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Volkswagen CEO Says He's Not Scared of Apple (cnn.com) 142

Posted by msmash from the war-of-words dept.
Volkswagen's CEO Herbert Diess isn't intimidated by Apple, even though the tech company potentially has an electric car on the way. From a report: "The car industry is not a typical tech sector that you could take over at a single stroke," Diess said in an interview with German newspaper Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung. "Apple will not manage that overnight." For years, industry observers have speculated that Apple will release its own electric, self-driving car. That conversation was reignited in December 2020, when Reuters, citing unnamed sources, reported that Apple planned to produce a passenger vehicle by 2024.

In April 2017, Apple received a permit from the California Department of Motor Vehicles to test self-driving vehicles there. "There's just so much going on in [electric and autonomous vehicles] and connected tech," Morgan Stanley analysts wrote in a note to investors in December 2020. "It is perhaps a fitting time of the world's most valuable company to play its hand in the $10 trillion global mobility market." Volkswagen is also aiming to be a dominant force in the electric car field. The car company sold 231,600 battery electric vehicles in 2020, according to figures published by the company in January.
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Volkswagen CEO Says He's Not Scared of Apple More

Volkswagen CEO Says He's Not Scared of Apple

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  • 3rd party repair centers should be scared of apple (Score:5, Insightful)

    by Joe_Dragon ( 2206452 ) on Monday February 15, 2021 @11:08PM (#61067530)

    3rd party repair centers should be scared of apple cars

    • Re: (Score:2)

      by AmiMoJo ( 196126 )

      Car manufacturers already tried that, the law had to clamp down on them.

      Doubtless Apple would try it anyway, but hopefully by then some decent right to repair laws for their phones will have come in.

    • 3rd party repair centers should be scared of electric cars. There are fewer moving parts and they should require much less maintenance. These types of repair shops have already been suffering because modern cars are so much more reliable and there are so many people who lease or rely on dealer warranties. The era of the grease monkeys is coming to an end.

      • The reliability of Teslas suggests otherwise.

    • Apple customers are rich or have sufficient credit and can afford not to care about repair costs. Wreck costs will be covered bu insurance so that's no problem either. Initial offerings will likely follow the "boutique toy" Tesla model as it perfectly suits Apple.
      Everything about Apple philosophy is awful if applied to automobiles but for new car owners that doesn't matter as they can lease instead of buy their vehicles.
      Impractical-to-economically-repair vehicles perfectly suit the lease model (modern Germa

  • Electric cars are not disruptive tech anymore (Score:3, Insightful)

    by Just A Gigolo ( 5876130 ) on Monday February 15, 2021 @11:12PM (#61067540)
    This is not your smartphone revolution of 2006 anymore, they playing field is very even. Apple would need to reinvent the car ie. the iCar in order to make any impact on the current trends on electric vehicles and their sales. Tread carefully on this one Apple.

    • Re:Electric cars are not disruptive tech anymore (Score:4, Insightful)

      by SvnLyrBrto ( 62138 ) on Monday February 15, 2021 @11:25PM (#61067556)

      There's at least one thing Apple could do that would be the equivalent of launching the iPhone or iPod: Use their cash stockpile to buy one of the national gas station chains and convert them to charging stations for EVs.

      That's really the last hurdle for electric cars. Home charging is fine if you own your own house with a garage and can have a charger put in. But if you rent, or your home doesn't have a garage, or the wiring to the garage is inadequate for a charger; you're planning every trip around the supercharger network, which was really designed for road trips, not day-to-day usage. Hell... if I could just pop into the corner Shell station and fill up my battery the same way I can fill my gas tank now; I'd already own a Model 3 myself. And Apple has the cash to make that happen.

      Though, I guess they both launch a new electric car AND buy and convert one of the gas chains to support it. But it's the second half that would really be the revolution.

