Apple Dials Back Car's Self-Driving Features and Delays Launch To 2028 (bloomberg.com) 67
Apple, reaching a make-or-break point in its decade-old effort to build a car, has pivoted to a less ambitious design with the intent of finally bringing an electric vehicle to market. Bloomberg: After previously envisioning a truly driverless car, the company is now working on an EV with more limited features, according to people with knowledge of the project. Even so, Apple's goal for a release date continues to slip. With the latest changes, the company looks to introduce the car in 2028 at the earliest, roughly two years after a recent projection, said the people, who asked not to be identified because the deliberations are private.
Apple's secretive effort to create a car is one of the most ambitious endeavors in its history, and one of its more tumultuous. Since it began taking shape in 2014, the project -- codenamed Titan and T172 -- has seen several bosses come and go. There have been multiple rounds of layoffs, key changes in strategy and numerous delays. But it remains one of the company's potential next big things -- an entirely new category for the device maker that could help reinvigorate sales growth. Apple's revenue stalled last year as it contended with a maturing smartphone industry and a slowdown in China, its biggest overseas market.
Apple's secretive effort to create a car is one of the most ambitious endeavors in its history, and one of its more tumultuous. Since it began taking shape in 2014, the project -- codenamed Titan and T172 -- has seen several bosses come and go. There have been multiple rounds of layoffs, key changes in strategy and numerous delays. But it remains one of the company's potential next big things -- an entirely new category for the device maker that could help reinvigorate sales growth. Apple's revenue stalled last year as it contended with a maturing smartphone industry and a slowdown in China, its biggest overseas market.
must use apple charge points and must use apple se (Score:1)
must use apple charge points
must use apple home change kit
must use apple service center for any thing tires, air, windshield fluid, repairs, lights, etc.
Re: must use apple charge points and must use appl (Score:2)
The tires will have the tpms built into them and the car won't shift out of "P" unless all four TPMS sensors are paired with the ECU at each specific corner.
Re: must use apple charge points and must use appl (Score:4, Funny)
The tires will have a pairing code, because non-Apple tires will compromise security and safety. Oh, and it will only have a lightning port for charging.
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The tires will have a pairing code, because non-Apple tires will compromise security and safety. Oh, and it will only have a lightning port for charging.
Changing the battery will require removing the windshield with a giant suction cup. All bolts and nuts will have nonstandard pentagonal bolt heads instead of hex heats. And they'll leave out the 12V lighter outlet because of courage.
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Re: must use apple charge points and must use app (Score:1)
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I'm just waiting for the epic trademark fight over which big corporation gets to use the name "iDrive".
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I'm waiting for the Apple space suit: iWalk.
Re: must use apple charge points and must use appl (Score:1)
Re: must use apple charge points and must use appl (Score:1)
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How do girls call it? I mean "wank" ... perhaps that would be a better brand, haha!
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I'm just waiting for the epic trademark fight over which big corporation gets to use the name "iDrive".
Kind of surprised Apple has not yet sued BMW. My iDrive is QNX based and likely better than anything Apple can do.
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Nah,
People often go "Apple is a greedy schmuck" when the reality is closer to "Apple tries to be a luxury product when it really isn't."
There is no reason to ask for 2x-10x cost on RAM and NAND storage. Especially since equal upgrades on Dell/HP/Lenovo are easy to compare.
Now what I see with an "Apple Car" is that Apple is probably going to release something that is better than the Tesla on a luxury car platform, like Lexus (Toyota.) Not an American or European brand.
But my assumption is based on Toyota bei
Re:must use apple charge points and must use apple (Score:5, Insightful)
Toyota is arguably the greatest laggard on EV tech of all major automakers and the most resistant to EV adoption - why on Earth would you pick them?
Not just "in North America" - globally. Their leadership got obsessed with hydrogen and couldn't believe that EVs could possibly be mass market.
For the obvious reason that Japan likes minicars, and Tesla doesn't make a minicar. The Nissan Sakura (Japan's bestseller) is closer to a Smart Fortwo in length, than it is to a Model 3, and is significantly narrower than the ForTwo. And has a range of 180km WLTP (about 100 miles EPA). And has a top speed of 130kph / 81 mph and a 0-100 acceleration time of "eventually". You think that would sell in America?
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It should be also pointed out that Japan is as well a laggard in domestic EV sales, so "dominating the Japanese market" isn't a big statement - I haven't seen the 2023 numbers, but in 2022 EVs were only 2,1% of the market, which is tiny.
If you had told me 15 years ago that yes, while EVs would become popular, China would dominate and rapidly switch domestic sales over to electric while Japan would become a laughingstock, I would have laughed in your face (esp. given the early starts with e.g. the MiEV and t
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Now what I see with an "Apple Car" is that Apple is probably going to release something that is better than the Tesla on a luxury car platform, like Lexus (Toyota.) Not an American or European brand.
Apple is probably going to release something that they claim is better than the Tesla on a luxury car platform
Fixed that for you...
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Now what I see with an "Apple Car" is that Apple is probably going to release something that is better than the Tesla on a luxury car platform, like Lexus (Toyota.) Not an American or European brand.
Apple is probably going to release something that they claim is better than the Tesla on a luxury car platform
Fixed that for you...
Well, they can easily release something better than a Tesla, because Teslas are EV Trabis.
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Nah,
People often go "Apple is a greedy schmuck" when the reality is closer to "Apple tries to be a luxury product when it really isn't."
