

Apple Aiming to Begin Electric Car Production in 2020 - IBM
http://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2015-02-19/apple-said-to-be-targeting-car-production-as-soon-as-2020

======
wodenokoto
I am still quite confused. There are tons of headlines about Apple going into
the car business and the articles are less and less clear about whether they
are pure speculation or if they are official statements or have reliable
sources.

I don't know I it's because I missed my morning coffee, but I can't tell if
this article is speculation or not.

~~~
dm2
I think it's confirmed that they have a "several hundred to a thousand"
employees working on a car project of some kind.

They've also been reportedly poaching car industry employees recently.

Steve Jobs always wanted to make an Apple car, they might be doing some "honor
his dream" type of project.

They might be just developing an autonomous system or a battery conversion
system, or they might be building a huge fleet of mapping vehicles.

The project is only 1 - 2 years old so there likely isn't much a product yet,
and pivoting is very possible.

There is a video of some person chasing a white van with something unknown on
the roof and very dark windows near Apple's headquarters. That's fueling some
rumors also.

I personally think they should focus on their CarPlay system and partner with
manufacturers to pre-install it in cars, but they would need to allow Android
phones to use it.

Apple has over 150 billion USD in cash and it doesn't seem like they know what
to do with it.

Apple, why not have a large poll on what projects you should invest in?

"Tesla CEO Elon Musk told Bloomberg Businessweek this month that Apple was
seeking to hire away his workers, offering $250,000 signing bonuses and 60
percent salary increases."

Dear Apple, nobody wants one of your closed-source, locked-down, inferior
vehicles. Stop poaching Tesla employees you assholes, Tesla is too important
for you to wage a money war with them for a side-project that nobody has ever
asked for.

------
swish41
I still don't buy Apple is going to make a completely in-house EV.
Historically, Apple only innovates in market categories in which the
incumbents suck (usually through an order of magnitude improvement in the
UI/UX). But Tesla doesn't suck...it's done a pretty damn good job. A
partnership with Tesla makes more sense.

~~~
melling
Watches? You could argue that there were better MP3 players at the time of the
iPod too. Historically speaking you're only looking back a decade.

~~~
wodenokoto
I don't think you could argue there were better MP3 players.

About watches, it depends on whether we are considering watches as jewelry (at
which they don't suck at all) or as information delivery devices (at which
they only deliver one type of information, which is typically readily
available everywhere)

My Nokia 3110 was great at making phone calls and quite good at SMS'ing, so in
that sense they didn't need to be upgraded. In the same vain we can say that
we don't need watches that are better at keeping time. But cellphones of the
late 90's sucked at a lot of things that are nice to have in your packet, such
as games, news and reading.

So the question is, are there a lot of things other than time that are nice to
have on your wrist? If yes, then the market fit Apple perfectly.

------
sandymcm
worth reading on this topic:

[http://9to5mac.com/2015/02/19/apple-electric-car-
team/](http://9to5mac.com/2015/02/19/apple-electric-car-team/)

[http://daringfireball.net/linked/2015/02/19/9to5mac-apple-
ca...](http://daringfireball.net/linked/2015/02/19/9to5mac-apple-car)