      • Yeah but no one wants to sit at the local super-charger 40 minutes once a week. When you're doing long trips it's ok, but not regularly. Putting them at grocery stores is a good idea.

      • Buying out a national Gas Station chain and converting them to EV Charging isn't really disruptive, unless you build an EV with a battery capable of charging in 5 minutes. Then you have disruptive tech.

      • buy one of the national gas station chains and convert them to charging stations for EVs.

        That makes no sense.

        An EV charging station is nothing like a gas station.

        My charging station is a 220v electrical outlet in my garage. It is two inches wide and four inches high.

        The only time I use any other charger is on long trips when I use a supercharger on the highway. But a supercharger is also nothing like a gas station. It is the size of a parking meter.

        A major advantage of EVs is that you can charge at home. You can charge in the parking lot at work. Or at the mall, or the grocery store.

        • Re: (Score:2)

          by nagora ( 177841 )

          A major advantage of EVs is that you can charge at home.

          That's the opposite of an advantage - that's a workaround. If I'm driving through the Scottish Highlands it's of no value whatsoever.

          • A major advantage of EVs is that you can charge at home.

            That's the opposite of an advantage - that's a workaround. If I'm driving through the Scottish Highlands it's of no value whatsoever.

            What I always see happening during these EV hatefests is that people take a specific use for a vehicle, then declare it an utter failure because it doesn't match some predetermined specific case that is apparently critical. Should EV's be eliminated because Shanghai Bill charges his EV at home, which you apparently consider home charging a deal breaker? That is having multiple places to charge, one being in the convenience of your garage.

            Meanwhile, what do you think about this? Fake news? https://mashabl [mashable.com]

            • Re: (Score:2)

              by nagora ( 177841 )

              A major advantage of EVs is that you can charge at home.

              That's the opposite of an advantage - that's a workaround. If I'm driving through the Scottish Highlands it's of no value whatsoever.

              What I always see happening during these EV hatefests is that people take a specific use for a vehicle, then declare it an utter failure because it doesn't match some predetermined specific case that is apparently critical.

              If you live in the Scottish Highlands then it is fairly critical.

              But my point was more about the idea that being able to charge at home is not a substitute for being able to charge on the go. Obviously, if you can't charge on the go then it's the only option - hence a workaround. By "on the go" I mean charge in less than 15 minutes.

              I don't think any of this is a problem with EVs as such.

              Should EV's be eliminated because Shanghai Bill charges his EV at home, which you apparently consider home charging a deal breaker?

              If I can only charge at home, or when I happen to have a reason to stop for an extended period, then that is a deal breake

              • Re: (Score:3)

                by hawk ( 1151 )

                >For hilly terrain, that's still a bit restrictive at speed,

                maybe not--keep in mind that you're charging on the downhill parts.

          • You quoted half of his comment and told him that he's wrong. But if you read the whole comment, not only he's right, but you deliberately made yourself wrong. Why would you do such a thing?

          • Re: (Score:2)

            by hawk ( 1151 )

            As for me, the lack of a boat or ship is a bigger barrier to driving through the Scottish Highlands. :)

      • Re: (Score:3)

        by tlhIngan ( 30335 )

        That's really the last hurdle for electric cars. Home charging is fine if you own your own house with a garage and can have a charger put in. But if you rent, or your home doesn't have a garage, or the wiring to the garage is inadequate for a charger; you're planning every trip around the supercharger network, which was really designed for road trips, not day-to-day usage. Hell... if I could just pop into the corner Shell station and fill up my battery the same way I can fill my gas tank now; I'd already ow

        • What needs to be done is installation of simple regular 15 amp sockets in every parking stall. This is not as difficult an ask as installing a 240V 30A or 50A "fast charge" plug - and for the majority of drivers, this is enough. 15A at work, 15A at home, and you'll cover a lot of people who don't need superchargers and stuff.

          Yup - this isn't even something that has to be invented. In Alaska and Canada, Good old Internal combustion engines have their batteries and engines warmed by outlets at parking meters.

