So I've always wondered if Apple actually building a 'car' was ever really the goal. It seems like a skunkworks where they try crazy things and then incorporate into Carplay.
Future seems to be ever expanding Carplay support. I use it and probably would not buy another car that did not have it integrated. I imagine car manufacturers are somewhat tired of always building HUDs and in vehicle control systems. So gradually standardizing on a way to take all the displays/touchscreens in a vehicle and let them be run by Carplay seems like the future. Eventually, they can start handing more and more of the software side (not their specialty) off to people cellphones via some interface, particularly around media.
As the ubiquiti of the M1/M2 type chip is found in all of our pockets (embedded ML silicon), the car companies will no longer have to actually embed it in a vehicle as an add on. Plugging in your phone with an M1/M2 type chip will unlock Siri or similar AI functionality in the vehicle. Sure it will drive without it, just like it does now, but it wont be 'cool' and have all the assist, nav, and media functionality everyone wants.
I think this is a fair take, and I've had similar thoughts too. However, one thing computer industry people don't seem to get is how much the idea of Apple owning the "dials" on the instrument cluster as shown in the keynote this year will likely go down like a cup of cold sick at most European auto makers. In many cases the designs or colors used in the dial faces have decades of brand history behind them.
Regardless of what customers desire, auto-makers are in no rush to become just a dumb pipe for apple or google's driving software. So far not one automaker has of yet publicly announced support or plans to support the more extensive CarPlay Apple demoed. I think if it does ship, it will need to support far, far more customization on interface and dial-faces than was shown in the keynote for auto-makers not to feel totally sold out of the cabin.
It was slightly disappointing to me I've only really seen Nilay Patel at the Verge in the media point this out; anyone with experience of the car industry I think will come to a similar conclusion. People may forget, it took a very long time for some automakers to even trust adding the existing CarPlay, partly due to concerns regarding loss of control of cabin features. Old CarPlay is is a far less intrusive system than the one Apple are proposing now.
As a thought experiment - if I personally ran BMW or Mercedes, I would have real concerns about dilution of the brand by adopting a generic industry wide car UI, even if I also think Apple would probably do a great job. Maybe the carrot of Apple solving autonomy as part of the package might be enough to swing the deal, but even there, I think in time legacy automakers will work out who to aqui-hire to build their own systems instead of selling out completely.
I understand where the automakers are coming from and agree that it'll take a while for this to become mainstream because of this.
But I can help but laugh a little at this attitude from carmakers. Modern cars have almost all become the poster child for "bad ui" with their addition of touchscreens that almost universally look dated and run poorly.
> Modern cars have almost all become the poster child for "bad ui" with their addition of touchscreens that almost universally look dated and run poorly.
The dashboard dials have little left to be optimized. This is separate from the issue of media controls in the centre console.
Given occasional hiccups with CarPlay itself, intermittent dropouts or UI lag because of a flaky cable or an older phone running the last supported OS is intolerable to something as mission critical as the speedo.
The speedometer is one thing, but even more "mission critical" are the warning/error symbols, which have a low-to-medium level safety rating on them. Speedometer probably would have that, too, but monitoring "fancy" screen contents like this becomes a somewhat more involved task.
> auto-makers are in no rush to become just a dumb pipe for apple or google's driving software
The cellphone carriers and manufacturers wanted control too. They both used to dictate what you did with your phone. Apple wouldn’t be the Apple we know today if it hadn’t up-ended that market.
I can’t really see Apple producing something so good that it makes all other car manufacturers efforts look like crap, but then most people would have said the same about the phone industry.
CarPlay is already there as far as I'm concerned. Vastly better than the built-in UI of my car (VW), which is filled with ugly graphics, annoying, slow animations, and poor organization.
I think my BMW i3's user interface is superior to CarPlay. Maps have a lower "ink to information ratio", it is snappy, and well-organized.
I dread the day when I end up getting a touch screen car to replace it.
My previous car had a touch screen, and I've used touch screen cars from a dozen vendors. They all suck badly, except Tesla, but they still suck compared to a jog wheel + physical buttons, or even an old fashioned "dumb" car.
I agree in most cases, with the main exception of Tesla. While not perfect, the responsiveness/design/ease of use in their cars is generally consistent and well executed. I'd still take Tesla's OS over CarPlay, personally, given the choice.
One thing that is different regarding cars is that car industry executives have the benefit of hindsight here. Apple was not a trillion dollar business in 2007, in 2022 everyone pays attention.
Apple's business model is clear; they would hoover up any profits that might arise via new in car software business models. Apple's success in reducing cellular carriers to dumb pipes will be the cautionary tale every car CEO in the world is familiar with.
Remember that when the iPhone came out, wireless carriers thought Motorola and Nokia and friends had too much power and they were looking at whether they could get white label phone manufacturers to make phones for them directly.
1990’s and 2000’s mobile in the US was a refugee camp for executives from the Bell Telephone breakup. They were a bunch of dirt bags trying to snap up everything they could, including re-patenting information technology by adding, “but without wires” to existing patents.
The RAZR phone was one of the first times they’d blinked in a while, and Apple showed up in the afterglow.
I'm willing to bet that Apple will lay down some cash to get car manufacturers on board if they think it will increase lock-in for iOS (and therefore the iPhone and other devices) by a certain margin.
Google I'm sure has its own incentives to do this.
Too early to tell if this will be the case or not.
Car makers are very well aware of the lock-in possibilities and execute them already. They were just very slow to wake up to the fast raise of, how to call it, "software defined car", and start pouring endless money now into this.
The car makers usually defined the functions in their car and how to split that to the different computers (plus quite a few of this is fixed to specific computers, anyway). They also defined the data going back and forth between these, at least in part. Everything else was defined and done by the suppliers.
This entire approach was upended by increasingly powerful embedded hardware and possibilities resulting from it, which rendered the entire software stacks in the cars so complex, the car makers had to seize control over this again. Someone has to define the larger scale software architecture in a vehicle etc.
Combine that with that juicy lock-in scenario (I mean the big idea is to have cars connected all the time, like your phone), and you can bet on the fact that the car makers are very well aware of the possibilities which come with that (think of all the data which comes with that). And they are not exactly willing to just yield to the likes of Google or Apple because of it, i.e. we are talking really big money here.
How all this will play out in the longer run, lets see. Car makers sit on a lot of cash, so this will be a fight which will be going for a while.
Maybe they can start working with a car manufacturer that doesn't have such an image to protect, like one of the Chinese ones that are expanding in the West.
If it's actually good, customers will then push manufacturers into it.
I can't help but compare to what happened with the wireless carriers with their crippled "smart" phones before steve jobs convinced AT&T to take the iPhone 1.
Agreed. The car manufacturers will lose control of the "car user interface" if they take on Apple's new CarPlay. My prediction tho is that some manufacturer will be desperate and take it and on then its a slow moving wave that crests over the industry as consumers ask for it.
Strongly disagree with this; we have many indications that Apple's efforts aren't just on CarPlay.
First, Apple's car project is clearly mostly focused on self-driving (tying into Apple's mapping efforts). To steelman your argument, it's possible that Apple's just trying to develop self-driving software that car companies can just adopt into their cars, but that would be absolutely unprecedented for Apple; they just don't do licensing deals like this. The fact that Apple's developing self-driving AI means that either they plan on rolling out a consumer car, or rolling out a robotaxi service (as a subscription service, which Apple is interested in). It's either licensing, or using it for their own cars; there's no scenario where self-driving is built-into CarPlay, since if you forgot your phone, your car wouldn't work; and it wouldn't work for Android users either. Self-driving will never be a CarPlay/Android Auto feature that "plugs into" a "dumb car". Too finicky.
Second, Apple's clearly investing heavily in car hardware and all related technologies (battery, etc). The most informed people on Apple are Mark Gurman and Ming-Chi Kuo, and they both agree that Apple's developing its own car hardware. See, for example, a 20-year Lamborghini vehicle R&D veteran hired to help design the car just two months ago.[0] That goes far, far beyond CarPlay. Kevin Lynch (who was in charge of Apple Watch) took over the project. There's tons of indications that this is about hardware, not just software.
Personally, I feel it would be better for Apple to design an electric bike than a car; but hey. Car likely comes first, then bike (just like: VR goggles first, then AR/XR glasses). Also far more ways to integrate content consumption (TV, Music) and productivity features in a car.
I would be inclined to agree that it’d unlikely apple provides self-driving software to other manufacturers, but wouldn’t iTunes on windows be somewhat similar? Create must-have software to drive adoption of some other hardware? (Phone?)
> imagine car manufacturers are somewhat tired of always building HUDs and in vehicle control systems. So gradually standardizing on a way to take all the displays/touchscreens in a vehicle and let them be run by Carplay seems like the future.
What is then remaining as distinctive feature of a car vendor? The design?
With their custom entertainment system they can confront they driver with their own brand identity and differentiate how they integrate the different features.
But with EVs the engines aren't as different as fossil fuel engines, they don't have their gear shifting with that adjustment anymore. Lots of brand vlauebis lost and becomes obvious to the buyer that cars are 95% the same across brands.
Another anecdote, but this is exactly how I chose my last car. I went to CarMax, filtered by CarPlay integration, and then chose from what was available. In fact, the lack of CarPlay integration is one of the main reasons I didn't consider a Tesla at the time.
From basic things like a snappy interface and keeping my podcasts in sync, to suggesting the destination based on the recent maps search I did from my phone on the way to the car, the attention to detail makes it a better experience. I don't particularly get any joy out of driving. I just want to get to my destination safely and quickly, and CarPlay makes the process less taxing.
The last few times I’ve rented a car it’s had CarPlay and based on those experiences, the next time I buy a car, it must have CarPlay. The experience without it is just so poor (and don’t get me started on how ridiculously bad the experience of pairing bluetooth is in my parent’s car which requires a mix of voice commands and button presses in a completely undiscoverable way).
