is required. Airplanes have been running
incredibly complicated software without issue for decades. For that matter,
cars too. Making this a culture issue is frankly ignorant of the whole
software development process.

As for his past sales figures and argument that people aren't buying electric
cars, he misses the point that other than Tesla there are few practical
electric cars if any (Leaf's range is too short, Prius isn't an electric car,
it's a hybrid, etc.) and the Teslas are priced for the upper class only.

~~~
zardo
I don't know about airplanes, but cars certainly have their issues. The
problem of developing highly reliable software isn't really a solved one. If
anything, I think Apple has the advantage of not already being entrenched in
an old process.

------
FreedomToCreate
Apple is a consumer electronics company. They build focused hardware with
software that they patch over time. Cars don't work like that. Cars are like
building 100 products into one thing. Fine tuning every aspect of there design
is incredibly difficult and is reflected in cost. A software for cars is
completely different. For Apple to completely commit to cars, the dynamic
within its culture will have to radically change. Look at Tesla, their
employee culture is nothing like the other SV companies.

~~~
seivan
Wifi, two cameras one with a flash, finger-print, GPS, gyro, accelerometer,
display, force-sensitive touch displays, sensors for display, cell-reception,
in/out microphone ports, co-motion processor, bluetooth, speakers, etc etc.

Not to mention a ton of software.

Those are several products in one. Wether or not they actually build and
design everything themselves is irrelevant. Not all car companies makes
everything themselves, most share engines and other parts.

~~~
vonmoltke
The difference is the number of engineering disciplines involved. A
smartphone, as complex as it is, still requires a relatively narrow set of
disciplines compared to an automobile.

Systems engineering was basically created by the auto and aerospace industries
for this reason. It coordinates all these disparate disciplines into a single,
cohesive effort. What I have seen of systems engineering[1] in SV does not
leave me with the confidence that most of those companies will actually
succeed beyond some science experiments. At least, not the companies that
haven't started out as fundamentally car companies like Tesla did.

[1] Real systems engineering, not glorified, overworked sysadmins

~~~
cowsandmilk
Electric vehicles are far simpler than internal combustion engines. I mean,
you don't even need things like electronic fuel injection. Literally, the
complexity of building a car goes from the complex systems developed over a
century back to the simple vehicles of the late 1800's.

~~~
OopsCriticality
What about the complex battery management needed for an EV? Or the power and
vehicle dynamics management needed if there are multiple motors? Or the
additional complexity of the regenerative braking system? Or the fact that the
car itself is a very small part of the entire product lifecycle (think design,
testing, parts availability, service, etc.)?

------
at-fates-hands
At what point are companies going to give up on electric and look at other
possible alternatives like hydro or something nobody has come up with like
converting trash to renewable energy?

I still have issues with the environmental impact with electric fuel cell
manufacturing and recycling. It's horrible on the environment and the
recycling issues (hell, we still have problems just recycling plastics) cause
me to doubt electric as a long-term viable solution.

Just in case:

[http://www.theguardian.com/vital-signs/2015/jun/10/tesla-
bat...](http://www.theguardian.com/vital-signs/2015/jun/10/tesla-batteries-
environment-lithium-elon-musk-powerwall)

 _In a 2013 report, the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency’s Design for the
Environment program concluded that batteries using nickel and cobalt, like
lithium-ion batteries, have the “highest potential for environmental impacts”.
It cited negative consequences like mining, global warming, environmental
pollution and human health impacts._

[http://pubs.acs.org/doi/pdf/10.1021/es903729a](http://pubs.acs.org/doi/pdf/10.1021/es903729a)

 _The main finding of this study is that the impact of a Li-ion battery used
in BEVs for transport service is relatively small. In contrast, it is the
operation phase that remains the dominant contributor to the environmental
burden caused by transport service as long as the electricity for the BEV is
not produced by renewable hydropower_

~~~
millstone
Err, how would a hydro powered car work, without a battery?

> In a 2013 report, the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency’s Design for the
> Environment program concluded that batteries using nickel and cobalt, like
> lithium-ion batteries, have the “highest potential for environmental
> impacts”

The highest potential for environmental impact _among current Li-ion battery
chemistries_. This chemistry is currently best-in-class for energy storage,
but it is an area of very active research. For example, lithium-air batteries
hold promise for more energy storage with a carbon cathode.

Of course grid power is also moving to renewables.

------
peterbsmith
Anyone care to tl;dr this?