          The idea of having your vehicle constantly being topped off is a bit of a different paradigm, but I know a lot of people who would love having that "full tank feeling" all the time.

        • Well, in the here-and-now with COVID, I barely go anywhere at all. :)

          But in my case, it's the "no garage" problem. So, to charge at home as you describe I'd need to always be able to get the street parking directly in front of the house, then run an extension cord out a window, across the sidewalk, and to the car. And when COVID is over and I can go back to working at the office... there're no chargers, fast or slow, available there. And while I'm sure there are outlets in the garage somewhere, they're d

      • Use their cash stockpile to buy one of the national gas station chains and convert them to charging stations for EVs

        In addition to the other posts commenting on why this isn't a good idea, there is also the little problem that gas stations are little environmental disaster zones. The liability that they would assume would be enormous. They would be better off buying McDonalds or Burger King or the like if they want to buy such coverage. Probably easier to transform into EV stations as well (they already have parking lots for the most part).

        • Also, there are no "major gas station chains" to buy.
          Most gas stations are owned by a family who owns only one station. That "Shell" or "Chevron" sign only means that they sell Shell brand gas; Shell doesn't own the station. The big companies own only 5% of the gas stations.

          Actually even saying "Shell brand gas" overstates it - the same tanker truck fills the tanks at the Shell station and the Exxon across the street. It's not even shell gas. It's literally JUST a sign. The one that's different is that Chev

      • If they were going for fuel cells with hydrogen this would make sense. Otherwise, parking garages and other forms of public parking make for better recharge spots.

      • There's at least one thing Apple could do that would be the equivalent of launching the iPhone or iPod: Use their cash stockpile to buy one of the national gas station chains and convert them to charging stations for EVs.

        Bad idea. Nearly all gas stations are in the wrong locations to be EV charging stations. Most of them have far too little space, too. They'd do better to buy a truck stop chain, but those aren't ideally-placed, either.

        EV charging is entirely different than ICEV fueling.

    • Interesting observation.

      If Tesla were to play the part of Blackberry in the modern reinvention saga, what could Apple do that would be extraordinarily different? Full Autonomy would be the next huge gamechanger, but there are a lot of really smart companies working on that problem, and none of them are there yet. Perhaps Apple has had breakthroughs that others haven't made. But even so, starting a car company is a huge thing to take on to monetize a software breakthrough.

      It wouldn't surprise me to find o

      • He is loaded with golden parachute. Plus what else expect to say, gulp we r done for crash my options b4 I can cash out n leave it to the remnants on the Titanic. But of course VW has experience that Apple would lack but likewise Apple does not have the high legacy overhead. Charging in EU at least more standardized and less distance in between stations. Lines aside.

      • Full Autonomy would be the next huge gamechanger, but there are a lot of really smart companies working on that problem, and none of them are there yet.

        With the exceptions of highway driving on well marked roads, or limited low speed areas of/routes in a few cities, all only in good weather, we are nowhere near full autonomous. A car that can actually handle everyday city traffic in an acceptable way is at least another 20 years, maybe even 50 years away. Humans do it with a shitty dual camera system, a 3 axis accelerometer, and a ridiculously unsuited and complicated mechanical actuator and these smart people keep relying on the very best cutting edge s

    • "Self-driving" is a really big reinvention, let's be honest.

    • This is not your smartphone revolution of 2006 anymore, they playing field is very even. Apple would need to reinvent the car ie. the iCar in order to make any impact on the current trends on electric vehicles and their sales. Tread carefully on this one Apple.

      Currently EVs still only represent 3% of automobile sales. Not sure what you're rambling on about with this not-a-disruptor market statement. If anyone comes along and throws a decently priced option out there, people will buy it up in droves. All you need to "disrupt", is best price. Amazon Basics has driven many a business out of business, doing little more than that. Apple could pull a similar tactic and sell cars at a loss just to destroy (and eventually buy up) the competition.