Eh I've had decent experiences with BT in cars, there are some truly terrible implementations out there though.
My current vehicle doesn't have a functional BT connection, because some idiot put it behind a voice activation (and the mic broke).
I don't think this is the long term future, though - I've seen it work really well, if consumers actually start caring about how to connect to their cars it will work better.
BT will always "just work" - Android Auto and Carplay (never used) are enterprise monstrosities you must sign your soul for in blood that don't work on Thursdays, by comparison.
Yeah yeah I'm sure it does some app thing but I honestly don't car, what with cellphones becoming less reliable over time. I only want to play music in my car, BT works great (once it is setup).
My experience with CarPlay has been rock solid in four different cars from four different manufacturers. I was able to connect in about a minute in every case (the longest time for connection was the first rental car with CarPlay where I didn’t realize it was there until I plugged my phone into the USB jack to charge—this was in 2018 and it was wired CarPlay).
In contrast, the BlueTooth in the car that I own typically takes about half a block to a block’s driving before it actually connects to my phone, occasionally refuses to connect or will pair but not send audio. There’s some weird interaction between Overcast and the car’s Bluetooth that means that if I’m listening to a podcast when I turn off the car, I need to restart Overcast before it will send audio to any output (including the car when I get back in).
I don’t understand the “you must sign your soul for in blood” claim, unless you’re an open source absolutist (or maybe Android Auto is really bad, I don’t know), but your claims don’t match my experience.
yup! me too. Thats how i ended up buying a new car instead of a recent second-hand version of the same. Carplay was an absolute non-negotiable must have.
With a large screen capable of CarPlay with enough real estate for navigation etc? Most everything is custom OEM sizing/fit/etc these days , gone are the days of interchangeable single-cd headunits
Custom OEM size/fit has been addressed to some degree for a quite a while now by both the "mainstream" car audio manufacturers [1] and, more extensively, by some lesser-known aftermarket brands [2].
YMMV based on just how old your car is and the type of OEM head unit, but there are kits (e.g. this one for a 2016+ Honda Civic [3]) that allow you to install "standard" head units with a fit/style similar to OEM.
Yes, I was considering replacing my 2013 Honda Fit but just got a double-height Pioneer radio (AVH-2400NEX iirc) installed by an audio dealer.
It works perfectly, kept the existing car controls and I still have a car that mysteriously fits your entire apartment inside it while also not being subjected to a CVT.
In the US, lack of CarPlay really only removes Tesla from consideration at this point. Everything else, from Ferrari to Kia, supports CarPlay. Is there another holdout I’m missing?
I can see it especially if the various models are "similar" - I chose my last used car from Hertz from a field of two - based on how well the iPhone played music with the radio. Other than that the cars were functionally identical for me.
Same. My car has Carplay, while my wife's doesn't. Guess which one we discuss selling? A large part of that is the better integration of media. Its hard to go back to a propped up cellphone in a holder with bluetooth, once you've used Carplay.
Cabin usability and ergonomics are a huge selling point. CarPlay & HUDs are just one piece of that, but it a critical piece of the overall usability experience.
Getting into a car that has a pre-CarPlay infotainment system feels like stepping back decades in time even though the car may only be a few years old. Slow, unresponsive, buggy, and just extremely unpleasant and unnatural to use.
IMO, cars that predate screen-based infotainment systems have aged far better than pre-CarPlay systems. OEMs are just disastrously bad and behind the times at building a quality infotainment system. Mirroring the smartphone that everyone already has is a fantastic solution.
It's a very good thing that CarPlay shifts so much of the responsibility out of the car and into the smartphone, something that is much more easily and frequently upgraded.
The exception to this is ~2009 era BMWs with professional Nav, which feels just as snappy and good as my 2022 replacement for it. My large survey of a decade of rental cars suggests that almost nothing else has a screen that isn’t blurry.
It's in my top 3 criteria along with reliability and energy efficiency. Performance is probably dead last for me, assuming some reasonable floor (i.e. I can safely merge onto the highway).
It's something I'm going to interact with on a near daily basis, so it's important that it doesn't piss me off.
I didn’t buy my Audi for the HUD (or other UI) but I’m unlikely to buy another one after:
1. The Android based entertainment system regularly crashes.
2. The non-android based digital center cluster is designed so poorly as to have the date in two to three places and fuel levels hidden by default.
3. Safety systems that will needlessly engage the brakes because it believes that driving past the backed up left turn lane on a gently curving road is an imminent head on collision.
I’ve learned to work around these issues for the most part. Disabling all the wireless hardware reduces, but does not eliminate entertainment crashes. I memorized the steering wheel dial flicks to get the fuel gauge to display. I turn off the safety features.
Most of the car is very nice. The software stack is honestly something Audi should have outsourced to a competent development team elsewhere in the automotive industry.
Me. Just about any car is fine as far as performance goes. All I really care about are the creature comforts in the cabin and the infotainment system (or whatever they call it now) is a big part of that.
It was definitely a factor for us, especially as more cars move to all Software interfaces. A laggy or unintuitive system ranges from annoying everyday to dangerous.
After buying a RAM, I carefully consider software quality.
Sometimes the GPS azimuth data gets out of sync, which is annoying. However, the dealbreaker is that the transmission has some software bug where it overheats if you drive for more than an hour or so in certain circumstances. (Turning it off and waiting five minutes reboots it enough to get it to do whatever it needs to do to cool itself off.)
Sometimes we get a dreaded error message like this on the dashboard: "Drive to destination without switching into reverse or turning off. The vehicle might not turn back on.", which means the drivetrain computer cannot talk to the transmission, and it is stuck in a random gear.
Also, there was a safety recall software update. Applying it broke the state machine transitions for the push button ignition switch. (If you see a Ram owner accidentally re-start their engine after parking, this is why.)
Other Fiats (or whatever they renamed themselves to) are apparently on the same drivetrain software platform and have similar problems. All of the above things happened in warranty and none are fixable, from what we can gather.
It also had a bug where sometimes the cruise control wouldn't disengage unless you stood on the brake pedal while forcing the shift knob past an interlock and into neutral. They fixed that with the software update that broke the ignition switch.
We're eagerly awaiting the day when we can upgrade to an EV pickup truck from another company.
The GMC we had before the Ram was even worse. It was even more likely to strand itself, and the ABS / traction control liked to unexpectedly engage. Also, we had many mechanical issues. Like RAM, we had difficulty getting GMC to honor the warranty (with < 100 miles on the odometer).
The only reason I’m considering upgrading my 2011 Audi to a newer one is the technology. The car itself is great but it’s got crappy stop start features, crappy audio/infotainment tech, bad A/C etc.
It is relatively cheap to upgrade the infotainment systems on most cars. Apple and android compatible systems start as low as $350.
I did a self install on a 2010 ford Escape after my kids killed the radio (by inserting pennies into the cd slot…). Between that upgrade and new tires it was like driving a new car.
Speaking as somebody who doesn't care at all about cars, the primary things that would drive my car purchase would be:
- Cost (per unit distance in fuel, maintenance, etc)
- Comfort (which includes integration with other software, ie Carplay)
I don't care about "performance"; I don't even know what that means, and frankly I don't care. The car needs to get from my house to some other point on the map and back cheaply and comfortably.
By performance I mean the comfort of driving on the road. I used to have an anemic car which sputtered every time it drove. The engine was fine, the mechanic said, just weak. So now I look for a comfortable drive. It doesn't have to be a racecar, but it should be powerful enough to have a smooth ride.
Well, I'd say there's a difference between HUD and infotainment. I might be influenced in a car decision by the actual HUD and its useful features (for example: the blind spot cameras on some new cars), but the infotainment screen between the driver and passenger is almost always just an annoying barrier between me and having the music/podcasts/whatever + maps from my phone playing in the car.
I'm getting a lot of responses and it seems I can't edit my previous comment. To clarify, I mean who buys cars primarily for their built-in infotainment system that's not Android Auto or Apple CarPlay? If a car has either one, then I don't really care what it comes built-in with because I won't be using it. Beyond that, other factors are necessary too such as MPG as I mentioned.
If you mean the infotainment system or head unit, I think lots of people place a very high value on usability. Depending on much you rely on navigation or use apps for audio, high quality UI goes a long way.
Fortunately if you also want to prioritize performance, mileage, etc., CarPlay makes it a lot easier to tolerate a lackluster factory interface.
I've only test driven a few cars equipped with HUDs, but it's a super cool feature. I can see the value of a car that projects nav directions in addition to the more standard things like current speed. There's even phone apps you can use to simulate a HUD, if you keep your windshield clean.
My wife has a previous gen RAV4. I have a current gen Corolla Hybrid. The interface is VERY similar. However, she has a physical play/pause button on her RAV4 while my Corolla does not. This is INCREDIBLY frustrating because when you start the car, it MIGHT automatically resume your media. Sometimes this is OK, but other times, it is interrupting a conversation and losing your spot in the podcast you're listening to. A pause button is the perfect solution. However, in the Corolla, you have to wait about 30 seconds before you can tap the touch screen to switch to the audio touch controls, then wait a second or so before you can tap the touch screen pause button.
TLDR: Toyota removed the physical play/pause button and it's really annoying.
I forgot to mention, it's even worse! There is still a perfectly usable, unused button available to be a play/pause button! There are two knobs, each press-able. The one on the right does nothing when you press it. It SHOULD be the physical play/pause button and I have no idea why it's not.
Not really my wife’s BMW and my Jeep are both SUVs. They are pretty different and Jeep has started offering off road Hybrids. Eventually both companies will offer full EVs in existing lineups. The BMW is much better to drive but I wouldn’t take it off road. EVs will continue to fill the niche gaps their consumers want.
Same energy as complaining about not being able to provide customer with "dazzling box cover art design" because digital downloads made shelf boxes irrelevant.