      One hardly needs to

      • Apple has the money to be bold, but it hasn't done much with it since Jobs' death, which was 10 years ago this October. A decade of sitting back and doing some minor tweaks and letting the money roll in is a long time.

        • Apple has the money to be bold, but it hasn't done much with it since Jobs' death, which was 10 years ago this October. A decade of sitting back and doing some minor tweaks and letting the money roll in is a long time.

          Yes, it is. A very long, and highly successful (read: profitable) time.

          That said, I agree. The worlds largest fashion designer of tech is going to need to come up with some new things to keep the hype going.

    • Re:Electric cars are not disruptive tech anymore (Score:5, Funny)

      by BrainJunkie ( 6219718 ) on Tuesday February 16, 2021 @08:40AM (#61068378)

      Tread carefully on this one Apple.

      I picture some E level guy at Apple browsing Slashdot while sitting on a throne built from $100 bills, only an Apple laptop, no cables attached of course, resting on his desk made of $100 bills.

      He is here looking for strategic advice. He came to Slashdot for the well proven track record its readership has in predicting the future of consumer tech. He remembers their take on the iPod (no wireless, etc). He remembers their take on the iPhone (no one wants an all touchscreen phone). He remembers their take on the iPad (it's just a scaled up iPhone). He remembers their take on the iPhone X (no one will buy a phone with a notch). He remembers their take on the Apple Watch (no one wants a smart watch). He knows they think everyone wants their USB ports and headphones jacks back and that bluetooth headphones are stupid and a power supply should be included with all phones/tablets.

      He smiles as he gazes over at the APPL market cap chart on his wall made of $100 bills. Way down at the bottom, easily missed, is a tiny brief little line for LNUX. He smiles, blows his nose on a $100 bill, and imagines the laughs he will get when he mentions that a Slashdot reader has advised them to tread carefully with their auto offering.

      • Sometimes when people say what they like and don't like, they are speaking for themselves, not prognosticating about what will do well in the marketplace.

    • Jumping from Computers to Mobile phones to Cars doesn't seem a natural fit for Apple.

      Cars have a heck of a lot of regulations, many of them may be old and outdated, but they still need to be followed. This isn't something that even a company the size of Apple can push lawyers at, and get it fixed by the time of release.

      Also with cars, you cannot make excuses like you are holding it wrong, or it was designed to do that. When there is a problem it is a big problem. Which also comes down to the fact that Cars

  • Apple has shown themselves unable to take over any industry. That's not what they do, they take over a lot of the high-end.

    That's why Volkswagen doesn't need to be afraid of Apple, nothing they make is high-end. Even if you think it is, later you find out they cheated or lied on some part.

    • Have you not heard of Nokia? Just about everyone had one at the start of the century.

      • Re: (Score:3, Insightful)

        by cowdung ( 702933 )

        Apple under Steve Jobs may have brought Nokia down. But then let others take market share from them with Android.

        But more importantly: Tim Cook is no Steve Jobs.
        His Apple really hasn't done much of anything except keep their ever more expensive brand.

        The new M1 chip is an interesting exception. But it remains to be seen if their moving away from Intel will be a success.

        Tim Cook can't take over his own shoe let alone a whole industry. He's hasn't had a really successful product yet, he's just repeating old i

        • Apple under Steve Jobs may have brought Nokia down. But then let others take market share from them with Android.

          But more importantly: Tim Cook is no Steve Jobs.

          I kinda doubt that the idea was to have everyone own an Apple. It's not their market. And it isn't the way their customers think. I think that's the big divide. When I'm dealing with people that are buying Windows machines, they are obsessed with price. They will search and look for a better price, agonizing that once they pull the trigger, a better deal will show up, and looking to save 50 dollars while a project leaks thousands every day because they are always looking for that better deal.

          I can buy a

          • Intels cellular modem chipset sucked. It was so much worse than Qualcomm that side manual by side comparisons were an issue as no one wants to buy the latest iPhone only for it to have no bars where last years model worked fine. For awhile, they even disabled the ability to have easy access to the internal radio performance metrics because you could objectively show how bad it was. To this day you still can’t replace your idiot bars with a proper dbm scale like you could on older versions of iOS.

        • He hasn't had a successful product yet? Last I checked, the AirPods have sold over 100 million units, and make up over half the global wireless headphone market.

      • Wasn't Nokia a high-end phone, if not the best phone available? So, wouldn't that go in line with what I wrote?

        • Nokia had a wide range of phones, from the low-end to the high-end. AT&T had to pry my Nokia bar phone out of my nearly dead fingers by shutting off their TDMA network. I loved the voice quality and the 3 week battery life. Of course, you couldn't play PUBG on it....

        • They had high-end models sure, but they also had much cheaper stuff. Perhaps comparable to Samsung today.

          And it's not just Nokia. Afaict of the major mobile phone vendors in 2005 ( https://www.networkworld.com/a... [networkworld.com] ) only Samsung is still a major player today.

      • Re: That's not what Apple does (Score:5, Insightful)

        by dwater ( 72834 ) on Tuesday February 16, 2021 @12:36AM (#61067658)

        Have you not heard of Stephen Elop? He was as much to do with Nokia's downfall as Apple. Of course, Nokia's board motivated him to make the decisions he made, so they're ultimately to blame, imo.

        • Re: (Score:2)

          by AmiMoJo ( 196126 )

          Nokia kinda knew what to do, they could see smartphones were the future... They just didn't know how to do it.

          Their crusty old OS didn't help.

          • They were doing great until Elop's burning platform memo. Until about 2010, after the second or third iteration of the iPhone, Nokia still outsold Samsung and Apple put together. They just never did well in North America. They owned the rest of the world. Read this: https://communities-dominate.b... [blogs.com]
          • I guess you're referring to Symbian which indeed was an OS that just couldn't compete with iOS or Android. Nokia went on to make a new OS (Meego or Maemo I can't recall the name right now) and the released a pretty nice phone, which, IIRC, was a complete Linux system.
            That was when Elop was on board and they didn't really promote it much. It seemed that the decision had been made to go exclusively with Windows Phone. It's a pity, that other OS could've been a nice one.
        • Let me just leave this here...: https://communities-dominate.b... [blogs.com]

      • Have you not heard of Nokia? Just about everyone had one at the start of the century.

        You mean the very successful company that continues to generated $20bn+ in revenue every year and is a leading provider of mobile infrastructure and holds many patents in 5G? Yeah I heard of them. I heard they sold their crappy handset business and make more money now than they ever did selling mobile toys.

        • Have you not heard of Nokia? Just about everyone had one at the start of the century.

          You mean the very successful company that continues to generated $20bn+ in revenue every year and is a leading provider of mobile infrastructure and holds many patents in 5G? Yeah I heard of them. I heard they sold their crappy handset business and make more money now than they ever did selling mobile toys.

          You are making an point the lowest price crowd isn't interested in. They want the cheapest possible phone or computer or car in general, and the fact that Nokia and Apple are quite profitable is irrelevant to them. I think they envision a world where the only car is a Toyota Corolla.

          Or maybe a Yugo?

        • Re: (Score:2)

          by jlar ( 584848 )

          Have you not heard of Nokia? Just about everyone had one at the start of the century.

          You mean the very successful company that continues to generated $20bn+ in revenue every year and is a leading provider of mobile infrastructure and holds many patents in 5G? Yeah I heard of them. I heard they sold their crappy handset business and make more money now than they ever did selling mobile toys.