Cars have handling, space, looks... just about everything else other than the dash/touchscreen is meaningful competition space.
Yeah, we sold cars for the better part of a century without digital entertainment systems, so we can go back to that not being a differential.
Particularly when it seems like none of these bespoke entertainment systems raise the bar, and instead the standard seems to be “not annoying and in the way.”
I was thinking along those lines, but the majority of phones are Android and I can't see a car manufacturer tying major features of a vehicle to users of Apple phones.
Do they get Google to implement equivalent Android features just as CarPlay and Android Auto are complementary now? In some ways that makes sense (you get the personal assistant you prefer instead of one provided by the car company) but it means differentiation must be limited because the car can't change too much depending on what phone is plugged into it.
HUDs are the small part of the story. far more important thing is what sensors you have access to and what can you control? Car manufactures are notoriously behind and bad on properly expanding and standardizing both sensors and controls. So, it is impossible to deliver consistent experience and capabilities. Even in 2022, most manufacturer haven't still figured out how to do firmware update without using USB drives. You can't even use phone to unlock cars. These are not hard things, but car manufacturers just can't get around to do it given their ancient and inefficient supply chains and factories which are only optimized for price wars, not leap-frogging experience. CarPlay is great for music and may be some cute graphics of basic gauges but the real value ultimately lies in some level of self-driving, assisted features and holistic integration which cannot be enabled without having complete control of hardware.
Why does it not present hell in any other use case, such as computers, phones and games consoles, or actual cars on sale today? Why aren't Tesla or Rivian owners collectively going crazy - there are over 1 million Teslas receiving updates approximately every two weeks? These arguments do not appear to be borne by any evidence in reality.
It's not like physical car repair places have some amazing flawless track record either... Physical access and the servicing of electrical devices do not need to always go hand in hand in 2022.
> Why does it not present hell in any other use case, such as computers, phones
It absolutely causes problems on computers and phones. Windows updates are famous for interrupting/losing work at this point. MacOS upgrades are less aggressive but far more likely to break formerly functional software (and stomp custom configs). Phone security is always an issue if not an outright disaster in dozens of ways. Look up the Qualcomm / MediaTek audio decoder issues from just this year.
Somebody can spy on you and steal sensitive data w/ access to your computer or phone. What can they do with a car?
Have you read the Wired article from 2015 about hackers remotely killing a jeep on the highway?
Some levels of computer security rely on avoiding connecting to public networks. Or any network.
> Why aren't Tesla or Rivian owners collectively going crazy
Just last year there were over the air updates on Teslas where owners reported vehicles stopping without warning. They fixed that promptly with another emergency OTA update, but not exactly a shining example.
Just last month someone I know told me that the performance profile of his Tesla was weird since a recent update.
These are the realities. There's a ton of evidence.
I'm not arguing things don't fail. Entirely non-connected cars fail for all kinds of hardware/software related reasons too.
One simply can't ignore the fact that today, including outside my own home, millions of cars update software just fine every few weeks, without issue. The number of phones or computers managing it is in the billions.
It was several years before I was completely comfortable upgrading my iPhone without backing it up first, and Apple had decades of system software experience and complete control over the hardware.
Auto manufacturers are much, much worse than Apple at software, and I suspect they have less confidence all of their embedded electronics work correctly under all circumstances, although that’s just speculation on my part. From what I’ve heard about canbus, it’s a bit of a mess.
Anyway, I can completely understand why traditional auto makers are less comfortable allowing a car to be updated anywhere at any time, and why they might be less competent at securing the update mechanism.
Let's take a look at it. I'm sure Apple is getting paid in some way for CarPlay integration. Now if the next generation has higher level of integration that car manufacturers use it instead of their own built software, there's certainly money flowing to Apple.
So, let's say that Honda starts integrating it into their vehicles. In 2020, 1.3mm vehicles. Of course, initially, not every car Honda sells will have CarPlay installed, but a few years out, let's assume every vehicle does.
If Apple got 2% of the selling price of the vehicle. Across all Honda models, the starting MSRP averages out to about $32,091. So, on average, Apple would get $641 per vehicle sold. Over the course of a year (if every vehicle sold with it), just from Honda, Apple would get $833mm. Add in a few more larger manufacturers and it's not a bad investment.
> Whether it costs money to get CarPlay support in your car is up to its manufacturer. While Apple doesn’t charge automakers a fee for the necessary software to integrate CarPlay, there are some costs associated with meeting the necessary hardware requirements.
The only reason an automaker does not include CarPlay is to try and keep their product from becoming a commodity. It was disappointing to see Toyota be stubborn and refuse CarPlay for so many years.
Something, something, "put the armour where the holes aren't."
If you are selling a lot of phones and tablets and laptops with your apps and platforms as they are, you don't want to invest billions in making them better just to make your existing customers stop complaining. They bought your product anyways, clearly whatever they're complaining about wasn't a deal-breaker.
You only want to invest in your own apps and platforms in areas where improvements would drive meaningful business outcomes. So you need to look at features that would cause someone who would otherwise buy a Samsung phone to buy an iPhone. Or you need to find people who didn't but an iPhone or iPad or AppleTV or OS X laptop and figure out if there is something that can be added to the product to get people to switch.
In the case of a dominant player like Apple, those are hard to find in the mainline product. Big new sources of revenue are most likely to come from entirely new product areas (thus their investment in phones, watches, tablets, and set-top boxes) or from going down-market and making commodity products.
They're allergic to cutting margins to the bone, so we're left with trying to find new markets, and that is why they invest so much in an automobile skunkworks while being much more careful about investing in the products that are already successful.
I mean how much of a return can carplay generate on an initial investment of 8 billion and on-going OPEX even if selling to all the manufacturers (which it isn't).
I think the point is that it was unlikely their intention to be building solely for carplay and an actual car was a bonus. However if they wind down the hardware play of an actual car this could be something that soften those sunk costs.
3. Selling other things to people who bought one of your things.
4. Preventing people who are subscribing to your thing from switching to somebody else's thing.
5. Preventing your competition from commoditizing things and driving prices down.
(There aren't really just five, there is no one "theory of everything," it's just a literary device.)
CarPlay is obviously #1 "Selling a thing," manufacturers license it. But it could also be #4 "Preventing people who are subscribing to your thing from switching to somebody else's thing."
If automobiles all have their own proprietary interfaces or worse, Android Auto, people who drive cars may end up buying phones that integrate nicely with their cars and ditching their iPhones.
If my conjecture is correct, Apple is investing in CarPlay to protect the most profitable product the world has ever seen.
>But [CarPlay] could also be #4 "Preventing people who are subscribing to your thing from switching to somebody else's thing."
The more reasons an existing user has to value something they already use, the harder it becomes for the user to switch. With few points of stickiness, it's easy for a user to check if an alternative has, say, similarities to features A and B. But if it's ABCDEFGHIJK, the likelihood of that user leaving drops dramatically. It's a common point that Apple does well iterating on its products, but that iteration goes beyond performance and capabilities into areas of stickiness.
Imagine a world where the car manufacturers no longer deal with software development for the vehicle, but instead you have a licensing agreement with Apple where CarPlay is the interface. Similar to Volvo and Google and Android Automotive. A lot of car manufacturers are standardizing around Android in general (see Acura, Volvo, BMW). If Apple could get in with an A-series chip and a custom software stack, then that would probably be a decent amount of money through some hardware purchasing and software licensing. Look at how Cariad (the VAG stack) blew up schedules for upcoming Porsche and Audi models and early versions of it were laggy, missing features, OTA updates are slow/non-existant, etc. If Apple can get their foot in the door, it opens up new service opportunities for things like Apple Music alongside any licensing, which may be the bigger goal.
Given the thread on Volvo and polestar bemoaning all the issues with the new Android Auto versions, I’m not so eager to continue in that trend. Let the car companies do what they do best. Build an automotive grade car that does the car thing really well and leave the entertainment to the CarPlay. Getting hud and center driver console display driven by CarPlay would be awesome though.
This next generation of CarPlay is the ultimate iPhone experience for the car. It provides content for all the driver’s screens including the instrument cluster, ensuring a cohesive design experience that is the very best of your car and your iPhone. Vehicle functions like radio and temperature controls are handled right from CarPlay. And personalization options ranging from widgets to selecting curated gauge cluster designs make it unique to the driver.
Almost every new car sold in the developed world has a display in the dashboard, but very few actually have a Heads-Up Display (HUD) projected in the driver's line of sight. It's mostly just premium models from GM and BMW that come with this feature. It's a shame that more cars don't have a HUD as it really does help to reduce driver distractions.
This is by far the best feature of our BMW F10 (manufactured in 2014 IIRC). I hate the distraction of constantly checking my speed in town, where there is a mix of dense traffic, many obstacles, outright stupid cyclists ignoring all traffic rules and aggressive motorcycles drivers and tons of radars that fine hard.
I've noticed with my previous car (also BMW, E46 that I will remember fondly for the rest of my life as amazing car but not due to this) that if I looked at speed, my peripheral sight of whats happening on the actual road was almost 0. I may notice break lights of car close to me if its newer car, or an atomic blast, but anything else simply no. Just something very bad waiting to happen.
Its such a great safety feature even with minimal info (current speed, current speed limit, and if car navigation is on some basic directions, but maybe thats the key, don't clutter it with too much info) that I would make it mandatory if I were EU and subsidize it.
Agree Apple is using it as a play ground for CarPlay and never going to ship an actual car. Maybe at project inception that was a possible delivery. At this point with legacy makers actually making competent EV offerings.. no.
Car market has many challenges that cause production and sales to scale slowly. Even if they outsource manufacturing, like Fisker has down with Magna (which no one has done at the many many millions scale Apple would need to).. what about service centers?