          You mean the company that had a market capitalization of 160 billion USD in 2001 and less than 24 billion USD now? There is no doubt that Nokia was absolutely crushed by Apple and Google in the smartphone wars. And this was in spite of Nokia having great hardware and the best supply chain in the business.

          It is however still a big company. And it is great that it found other business areas where it seems to thrive somewhat. And who knows. Maybe they will hit gold again.

          • You mean the company that had a market capitalization of 160 billion USD in 2001 and less than 24 billion USD now?

            You realise half the company has been sold off in the interim so comparing market cap is pointless right? Market cap is a worthless metric to judge a company's success. Revenue and profits are what count. I mean since we're talking about car companies here a good comparison would be the car company with the worlds largest market cap is also the company that sells the lowest number of cars and yet barely scrapes a profit. Makes total sense right?

    • Re: (Score:2)

      by dfghjk ( 711126 )

      VW doesn't need to be afraid of Apple, but not for that reason. VW also owns a number of brands, some of which are very high end.

      There is absolutely no reason to believe that Apple would produce a "high end" car by auto industry standards. What knowledge do they have to do so?

  • Nokia, RIM, Microsoft, Camera makers, ... (Score:5, Informative)

    by EMB Numbers ( 934125 ) on Monday February 15, 2021 @11:29PM (#61067558)

    Palm CEO: Apple won't dominate handset sector https://www.fiercewireless.com... [fiercewireless.com] "PC guys are not going to just figure this out. They're not going to just walk in.''

    Nokia, RIM, Microsoft, Camera makers, watch makers, music player makers, ... They all said eh same thing.

  • Apple Products (Score:5, Interesting)

    by locater16 ( 2326718 ) on Monday February 15, 2021 @11:45PM (#61067588)
    Apple Products are overpriced and rely on a lot of PR magic to get people to pay that price.

    But damn are the fucking good at PR magic; and in recent years damn can they make a well built product too. Their headphones and Mac Pro and Monitor might all cost way too much, but you're getting well put together and engineered products at least. So maybe "Volkswagen" the brand doesn't have to worry. But their fully owned high end subsidiaries of Bentley, Audi, Porsche, and Bugatti might all be in for a hard time. Because unlike Google, Apple seems to put a ton of money into things and not give up on them just because they're not interested.

    "I'm not worried" sounds exactly like what Rolex and the other swiss watch makers said before the Apple Watch came along. Last year Apple sold 10 million more watches than the entire Swiss Watch industry combined.

    • > and in recent years damn can they make a well built product too.

      Watching Louis Rossmann repairing Apple laptops on YouTube, I get a distinctly different impression - ie that their design and build quality leave a lot to be desired.
      Though he does seem rather good at repairing them... and guides you through the process so you could maybe have a go yourself.

      https://m.youtube.com/user/ros... [youtube.com]

    • Re: (Score:2, Interesting)

      by Tom ( 822 )

      Apple Products are overpriced and rely on a lot of PR magic to get people to pay that price.

      They also simply work.

      I'm a Linux guy. My name is on a couple important projects such as High-Availability Linux and SELinux. I've written kernel modules, contributed to the Gnome project, sent patches to who-knows-how-many other projects.

      But there was a point where I needed my machines to work. I needed them as tools, not as toys to tinker with. I bought a Mac and I've never looked back. It was the first time I've seen drag-and-drop actually work, from almost anywhere to almost anywhere and it was amazing.

    • But their fully owned high end subsidiaries of Bentley, Audi, Porsche, and Bugatti might all be in for a hard time.

      I doubt it. Bentley Porsche and the like are more than just fancy lipstick and polish. They have some actual proper engineering underneath too. I'm not sure a company that produces things like the Mac Pro workstations which aren't compatible with high end workstation GPUs would be much of a threat.

      Apple will need to do more than spit shine a shitty car to convince people to give up an actual high performance machine.

    • Re: (Score:2)

      by AmiMoJo ( 196126 )

      Funny you should mention those two.