Next cars face various tax, tariff and regulatory challenges far beyond any market Apple participates in today. They couldn't simply make the cars in Shenzhen and ship them across easily. Almost certainly some non-trivial amount of assembly would need to happen domestically which means a US workforce and potential union concerns. This is due both to tariffs and to maximize applicability of the new EV tax credit law.
Further, I don't think Apple likely brings any special sauce to ADAS/Autonomy, and its a hard challenge many of the current players underestimate & overpromise.
Oh and repairability and granularity of components/modules. EVs need to be serviceable in ways that phones/tablets/Macs are not. Car needs to be designed for this, and parts supply networks need to exist. This is not an Apple forte.
All this to enter a traditionally low margin, boom&bust industry? No thanks.
Making the iPhone more sticky seems like a solid play. Use the phone in place of a key. Keep maintenance records on the phone. Tap a few buttons on the app and give the dealer a virtual key to the car so you can get it serviced. States are already putting IDs in to apps and the wallet. etc.. Maybe use the phone for various road passes and such, that seems like an easy and natural extension.
Around the time the self-driving craze sort of took off, the noise in the echo chamber was that Apple was terribly far behind in 2 main categories: services and AI/ML. Now, they're charging ahead with services and they've got custom ML hardware on every single device they sell. A car seems like too big of a project with too much hype to use as a forcing function for all that stuff.
Seems like there are some strong health and safety plays as well. If you have a watch on, it already can do fall detection. Car crash detection is a logical next step, if all the passengers had watches on, they could start sending real-time telemetry to the paramedics, maybe encourage them to prioritize a passenger that was in greater distress. With the cameras and such, there is absolutely enough processing power in your iPhone to look for drivers falling asleep and with some other data they could probably make a pretty good guess if you're intoxicated.
My concern was that Apple would make a car and it would be a McLaren or something, it would be coveted, look amazing, and be just about completely unattainable. Now if I could buy a Toyota or a Hyundai and just plug my phone in and it became the brain of the car? I'd talk myself in to taking a new car for a test drive to try it.
> Making the iPhone more sticky seems like a solid play. Use the phone in place of a key. Keep maintenance records on the phone.
Apple already does this,[1] though not many car manufacturers support it (BMW and a few models from Kia).
Teslas let you use any iPhone or Android phone as the key. You can also use your phone to turn on valet mode (which limits acceleration and max speed) and track and control the car (turn on heat/AC, lock/unlock, view through the cameras, etc). Lastly, you can book service or request roadside assistance from the phone app. It's all very handy, and I'm surprised more car companies haven't copied these features yet.
Seeing how boring Carplay has been so far I’d have my doubts about skunkworks. That said it makes sense they might be working on exclusive operating system of sorts. The way car systems (100s of suppliers and their implementation) work nowadays is insane.
"Boring" is good compared to most of the systems the car manufacturers came up with. A some of them still manage to screw up the integration of CarPlay with their own infotainment systems which often don't seem to want to get out of the way.
CarPlay does not work well at all on my 2018 Golf. There's a multitude of obvious, awful bugs. (eg. audio directions not occurring, but nonetheless ducking spotify audio for them)
> audio directions not occurring, but nonetheless ducking spotify audio for them
FYI - there are two different audio “sources” at play: “music” and “announcements”. Your “announcements” volume is set to 0.
Not that I have any idea how to change that on your car, but on my VWAG car I can adjust the “announcements” volume by turning the volume dial while it is speaking the directions (or not, in your case)
How much of that is the fault of shitty CarPlay hardware in most cars? We see how well things like AirPlay works when Apple controls both ends of the hardware.
Probably about 90%? Apple is writing software in an attempt to replace native software and whenever their software doesn't perform as well as the native software performs it's on them.
I do understand that Apple needs to integrate with hardware from hundreds of different manufacturers and I feel their pain - but nobody is twisting their arm and forcing them into the market.
I'm sure 10% of the time or so the car maker is just being completely incompetent in using incompatible hardware or switching things out at the last minute without warning - but yea, mostly on Apple.
Getting cars onto portable, standardised software makes the chips much more of a commodity and should reduce supply chain issues a lot - you go from needing to source xyz specific microcontroller to just needing to source "a chip that can run iOS/android version x".
I wouldn't buy such a car to be honest. I thought the future would be more accessible cars, not some locked in trash where you have to pay dividends to even more suppliers. Although the car industry is heavily guilty here as well.
For me a car is a tool. Aside from playing music, a technology available since forever, I don't expect much. Navigation is a solved issue for the most part. Self-driving cars are far away. An actual HUD is really nice, but many manufacturers already include them. If there is ever a standard, Apple would not be a good custodian.
Of course it is. Apple wants 30% of everything their car delivers you to. You're Apple's customer and they're bringing their customers to your business so clearly they deserve 30%. Plus even more lock-in, if you want to switch to Android or something else you'll have to buy a new car.
I always assumed it was an employee retention project. Jony Ive seemed bored of re-designing yet another rounded rect with a black mirror and was ready to leave, to attract top AI people you need a self-driving project, etc. But I guess at this point it has gone too far for just that.
It seems Mercedes are not going that direction at all with with the EQ range. They've gone all in, the MMI is deeply embedded into the car, speech recognition runs locally, it can control performance mode, seat massagers, huge swathes of car specific functionality, via speech, that I think Apple would have an uphill to catch up with, universally, across all vendors.
I doubt the upper tier of manufacturers would be happy with mere UI skins either.
Cars that are more like appliances, shared cars, with user customization in your phone, maybe that could work?
I would guess that for like twenty years Apple had sort of plan stored away to launch a television. Do you remember Mac TV? Pippin? They probably considered it as a possible integration with Apple TV. That would mean for decades there was someone planning the product: How long would it take to launch? How much would it cost? What might the design be? What would be the business plan?
Is there a car on the market where this is the case? I'm not sure why that would be anything to worry about. I don't think any manufacturer except potentially Apple would require this for safety and competitive reasons.
As they've taken over more of the car's UI, I've wondered if the main goal is to bring a Comma-like feature to CarPlay. They could sell a lot more Pro-level iPhones if Apple offered self-driving functionality through CarPlay (but only for the top-tier Pro models).
And CarPlay gets regular updates and support, where usually what you buy from the car manufacturer had better make you ecstatic, because it’s not going to change, and you’ll be lucky to even get bug fixes.
My wife's car isn't that old (2017 model) but using the navigation is a painful experience. Inputting an address takes multiple minutes and can only be done by turning a knob one letter at a time. First, state. Then city. (There is no defaulting to current location, so this must be done every time). Then street name and finally numerical address. If any of these items aren't in the database, you get to go back and start over or try for the hopefully nearest address that is in the system. It's a mess but sometimes necessary.
It also no longer gets traffic updates since the modem is 3G with no upgrade path currently. It does not support AA or Carplay. I hate it but she loves the way it drives, so we'll be keeping it for a while.
But why won't Apple possibly build a device like comma.ai to basically fit into the car's OBD port and also bring in some self driving abilities and eventually full self driving, just by a completely new device that pairs to the iPhone. They can possibly strong arm autos to make the plug and play real smooth. It's not that far fetched. They might actually be able to do something using mixed reality, given how either pure vision based or lidar based self driving approaches are still not reaching the levels they were supposed to years ago.
This could be under the usual AI umbrella like other companies, but the fact that there is an AI DR to Tim Cook makes me think self driving is big on the agenda. I"m not sure which other AI effort is so valuable to Apple to warrant a SVP.
https://www.apple.com/in/leadership/john-giannandrea/
I don't get why Apple's user experience keeps being repeated as "second to none". It really depends on what you are doing and used to. I personally find Android easier to use than iOS, but maybe I would feel differently if I haven't been using it for a while.
Although iOS is my personal preference over Android, I frequently find myself stuck whenever I tried to go beyond Apple's intended "user journey/flow". It definitely has a trade off.
Agreed. And just look at the debacles of their various mice and keyboards to see how much they actually care about delivering great user experience for everyone. They prioritise "design" and company image every time.
All Apple did is commodify the industry, and that business model has proven to be successful for them (same as it was with the iPod).
At the end of the day, Apple's contributions to technology aren't chivalric acts of kindness. Their ultimate goal is the same as everyone, running a rent collection business and relying on their services to make consistent income. That's what I think we need to fix. Apple can continue to make phones, we just need to separate their services (the App Store, Apple Music, Apple TV, Podcasts, etc.) from their hardware business. If they did that, I might actually buy a Mac again!
A commodity is something by definition that is easily substitutable and you have to compete on price. Apple products are anything but a “commodity”. This is kinda Econ 101.
The iPod and the iPhone both felt like big steps at the time. For both of those categories Apple led by example and basically forced everyone to try to fit their example.
3. longer battery life (unless it contradicts rule 1 or 2)
It's really that simple. Apple fought against this a long time before they gave up and realized the truth. They shipped smaller phones long after Android had moved on to larger screens.
I switched over to the dark side (Apple) specifically after I explained to my mom how to pair AirPods. Idk what pairing in android is like now to be fair
You pull down on the screen to show the top cards for various settings and long press Bluetooth to open up options, then press "+Pair Device". Put whatever device you are connecting in pairing mode, then click on it in that list once it shows up. It's pretty self explanatory on the Android side, the issues seem to stem from the implementation of Bluetooth on many other devices.
With samsung and the galaxy buds, you open the buds charging case. Then a pop up comes up on your phone, you tap connect and it installs the control panel for your buds and that's it. It seems to be the same on ios.
Ahh apple forced them to improve this experience after all eh? I remember Bluetooth pairing quite a bit slower and cumbersome on Android pre-airpods era.
Given the number of times I've seen a reported, verified bug in OS X be "fixed" by hiding the bug from the public tracker and marking it "will not fix," I would have a hard time ever trusting a car made by Apple.
Apple also makes their products to be disposable, seemingly as part of the culture, while a well-made electric car can run to a million miles over 50+ years. That's a very different build philosophy.
The key to me is that Apple presents the image of perfect fit and finish--beyond that their products are not problematic in a lot of ways (ability to modify them, or expand them, or extend them in ways that Apple doesn't approve of...). Some of their tech is cool, don't get me wrong. But it's far from perfect.
I would imagine an Apple car that only supports Apple Maps, Apple Music/Podcasts, and Siri and will only connect to iOS devices...and that costs twice as much as the Tesla for the base model, and more if you want a reasonable range. Pandora? Spotify? Waze? Meh. Sorry. Oh, and don't forget monthly fees for navigation; probably more like the $36/month of the Audi EV than the free navigation for the Tesla.
I'm sure there's a market for it. There are a lot of people who love Apple and who have money.
>a well-made electric car can run to a million miles over 50+ years. That's a very different build philosophy.
Source? Apple currently makes the longest lasting consumer devices with the longest lasting software support, so not sure how one can conclude longevity is not in their build “philosophy”.
>I would imagine an Apple car that only supports Apple Maps, Apple Music/Podcasts, and Siri and will only connect to iOS devices...and that costs twice as much as the Tesla for the base model, and more if you want a reasonable range. Pandora? Spotify? Waze? Meh. Sorry. Oh, and don't forget monthly fees for navigation; probably more like the $36/month of the Audi EV than the free navigation for the Tesla.
Why? All of those apps are
usable in every Apple device’s OS today, including Carplay. And Apple Maps has had free navigation since inception.
Also, I can get into almost any recent car and plug in my iPhone or Android phone and have access to CarPlay and Android Auto, and get access to a ton of apps, except in a Tesla. Seems like Tesla is being the more restrictive party here.
Fit and finish has absolutely collapsed in recent Apple software. Glitches and bugs all over the place. It's almost enough to tempt one to see if this really is, finally, the year of Linux of the desktop. Almost.
I would disagree about Apple making products to be disposable, though! I've found Apple hardware to be incredibly long lasting. Their phones, ipads, and iphones all last years and years and years in my experience.
> Fit and finish has absolutely collapsed in recent Apple software.
Bugginess abounds more than ever in Apple's software, and I'd love for them to take a cycle off and just work on fit and finish and bugs rather than features. But to be fair, if you're judging against the experience of using Windows, well let's just say that's a low bar to beat.
As far as Linux desktops go, I think the way they run very solidly these days is phenomenal, but I don't think they solve everyday problems (things that watches and phones and other devices can do) as well as Apple. If you embrace Apple devices and services, you have a whole bunch of tools that work phenomenally together in smart ways. I don't think Linux really can match that whole package anytime soon.
> judging against the experience of using Windows, well let's just say that's a low bar to beat.
Honestly, even with all the bullshit that Microsoft has been pulling, this isn't really true. I have used all three extensively in the past year (Windows since I was a teenager, switched to Linux only for 1 year, work has had me on an Apple device for 6 months). Linux just works. Windows usually just works, if you can ignore their asinine "features" such as adverts and Edge nags. Apple is by far the worst of the bunch, it feels like the entire platform is teetering on the edge of absolute chaos, held together only by the thankless work of the community (Brew, Co/lima, etc.). A fresh install of MacOS is completely and utterly incompetent.
> if you can ignore their asinine "features" such as adverts and Edge nags
Ads can thankfully be switched of (at least as of now). As for the Edge nags that's really rich. Especially since it happens in such a slimy way. Indicating in an underhanded way that your browser settings are insecure.
Else than that Windows works mostly fine since XP. Even with Vista I didn't have that much of a hate relationship as the general vitriol would suggest.
> a well-made electric car can run to a million miles over 50+ years.
That remains to be seen.
You mention Tesla as an alternative, but they're well-known for their fit and finish and repairability issues.[1][2]
Apple's software fit and finish has taken a dive. My Tesla isn't much better. (ex: I couldn't move my headrest for a month.) Poke around teslamotorsclub.com and you'll find all kinds of silly bugs that drag on.
> free navigation for the Tesla
Tesla builds 8 years of connectivity into the initial sticker cost, after that they will be charging.[3] Apple will probably charge too if it also includes network connectivity.
> Pandora? Spotify? Waze? Meh. Sorry.
Apple is especially bad about lock-in. I understand Pandora, Spotify, and Waze are installable on CarPlay (I haven't tried them), but there's still plenty of walled garden stuff going on elsewhere.
> while a well-made electric car can run to a million miles over 50+ years
That is a big claim, which is completely unsupported by reality. ICEVs do not get recycled because the engine died. Body rot, repairs that cost more than the value of the car, etc, this is why cars are taken off the road.
If anything, the current batch of early generation EVs are probably going to have shorter than average lifespans compared to established ICEVs, not longer.
There is a someone on YouTube who works driving HGVs for a large vehicle recycling company in the UK. I'm often surprised by the cars that are considered end of life. Cars which I still think of as recent models.
It would be great to see some statistics but to me most of the cars he picks up require some kind of major repair work making it uneconomical to fix. Often not the engine admittedly, the vast majority can drag themselves onto the back of the truck under their own power (and it's so much faster to do that than get out the winch cable that there is a big incentive for him to try). Usually though they aren't running correctly or have obvious issues with the clutch or gearbox. Almost none of the modern cars suffer any appreciable rot.
On the other hand I've been watching the price of 1st generation Nissan Leafs as I want one as a run around and over the last couple of years there prices appear to have increased. There are a couple of companies who will swap a 40kwh battery pack into a 24kwh leaf making it a very usable vehicle indeed, though the people doing this seem to be doing it for sentimental reason as you can buy a 5 year newer car with a 40kwh battery pack for the same net cost.
The price for a full 24kwh battery appears to be in the £2-4k range as even with 20% degradation it's still a huge amount of stationary storage.
I live in the Midwest (US) and all I see is cars rotting. Cars under 5 years where the owner doesn't take care of the paint (wash/wax etc) and the wheel wells start to rust off. I even play a game with my kids where we watch for "Pavement Princess" trucks that have rust.
I've had a good look around my local area and very few of the cars have any visible rust. We have a fairly mild climate in South East England but we do use salt on the roads in winter time.
Of the two vehicles with any noticeable rust, one is a '05 Mercedes Sprinter, these seem to be predisposed to rust. The other was a T registered (1999) Land Rover Discovery but even that has obviously been modified for off-road use so it's hardly fair to include it.
I wonder if this is climate related or US cars are not built with the same rust treatment.
It is normal for a car with that many miles to need to have some replacement parts. There are users who have reported going over 500,000 km on original battery (20% degradation).
The battery pack was recalled and its replacement has logged 1,000,000 km.
Similarly, three of the four motors were all recalled at the same time, the fourth one wasn't and made it to 1,000,000 km, possibly 1,500,000 as well, the article says they don't know.
Parts which are recalled and replaced by the manufacturer say something about reliability, but nothing about durability: reliability tends to improve.
Regardless, my point is the engines were 3/4 replaced once, not replaced three different times. The battery was also replaced twice, but that's because the interim was a loaner, not because it failed twice.
> The Tesla Model S P85 is a single-motor, rear-wheel-drive car. High power and torque was an issue in the early Teslas, which caused a few motor replacements. Three units were replaced by 680,000 km and the fourth one was running up to 1,000,000 km.
Not sure how you read that as 3 motors where replaced at the same time. It would be somewhat pointless given that the Model S only has a single motor. Three were replaced before 680,000km and the final replacement made it to 1,000,000km.
The word recall doesn't appear in the article. The first battery had a fault. By the sounds of things Tesla may have found a design fault which was then fixed because of the investigation into that particular battery but that interpretation is reading between the lines.
I take it back, it was me, not you, who read it wrong. I had remembered the Model S as being a quad motor vehicle, incorrectly.
Accordingly, I'll grant that this isn't a good example of an EV making it past the million-mile mark. I've made the case elsewhere for why it's not such a crazy thing to expect.
Thanks for your candour. For what it's worth I absolutely agree with you fundamentally there is no reason an EV shouldn't be able to make the million mile mark with only modest maintenance (perhaps having to replace individual components of the motors, perhaps a bearing for example). Fundamentally they don't have points of sliding friction, this makes wear and reliability much easier to achieve.
What impact this would have on the battery is an interesting question but with modern temperature control and BMS systems it may not even be a deal-breaker.
I didn't buy a macbook because it had Apple logo on it, I bought it because of the M1 chip that was 1 generation ahead of anybody else. Similarly, I bought an iPhone mini because its form factor worked very well for me.
If Apple introduced a VR headset I can already tell you that I won't buy it. If their car is inferior to others on the market then I won't buy it. I think most Apple consumer falls in the same camp as me.
> If Apple introduced a VR headset I can already tell you that I won't buy it.
I might if it worked with existing VR games, etc. because the Oculus software on Windows is a shambles. Lost count of the number of times it just plain won't start because it thinks I'm N Windows updates behind (even though I'm not.) Also had to completely wipe and reinstall a few times. Then when it does agree that I have a headset and it recognises that I'm wearing it, sometimes it'll just ... not show anything for a few minutes. Or a game will crash (not always Oculus' fault) and the software will insist I can't start anything else because the other game is still running...
macOS might have its glitches but software just works 99.9% of the time.
If the manufacturer makes parts easily available, wouldn't the incentive to steal devices to sell for parts more or less disappear? Same thing with counterfeit parts. The market for stolen/fake parts exists because OEM parts are essentially impossible to acquire legally.
Serialisation is simply another way for Apple to maintain control. You can now repair a device, but only with Apple's blessing and knowledge. The privacy/safety stories they sell are just that.
An iPhone-quality OLED display is always going to cost $150+ new as part. That alone is enough value to steal a phone for parts.