      Due to poor choice of materials their "Pro" headphones get condensation from sweat during prolonged use. That's a warranty extension waiting to happen.

      Their monitor is not nearly as great as they claim. It's old technology, which makes the HDR effect very poor compared to actual Pro monitors. For what you get it's way overpriced, noisy at high brightness and for budget mastering there are better options.

      https://youtu.be/rtd7UzLJHrU [youtu.be]

    • Apple Products are overpriced and rely on a lot of PR magic to get people to pay that price.

      Well - I buy and use both Apple, Android, and Windows products. It's not just PR that makes Apple my favorite.

      "I'm not worried" sounds exactly like what Rolex and the other swiss watch makers said before the Apple Watch came along. Last year Apple sold 10 million more watches than the entire Swiss Watch industry combined.

      The watch thing is a good example. We can get a FitBit or the like, or we can get an Apple watch. Apple watches are more akin to fine jewelry, and are built to compete with watches like Rolex and Swiss watches.

      People trying to compare Apple products with the lower end stuff are kinda missing the boat. Apple Watches are not competing with FitBits, My iMac is not competing with an Insignia device.

  • What he has to say on the subject it utterly irrelevant -- even if he was quaking in his boots at the thought of having to compete with Apple, there is zero chance that a CEO of a large company would ever admit that if he wishes to keep his job.

    Either way they'll say that they aren't scared, so the article is meaningless.

  • Time will tell. Although statements like that have a tendency to turn out to have been pretty dumb.

    That said, I do not see Apple making cars. They have too high prices and too inconsistent quality, both on design and on manufacturing level. People are a lot less forgiving if their cars break than when their computer or phone breaks.

  • Who were laughing at a phone without no buttons on the front?
     

    • Re: (Score:3)

      by dfghjk ( 711126 )

      Who failed high school English?

      Don't forget that it was Apple that removed the power button from a media player to produce a product that emptied its charge in a few days whether it was used or not. That would be a huge hit in the EV industry, right?

      There's plenty to laugh about when it comes to Apple and their hubris.

  • iPhone (Score:2)

    by Tom ( 822 )

    I vaguely remember the CEO of Nokia saying something very similar when the iPhone came out.

    Nokia's stock price on that day was 17.363 and they were the largest mobile phone company in the world.

    In 2011, they had to get into bed with Microsoft to stay relevant.
    In 2014 the predictable happened and MS bought them out (well, the mobile phone division) - nobody ever gets into bed with MS without being fucked over.

    For the last months, Nokia's stock price has been around 5.

    Sure, VW won't disappear overnight. It to

    • Re: (Score:2)

      by k2r ( 255754 )

      You may be looking for the comment Ed Colligan, then CEO of Palm Inc, made back then. I think he made it when there were just rumors of an 'Apple Phone':

      > "We’ve learned and struggled for a few years here figuring out how to make a decent phone, PC guys are not going to just figure this out. They’re not going to just walk in."

      I think of it every time when some CEO "is not afraid".

  • Volkswagen NPM (Score:3)

    by dromgodis ( 4533247 ) on Tuesday February 16, 2021 @02:19AM (#61067798)

    No worries, VW can fake their way though the digital age as well:

    https://www.npmjs.com/package/... [npmjs.com]

    "Volkswagen detects when your tests are being run in a CI server, and makes them pass."

  • Stupid question to ask (Score:3)

    by bradley13 ( 1118935 ) on Tuesday February 16, 2021 @03:52AM (#61067942) Homepage

    Seriously, why should he be scared. Apple has zero experience in the car industry, and it is nothing like making iPhones. If they start from scratch, they won't even have a useful prototype for years; they might be ready to sell cars in a decade. If they work with an existing manufacturer XYZ, then it's not an Apple car, it's an XYZ car with Apple gadgets and an Apple price tag. Plus: it's not clear why any successful manufacturer would want to work with them.