Personally, serialization that alerts the user "you have unauthorized parts, if your battery catches on fire or your screen has crappy colors it's not our fault" -> this is good, I am in favor of this, serialization that disables the device or features -> bad.
The disposability allegation was always bullcrap. iPhones have lead in terms of service lifetime, second hand value retention, and manufacturer software support for so long now and by such a huge margin I wonder at the motives of anyone still saying this.
>while a well-made electric car can run to a million miles over 50+ years. That's a very different build philosophy.
I'm trying to decide if this is something you actually think or is incredibly thick hyperbole. Why would you say a well-made electric car could run that many miles rather than the 200k+ mile cars that actually exist?
Well made ICE vehicle could do that too. But the costs are not worth it for consumers. Big ass diesel semi trucks go over 1 million miles, then they are rebuilt and put back into service. Reliability doesn't just come because your car has an electric motor in it.
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.
Apple doesn't get into low margin businesses. They get into an adjacent business. A prime example is TVs. There is no Apple TV set. There is AppleTV, a high margin add on for any TV with HDMI that makes it "just work".
They had the chance to buy a cellular carrier, but chose not to, because it's low margin. Instead they make a phone that works on any carrier.
Cars are a low margin business. But a car add-on could be a high margin business. They already have CarPlay, but I can see them making a hardware add-on for cars.
Aren't products like smartphones, laptops, desktops, etc all low-margin businesses though? At least for every other company in the market. Apple just sticks to the high end?
Porsche sells hundreds of thousands of vehicles per year with something like $20k profit per car on a $90k average selling price. There could be big demand for an innovative Tesla equivalent that didn't have so many build quality issues.
And Foxconn is desperate to get an Apple car contract. Car companies really screwed themselves by outsourcing everything to suppliers (who have much higher profit margins than the car manufacturers at this point) except the internal combustion engine which is losing importance fast. What I am seeing here for Apple is big demand, low barrier to entry, and high profits.
Apple is like other big companies, fundamentally risk averse. They seem incapable of straying too far from their core business, which at this point is making laptops and phones (and content delivery to those platforms). It's a very lucrative business and they've been gradually shifting revenue to software and content distribution. But that business in turn is ironically held back by the notion that it requires Apple hardware. They are not selling a lot to non Apple hardware owners. So, from that point of view, they actually should be expanding their platform to new areas. Like the living room or the car.
Which begs the question why there is no Apple gaming console, an Apple TV (as in an actual TV). Instead what we got was a rather underwhelming Apple TV thing that isn't very good as a gaming console and more of a chrome cast substitute aimed at people who want to experience a very watered down Apple experience on their non Apple TV. And we got the streaming service which so far isn't making too much of a dent in Netflix.
What's weird is that they've had a great chip for many years that is perfectly capable of running lots of games. A lot of their mobile apps are in fact games and they run great on IOS. And the M1/M2 chips are pretty decent at running GPU accelerated software as well. But what they did not do was open up the platform to games. They have a few game ports running on mac OS and the Apple TV is technically an IOS device and even has some games. But it's so crippled that that is very much a side show of a side show. The Apple TV itself is of course a side show and playing games on it is very much an afterthought; that's not what it's for.
Cars are much worse for Apple. They could do one on paper but they'd have to partner with someone on all the car bits, which is uncomfortable for Apple (it means they don't control the platform) because they don't have a lot of in house experience building cars. And there are a lot of new companies focusing on making great cars right now (Tesla famously being labeled the Apple of cars, for example). And, car ventures are very capital intensive. You'd need many billions of investment to produce even a small number of cars. Tens/hundreds of billions to scale up; like Tesla has done. That makes it a very risky business.
So, they did Apple Car play instead, which seems the closest Apple will get to the automotive experience and it's similar to the Apple TV in the sense that it's a watered down experience that only makes sense for existing Apple users. It expands their reach a little and it brings in some revenue. But it's not an Apple Car.
I think people focus too much on the actual car in this speculation. What about the service? Apple is really, really good at finding industries full of bullshit (computers in the 80's, mobile phones in the early 2000's) and saying, "okay, here's a slightly better looking product, with fewer features, and no more bullshit."
The vehicle market is full of bullshit. Tesla took the same tactic and has knocked it down considerably, but there's still the rest of the market.
I don't think you can say Tesla is "no more bullshit". If anything they are the one adding shiny useless feature for the buzz, and having a terrible all touch UI that makes no sense for driving.
The only car manufacturer that is "no more bullshit" would be Dacia and that's not the same segment. But they are indeed doing really well!
Not having to deal with dealerships, actual software updates instead of just abandoning software (BlueLink anyone?), pushing maintenance from every 6 months to ~2 years
I don't own or want a Tesla, but its certainly different from the rest of the industry
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.
The iBug will probably be good for some people but horrible for others.
"It just works" is a fine motto, but a lie. Devices often need intervention to work properly or to work at all. Laptops and phones generally require a lot less intervention than cars. Some of us are happy to outsource that labour to others. Some of us are fascinated with how things work and prefer to at least try fixing things ourselves. I have learned from personal experience that Apple is outright hostile to the latter form of folk.
I fully expect an Apple car will have all manner of non-standard screws, fasteners, and parts. It will be technically possible for third party mechanics to deal with, but letting one breathe on your iBug will void the warranty. Just opening the hood will, no doubt, require special tools and break multiple tamper-proof warranty-voiding seals.
If you're happy taking your iBug into an Apple store every time you hear a new noise, you'll be fine with an iBug. If you're the sort who wants to pop the hood and try to track down the problem yourself, then beware!
This is a disappointing read, zero insight into objectives beyond an EV for end consumers.
There is so much more to consider - progressing Carplay integration, demand for processing/sensing, partnerships, building knowledge, etc. Take the Sony Vision S for example, that was never intended to be a produced vehicle.
It’s funny how Apple CarPlay is basically the Android of the car world. While Tesla is more like IOS/iPhone, controlling both the hardware and software.
I mean iPhone apps still run fine through Bluetooth and there is a phone dock right under the main screen in Tesla so no problem seeing the phone and interacting.
I wish Toyota would partner with Apple for their internal maps, screen, controls, etc. Toyota seems to have a major problem with intuitive usability (especially for my parents who are in their 80s).
Toyota is the largest car company in the world and makes the most reliable vehicles in the world, but they need that extra touch to take them to the next level.
Just as I would never by a phone that is not an iPhone, or a laptop that is not a MacBook, I would never buy a car that is not a Toyota. But Toyota does have some room for improvement.
Also, an Apple-Toyota partnership would make Teslas look pathetic in comparison.
Toyota is heavily investing and committed to launch their own groundbreaking Arene OS solution through the Toyota's Woven Planet Group starting in 2025.
They've hired a ton of foreign software engineers into the woven group. If anything I wonder if woven's biggest impact will have been ease of hiring talent.
Apple has already publicly torpedoed their relationship with one major manufacturer (Hyundai/Kia). It's suspected that the same thing has happened less publicly with others like Nissan. They've supposedly been talking with Toyota for a bit, but that's always been a weird choice because Toyota leadership has never fully bought into the idea of electric vehicles and SV development styles, nor are they likely to enjoy being treated the way Apple tends to treat "suppliers". They also have their own development units for this, like GM and most of the German manufacturers.
I don't really care about electric vehicles either -- I think Toyota has its head on straight in this regard. Hybrids are fantastic. Electric vehicles are an important subset of the market, but Toyota makes vehicles that people rely on in the remotest and roughest parts of the world. If you're running drugs in the mountains of El Salvador or running from rebels in the Congo then you want a Toyota, not a Tesla.
I saw my share of Toyota Prius's and light trucks when I was working in Central Asia/Siberia, but I'm not sure it's relevant to the apple car discussion. It's generally thought that project titan is an electric vehicle (and my limited knowledge of the project from their various efforts to recruit me supports this), nor are ruggedized products Apple's traditional market. Offroad capabilities also don't make much sense in the context of a consumer-focused self-driving vehicle given the limited utility and difficulty compared even to on-road usage. It's more of a DoD research area at the moment.
So Toyota makes a strange bedfellow for Apple here.
Like many things, it's a question of definitions. There are already cars on the road operating commercial autonomous services. It's new and immmature, but in a very real sense "self-driving" is already here. L5 or offroad might still be decades out from initial introduction.
Toyota already makes cars that work really well and the company as a whole is undervalued (less than 1/3 of what TSLA is valued at). The point is for Apple to get into a huge market and make a ton of money with a best-in-class product. And no, self-driving is not already here.
Right, give up all control over infotainment to Apple of all companies - that'll surely work well for them.
At least with something open source they retain some control. Besides Toyota has already got you and me both because they're who they are - and part of that is they are actively involved with their suppliers and even own them in part.
If you want to you can already use Apple maps via carplay on Toyotas. What would be the benefit to Toyota for forcing Apple maps on their customers for the small portion of vehicles people now a days buy with separate navigation system?
The benefit to Apple would be getting massive amounts of information about roads and traffic conditions for their maps so that they would be better than they are now. The benefit to Toyota would be getting world-class mapping software and great usability design.
That would be around $19 billion and Apple has around $40 billion on hand. Although I think the culture of Japan would cause more difficulties other than having enough money to afford it.
Because Toyota makes reliable cars. As I noted above, I would never buy a car that is not a Toyota. If you want to be flashy, you get a BMW, but it you want to fight a war in the Middle East you get a Toyota Land Cruiser. Don't dismiss the reliability of Toyotas -- they really have it figured out.
There have been a lot of failed new car company startups. Like the Tucker, the Bricklin, the DeLorean. It's really, really, really hard to create a new car company. The usual problem is way, way underestimating the amount of capital it will take.
Tesla is an amazing company because they achieved it.