    I'm all for Apple getting involved in manufacturing cars. It would be a great way for Apple to get rid of all the money they don't know what to do with. /s

    • Re: (Score:2)

      by k2r ( 255754 )

      Building cell phones is nothing like building computers some people thought.

  • (VW)"The car industry is not a typical tech sector that you could take over at a single stroke,"

    * Tim Cook glances over at the corporate "fun money" checkbook, realizes he could buy VW a few times over. *

    (Apple) "I'd be careful making statements like that, buddy. You never know..."

  • This is true ... (Score:3)

    by Freischutz ( 4776131 ) on Tuesday February 16, 2021 @06:14AM (#61068130)

    olkswagen CEO Says He's Not Scared of Apple

    He is, however, scared to death of Tesla as is every other car company executive who sat with his thumb up his fundament as he bet the company on bullcrap tech like 'clean diesel'.

  • There is a large electric conversion market. Existing cars can get life extensions by replacing their ICEs. TransitionOne claims that they can convert a car in 4 hours: https://transition-one.eu/ [transition-one.eu]
    • While retrofits are possible, the fact is that they aren’t cost effective and seriously lack basic performance metrics like reasonable range. Kludgeoning an electric motor into a fossil fuel burning model isn’t a real market solution with any substantial depth and won’t ever be. The main problem is battery cost and that’s coming down rather quickly, so you’re better off buying a full electric.
      • You are ignoring the reality that the cost of the cars are sunk costs. The power train replacement is an upgrade and life extender. One will not do this with a new car. It will become even more important with very expensive vehicles, such as trucks.
        • You are ignoring the reality that the design is sunk in. Replacing the motor with an electric one and doing something like swapping out the gas tank for a battery has all kinds of design problems and hazards on top of having all kinds of mechanical issues and corrosion. The only person I know who had this done had a battery fire only a few months later and it was a total loss (in his case about 15k usd). Trucks will never get converted outside of maybe 0.00001%, they are one vehicle type that has almost

  • He's right (Score:3)

    by nospam007 ( 722110 ) * on Tuesday February 16, 2021 @06:26AM (#61068144)

    The only thing VW is afraid of are Fraud-Judges in 194 countries.

  • At the moment Apple is just something to keep an eye on. He should be very worried about Tesla, a bit concerned about Nissan, Hyundai and Kia, but jusr keep an eye on Apple, also the possibility of Chinese makes coming in at the low end, neither are a big issue at the moment or even medium term.
  • There's no concrete evidence that Apple will make a car. Even if it did, Volkswagen hasn't made a car that can compete with Tesla. I really don't think Diess needs to make any comments regarding competition with Apple. Let's not forget Volkswagen is the one single company that violated environmental regulations to the tune of being fined tens of billions of dollars across US and EU. They are still licking their wound from this incident. They are in no way ready to deal with Tesla/Apple headon, let alone "no

  • They should all be scared of Tesla (Score:3)

    by erp_consultant ( 2614861 ) on Tuesday February 16, 2021 @09:43AM (#61068556)

    Many people make the mistake of thinking of Tesla as an electric car company. What they are is an alternative energy company that just happens to make cars. They have taken a page from Apple's book with their own form of vertical integration. They don't just make the cars they make the batteries, the chargers, the solar panels, etc.

    Unlike the traditional auto makers, Telsa profits not only when they sell the car. They also profit when people juice up at the Tesla chargers and when they install home charging systems or install solar roof panels.

    With their forays into space travel and internet providers it looks like Tesla is poised to become the 21st century version of General Electric.

    Tesla is not a direct competitor with Apple but if I were heading up any of the automakers I would be very worried about Tesla.

  • Apple doesn't do partnerships and collaborations. Apple prefers takeovers. Especially when they have more cash on hand than your market cap. It's like the cat sitting on top of the aquarium asking which fish wants to partner together. Apple wants to know what you've got under the hood before it buys you.

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