Apple's expertise is in making software and tiny electrical gadgets. How they thought that would translate into expertise in making cars is beyond me. It makes about as much sense as diversifying into making jet engines.
> How they thought that would translate into expertise in making cars is beyond me
Is there any concrete statement/"evidence" that they ever seriously intended to "make cars"? Media reports always talk about "Apple cars", but the concrete visible bits I've seen also fit a software/computer-angle. But "Apple is dabbling in self-driving tech like any other large company with lots of money and an AI/ML-department" isn't as catchy a story.
Does anyone really think Apple is building a car? I don't and I never did. It makes no sense. It's not an industry one can just "switch into." The capital requirements for owning a car factory are ridiculous and it's not something you can outsource. There is zero crossover between consumer entertainment devices and the car business, as evidenced by the poor state of tech in cars! This is not something Apple can fix by making cars.
> There is zero crossover between consumer entertainment devices and the car business, as evidenced by the poor state of tech in cars!
That looks similar to the state of MP3 players before the iPod, or smartphones before the iPhone. I think a self-driving car with a car-width display and hifi stereo (or better) could be a huge success, even if the self-driving only works on highways, as with the latest Mercedes.
> It's not an industry one can just "switch into."
“Now compare that effort and overlay the mobile handset business. This is not an emerging business. In fact it's gone so far that it's in the process of consolidation with probably two players dominating everything, Nokia Corp. NOK, -0.68% and Motorola Inc. MOT
During this phase of a market margins are incredibly thin so that the small fry cannot compete without losing a lot of money.
As for advertising and expensive marketing this is nothing like Apple has ever stepped into. It's a buzz saw waiting to chop up newbies
The problem here is that while Apple can play the fashion game as well as any company, there is no evidence that it can play it fast enough. These phones go in and out of style so fast that unless Apple has half a dozen variants in the pipeline, its phone, even if immediately successful, will be passé within 3 months.
There is no likelihood that Apple can be successful in a business this competitive.”
Of course, that doesn’t imply the car industry is similar or that Apple can find the magic that cracks open the market, but they may think making a side bet of a few billion (Apple’s problem is that their MVP is larger than what the CEOs of most startups can only dream of) to see whether they can is a good idea.
The reason that Apple is able to sell iPads and iPhones is that they are small computers, something which Apple has made and sold from day 1. This is not true of cars. Apple's entire business model has been predicated on proprietary computer hardware that's smaller and more capable with each iteration. When it became possible to play music, watch videos, and make phone calls on these small computers, Apple started selling them for that. The only new business Apple has ever gotten into is media, and that rides on the back of their hardware.
None of this is true for cars! Apple's production, design, marketing, etc. have no overlap with how cars are made or sold -- and no amount of wishing or money will give them that overlap. It's not that it's a new business for Apple, cars are completely unrelated to anything Apple has ever made or done. No business in history has ever pulled off a switch like that. It's the reason that railroads never became airlines, for example.
Even with unlimited capital, Apple lacks the mindset to produce and market a car out of thin air -- a task which is difficult even for those entrenched in the industry.
The Verge's auto editor's repeated stance (it's easiest to spot in somewhat recent Ford F-150 Lightning articles) is that any modern EV is "a computer on wheels". Especially as cars trade physical cabin controls for touch screens, the resemblance to phones only increases. But there's also the fact that EV's physically simple drivetrain is augmented by the fact that it is much more than ICE a "software-defined drivetrain" with firmware replacing things that used to be physics (the power/torque curve of the acceleration pedal, for instance).
There's certainly enough people outside of Apple wondering if "cars are just computers now with wheels" that maybe Apple isn't entirely crazy if they think it is an adjacent market they might compete in.
And all of that's before buying into any hype about "self-driving" and "AI cars".
Well, I'll go ahead and say the Verge's auto editor is wrong on this one. A car is a mechanical device with lots of moving parts which aren't programmable. It's also a safety cage for people and regulatory nightmare for compliance with every jurisdiction's safety requirements, neither of which Apple is prepared for. Finally, cars require a sales and support network which Apple won't be able to build. It's more accurate to think of cars as boxes with wheels. The computer being in charge of throttle, brake, and speed has been a factor for a long time -- before Apple got involved -- and doesn't make Apple a car company.
Disney said no to buying Teitter because it would be a bad look, is a chaotic & messy property to acquire. It would be hard to manage & sully their clean image.
Associating yourself with automobiles doesnt feel exactly the same, but there's a similar jist to me. Cars have some very obvious bad impact on this world. Supporting & selling them is a pain. Trying to keep yourself as a loved respected treasured company would be much more difficult, quite likely impossible.
Automotive EE here… any article that talks about Tesla’s financials even indirectly and it does not immediately mention how much money they make by selling carbon credits back to GM Ford and Stellantis can pay immediately be disregarded.
A casual look at the numbers doesn’t explain much. But if you look at that 7% margin, and realize that Tesla is nearly doubling that with carbon credit sales which are 100% margin. It changes the picture.
Anyone else has a car they make 7% minus buying credits to be able to sell more in California. Tesla sells a car they make more. Without the carbon program Tesla would drastically have to change its model, which will be interesting because everyone is selling their own EVs and won’t need to buy as many credits soon.
It makes no sense for Apple to get into vehicles for 20 reasons, this is just one. They’re way too late.
Those credits aren't particularly relevant any more. Several years ago they were essential and made up practically the entirety of their profits, but today they're just a side-gig. In Q2'2022: $300m credits, $16 billion in total revenue, 2.3B in profit.
Wouldn’t people have said the same with mp3 players back in the day.
Honestly the biggest challenge will be manufacturing. Apple likes to surprise folks, how do you surprise them when you’ve got to build massive new factories
Wouldn't people have said the same thing with cell phones back in the day? In fact I had a discussion with an Apple store employee asking what they thought about the rumor that Apple was going to be releasing a phone. He said that there was no way Apple would even want to be in that space. I'm not saying they will get into cars, but you just never know.
This is true. I would say, however, getting into phones meant dealing with carriers and such. That is still not to the same level of complexity of a car, but I could see Apple partnering with an existing maker to help fill in areas that they don't have skills in. They did that when they partnered with Google for webservices during the iPhone initial release.
I agree but Apple is never first to the table, they always take others inventions and improve them. Apple also charges an insanely high profit margin so they might get by with or without the credits....
HN seems like the sort of audience who can tell me. This is a serious question: Why would anybody listen to Jean-Louis Gassée?
What I see is a career of failures, at Apple, at Be, at Palm, JLG was dealt good hands and some bad hands but played each indifferently. Did I miss something important ?
This criticism doesn't seem like it fits for the actual content of the article. I read through it and didn't see much appeal to authority going on here, it's arguments mixed with opinion and justification/examples.
The Polestar 2 feels like what an 'Apple car' would be like, to me. It seems to have a giant Android tablet in the middle console. Looks pretty smooth and tasteful overall but I can't summon up any excitement for it.
I own a relatively early Polestar 2 in the UK. It has been plagued with software problems, including a software update failing and bricking the car, requiring 3 different volvo techs to come and unbrick it.
Even with Google helping on the software!
Even now I'm stuck on 2.0 for some reason (2.2 is the latest in the UK). No idea why. Cant face the call to Polestar support and the inevitable reply of "Take it to a vovlo dealer".
The car itself is an absolutel monster. Love it to bits. The software not so much.
Given the relative simplicity of an electric drivetrain compared to ICE, is all that software absolutely necessary? I'm a bit shocked (pun intended?) to hear that your car got bricked by a software update.
The fun trade-off to the simplicity of the electric drivetrain is that the drivetrain is now almost entirely software defined. In an ICE your torque is a factor of a lot of physics: the physics of the motor, the fuel injector, the gear ratios in the transmission, and so on and so forth. With an EV motor it in theory has 100% torque physically available at all times, if you've got the power stored in your battery for that. You don't actually want to drive that way, though, because that can waste a lot of power, that can be dangerous, and that can cause damage (to tires, if nothing else).
The curves of how much power the car applies to an EV motor become software: everything about the "feel" of the acceleration pedal and even some of the "feel" of the brake pedal (because of regenerative braking) are software-defined curves. That's why EVs often give you multiple "Driving Modes" to explore to find the driving curve that feels the most fun for you to drive, or gives you the most ludicrous performance, or saves you the most battery power, or lets you do everything with a single pedal.
Some of that is that people are just so use to driving ICE vehicles that manufacturers feel the need to make EVs drive like ICE vehicles for comfort and familiarity, even though they don't have to (there's no transmission gears to physically shift).
Thanks for explaining that to me. That's such a fascinating way of looking at it. I wonder how long it will be before we get the Linux of cars. Or the Pine Laptop equivalent.
A mild problem that Apple has is that they seem to spend a lot of time solving the sort of problems that a highly paid VP from California would have.
Being frustrated by the driving experience and trying to solve that problem is in that category, being focused on the sort of annoyances that people spending huge amounts of time driving to Cupertino would have.
Meanwhile city governments around the US and the world are trying very hard to reduce the amount of cars on the road.
Would be nice if Apple were thinking ahead and not contributing to the entrenchment of this 20th century technology.
I found the announced enhancements to car play very interesting. To my understanding, it aims for replacing most of the user-facing software in cars. This is very tempting for car manufacturers, not to compete with car play, but just embrace it. It almost looks as if car play is to become the Windows of the car industry - instead of trying to come up with your own solution, just install the most widely used software available on the market. That could be a big step for Apple and hugely profitable, in the same way Windows made Microsoft into the giant it is.
It just could be that. But that would depend on the car manufacturers giving up on their own software so easily and it would be a completely new strategy for Apple. They love to control the whole stack. Even in cases, where they entered a market with a collaboration - the early iPod Phones come to my mind - they later switched to their own product.
Also, the rumor about an Apple car does keep coming back. And they spend a lot of money on what ever they are doing. So while the play on just Car Play might be strong, they do have something brewing in case car manufacturers don't just jump onto it. My favorite theory though is: they are building something which will be a "car" but as different from current cars as the iPhone was from mobile phones of its day and age. I would be really curious to see that.
Margins in the auto industry are tight and manufacturers are seeing software as their saviour. Hence we see software features allowing you to 'subscribe' to e.g. heated seats. There's hope in auto manufacturers for the "Smart TV play" where owner/driver analytics (anonymous and otherwise) can be sold on. Then there are hoped-for kickbacks from in-car infomercials advising drivers to replace consumables like tyres via a manufacturer-linked outlet. This is why car manufacturers fixate on their own software and yet car software will become more and more dysfunctional for the end user as they're the 'mark' not the customer. It could be hugely profitable for Apple to take over the space, but that would be at the expense of the car manufacturers' dreams of software-driven increase in margins, so I wouldn't bet on them signing up soon.
Possible CarPlay expansion aside--I can't even summon up a good devil's advocate argument for this.
I was having a discussion over the weekend over where Apple goes next with respect to hardware. I think my money is on AR if the many technical limitations can be overcome. There are also the social issues but as with many other things, I suspect a lot of people would be willing to put up with even more ubiquitous cameras in exchange for convenience whether you like it or not.
Setting aside technicals issues as a huge caveat, the promise of AR is massive. I'm actually somewhat surprised that we're not seeing more AR focused media to prime people to the possibilities (but maybe we're just too early).
Probably too early although we've seen some attempts with AR apps on phones.
As you say, technical is a huge caveat. But it's pretty easy to see that IF we could have glasses that could overlay/enhance/record/etc. there are so many possibilities in a way there aren't with VR for example--for both consumer and commercial uses. By contrast, VR seems pretty limited; immersive gaming and virtual tourism just aren't that interesting for most people. And people don't want immersion in a lot of circumstances.
When you can envision a clear market based on "just" relatively straightforward (if significant) extrapolations of technology that seems something worth paying attention to.
Absolutely. I would absolutely love to work in the AR space at some point.
That said, I can just as easily identify any number of social/cognitive/cultural "diseases" or abuses of that world. Should the transition happen (and all signs point at the big players /trying/ to make it happen), we will have some gnarly traps to avoid - and I'm not very confident that we will do so with grace.
I don't even think about buying cars less than 10 years old or so. I have actually had better luck doing this than when I used to buy cars new or nearly-new. It weeds out the lemons and the owners who don't take care of their cars.
Let someone else take the depreciation and find out how they hold up in the long term. Does Apple have any history of supporting its hardware for that long?
This is something that really worries me about current automotive trends. Carmakers tend to assume a 10-year lifespan for their vehicles, though last I saw the average age of cars on the road in the US is slightly higher than that[0]. My current car is approaching 30 and I'm planning to replace it with something closer to 10-15 in the near future, old enough to avoid touchscreens and new enough to not be destroyed by rust (yet).
With vehicles incorporating more technology, I'm concerned they might stop lasting long enough for rust to be an issue. Tech companies have already perfected a model of planned obsolescence. If cars start becoming obsolete and unusable as fast as tech products do, they won't have a chance to depreciate enough for me to afford one.
I forgot where it was exactly, but I remember a discussion on a podcast about how auto manufacturers deliberately price their replacement electronics to force planned obsolescence. The example brought up was an SUV that has a large display that controls everything from HVAC to the radio. The screen had an expected service life of something like 7 years, but a replacement price of something like $7k. The thought was that when people are faced with a price tag like that on a depreciated asset, they'll be more likely to trade it in for a new model.
Maybe I'm just a curmudgeon but that would all but guarantee my new model wasn't bought from the same manufacturer.
Could that have been 2.5 Admins episode 78? They were discussing the incident where a radio station broadcast a corrupted image file that bricked Mazda radios that received it.
The specific number sounded familiar, but I bet a lot of podcasts were talking about replacement automotive electronic parts in the wake of that Mazda radio news.
I was trying to do this and the market seems terrible. I can buy a 10-12yr old car with 150k miles for >$10k (at least in models that I was looking at). Or stuff that is hard to maintain for $5k (which is what I'm already driving). Newer used cars are almost as much or even more than new! Ended up putting a deposit on a new one.
I have a 2009 Toyota Prius and it has never once had a mechanical problem. Literally the only issue it has ever had is an inaccurate tire pressure indicator light on the dashboard.
I don’t see the point of them selling a car. Expanding CarPlay is more realistic. Let the automakers produce the vehicle code and apple takes care of the screens and what nots. I’d love to be able to build iOS apps for my car. Though as someone who values consumer and ownership rights, it might not be a great idea after all.
The competitive advantages of Apple are a strong brand, a huge stack of cash, world-class software and silicon engineers and second-to-none operations to build and sell millions of high-tech devices.
They can make a car if they want to make a car.
They could also make nice planes and boats...
The question is, how competitive can they be in this market?
Originally, Apple desired to make the Apple TV (hardware) the complete replacement for all your TV viewing needs. And for all the streaming services to just be dumb content pipes connected through a common / consistent Apple TV (app/software) UI.
Then Apple realized the Netflix's of the world are not going to give up the user experience, let alone the direct relationship with the user.
So Apple then pivots by making Apple TV just the platform for some other company to deliver their stream service through (like the Apple CarPlay).
They then refine their strategy to come around to realizing, they need to make their own content (the new Apple CarPlay HUD / instrumentation).
What if Apple moved sideways and got into the electric motor scooter market instead and displacing the likes of Vespa? If they keep the power low enough (no freeway driving here!) then most states wouldn't require a special endorsement to ride it. It would be the ultimate cafe runner!
Hipsters, college students, high school students, and suburban folks needing to drive everywhere would love it - and it would be reducing the amount of dino fuel burning vehicles on the road. The battery could be easily removable and carried in to charge in your house/apartment/dorm without any special equipment. Apple could absolutely kill this market.
You may be right but I wonder how such a market would compare to MacBooks? I wonder what the margins are? I think it's a big market and I don't see the so-called Big Four motorcycle manufacturers as being able to garner the public sentiment needed to tackle it. Apple could make it an extension of their environmental programs. Just a thought.
Well, MacBooks are the majority of Macs sold. 1Q of 2022, Apple sold roughly 3 million Macs. Figure an average of $1000 per Mac (which is low, but ¯\_(ツ)_/¯ ), that's almost $3B. Now Apple no longer breaks out product sales, so this is market research data, but it's probably safe to figure the annual Mac market at around $10B.
I can't see scooters being a big market at all, at least not at the margins Apple likes.
If it's something they officially give up on: Good. There's no sense in trying to further extend mega caps. If there were really a litany of issues with how vehicles were made, one would expect investment to appear in research and development that addresses those specific issues, not vehicles appearing out of capital groundswells from disasters.
It's alarming that the media doesn't call this what it is: a sell signal, and a clear sign that stock buybacks, collusion, and scared FTC beauraucrats who aren't willing to throw down the antitrust flag are making a sick economy sicker.
This may have already been said, but QNX is the underlying OS for CarPlay, and not iOS / macOS / *os. It has a pretty strong track record for realtime capabilities.
Off topic, I am really digging the artwork at the top of this article.
The bondi blue iMac, on wheels so snug in their wells they couldn’t turn more than a few degrees, standing on a white polished surface that it couldn’t drive on without unsightly black streaks, with a clearance so low it needs that polished surface to drive on. The most impractical car design, but quintessentially Apple.
It is part homage and part diss at the same time. I love it.
Having owned both MB and Porsche I can say I would pay for having an Apple driven, configurable dial set. That being said, the trend to replace buttons that you can feel and learn and access without thinking (looking at you Tesla) I hope there is some sanity to the design. Screens for what they are good at, buttons for normal everyday stuff!
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 automakers don't see this yet, and as a result will likely be bankrupt within 10-15 years.
What if Apple made a 1500 dollar electric Mini (car)?
Might just work.
I have seen some comments here saying that all the money in the world can't buy you a better mobile phone. If Apple is able to generalize that to another product class, the world might really change for the better.
I think a mini car would tank Apple's brand value significantly, especially if you think about the type of die hard apple fanboys who would be the first flock to hit the streets in these things. All it takes is a couple of people getting into some pretty dumb accidents to make people turn against them (the same way people judge BMW and Tesla drivers but probably to an even greater extent tbh).
I always liked OSX but an Apple Car is literally something I would never buy. Their walled garden manipulative BS is the exact opposite of what I want in a vehicle.
Maybe not quite the same thing, but OnePlus did a McLaren edition of one of their phones a few years back. It doesn't seem like it took the market by storm but it's still popular in some circles. (The improved specs certainly helped as well.)
What is the point of this article? I guess it had good engagement here but ultimately doesn’t provide anything of value. Apple will get into the car business if it can offer something better. Either way the product will be wonderful if they do, and we know they won’t abandon it too. So if they get in we can see iteratively improving product that is baseline better than many/most. Does it happen? Who knows?
They can set up a facility and employ people in a country without paying off their debt. What exactly does Philippines have to offer that others don't?
If the Philippine debt is repaid, you'll have established the new Silicon Valley, complete with a talent pool dominated by software engineers and a large number of blockchain and AI experts.
I think it would be a very bad move to do something like this right now, when the Philippines is still run by the close-enough-to-fascist-to-make-little-difference dictator Duterte. Just as one example of why doing anything that even appears to legitimize and support him (or anything that puts you or yours in his power) is a bad idea, his way of dealing with "the drug problem" is just to kill drug users outright. To the tune of tens of thousands.
I certainly feel for the people of the Philippines, and setting up a major Apple HQ there would likely improve their opportunities somewhat, but as long as Duterte or anyone like him is in charge there, there are just so many reasons not to make any significant commitments to the Philippines.