What's the difference?
I've always compared Apple products to a Toyota Camry you paid 3 times as much for... Doesn't matter how much you paid it's still a Camry.
Anyone trying to flog consumer products at a higher price is just a greedy schmuck, regardless of how they try to market it.
Re: must use apple charge points and must use appl (Score:2)
The itâ(TM)s-still-a-Camry analogy would make sense if you buy a Mac to run Linux or Windows on. Then youâ(TM)re buying pricey hardware with similar (or worse) specs but getting the same user experience you would with any PC.
Most Mac purchasers donâ(TM)t do that, though. They buy their Mac to run MacOS, because they prefer the MacOS user experience and are willing to pay a premium for hardware in order to get it.
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Not must, but they will spend the money to have the fastest most comprehensive charging network. It will cost them triple digit billions.
Gotta spend monopoly money to get into a monopoly. Tesla grew their semi-monopoly on non shit chargers organically, Apple will need to take a massive loss leader.
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For sale: one Apple Car, gently used, factory paint, original oil and tires and air in the tires.
with apple toll pay your tolls cost 30% more ! (Score:3, Insightful)
with apple toll pay your tolls cost 30% more !
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A 30% charge is a 42% or 3/7 * 100 increase in price for the producer to get the same amount. 0.7 * 1.42 approx = 1, if the producer wants to make $1 the need to charge $1.42.
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I'm really interested to know what their strategy will be for handling deaths. It's inevitable that one of their cars will eventually screw up and someone will die.
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That's why they are [reportedly] backing off the automation to something manageable. Driver assistance features designed to be just that rather than a driver replacement have been demonstrated to be feasible, even GM can do it.
The thing about making a car is that it's very hard to get it all to line up nicely with the kind of fit and finish customers expect from an Apple product. Tesla has proven that. It takes substantial experience to get that right, so Apple is either going to have to do a lot of expensi
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Perhaps, but even that seems like a minefield. Look at Tesla and the controversy there.
Apple will have to offer something special, because by the time this is released stuff like lane following and self parking are going to be pretty common features on even mid range cars. Some Chinese manufacturers already have lidar, and Volvo said it is introducing that soon too.
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Perhaps, but even that seems like a minefield. Look at Tesla and the controversy there.
Tesla never made a good faith effort to improve public transport, only two alleged efforts in bad faith. Apple could improve on that simply by being relatively honest.
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Apple has a giant bank account, and you aren't worth that much on Apple's balance sheet.
Apple's not building a car (Score:4, Insightful)
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well I think lot's of car manufacturers will take apples lockout 3rd party service and parts system.
Re:Apple's not building a car (Score:5, Informative)
Re:Apple's not building a car (Score:5, Insightful)
This is why Apple "making cars" has always sounded nonsensical to me. The auto industry is immensely cutthroat, and eats newcomers alive. People see Tesla succeeding and think, "Well, anyone can do it!", but Tesla was the exception, not the rule, and only barely survived, and only because it had a massively untapped niche available to it**. Dialing in affordable auto production is something that takes not just an immense amount of money and effort, but an immense amount of money and effort spread iterating over decades.
** By all standards, EVs should have been GM's market, with their tech lead on the EV1. Wagoner, who has numerous reasons to be kicking himself (he presided over a massive decline in GM's stock value), listed his decision to kill the EV1 as his greatest mistake.
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Killing the EV1 was necessary, it was a huge money loser and could never have been sold at a price that would make it profitable. Not following it immediately with another model, on the other hand, was really dumb. GM bought the patents for large NiMH batteries (the only viable chemistry at the time, Li-Ion wasn't sufficiently developed yet) and sat on them [wikipedia.org], then sold them to Texaco, which was then bought by Chevron... who also sat on them, because they were a threat to their existing business. Now GM is ha
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It was a money loser, but not a "huge" money loser. It was an eminently affordable loss-leader and tech development line. The losses on it hardly showed up on GM's balance sheet . And it was only as expensive as it was specifically because they made it in low volumes, Literally, there was only one robot on the entire line (for windshields).
And of course I didn't mean "make the EV1 forever". But it was the obvious start of where they should have continued from.
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The lack of automation wasn't the biggest cost problem. The EV1 had virtually no parts sharing, so they would have had to make a lot of them and not just a normal number for a production vehicle in order to get the costs down enough to sell them.
It must be true! (Score:2)
But wait, there's one more thing. (Score:4, Funny)
The Apple wireless car charger! Really, trust us, this will ship!
But wait, there's one more thing... the Apple AI dildo. It's magic, we tested it.
Why? (Score:4, Insightful)
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Why do people insist that Apple is making a car? It makes no business sense to do that, the profit margins (excluding Tesla) are horrible and won't help grow their company any.
Most people have said the same thing about VR/AR headsets, with the exception of the profit margins (and maybe even then). Didn't stop them from doing it. :-D
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"with the exception of profit margins"
You mean, with the exception of the most important thing?
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"with the exception of profit margins"
You mean, with the exception of the most important thing?
That's not remotely the most important thing. If Apple wanted to just sell things with a big profit margin, they could put soft drink machines at their stores, charge a buck per can, and make something like a 60% profit margin. But that's nickel-and-dime crap that won't grow the company enough to matter, so they don't.
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Apple is working on crazy new stuff. They need to concentrate on their current iDevices, services, Macs, etc. Their qualities are getting bad. :(
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Why do people insist that Apple is making a car?
Because Huawei is making one. And, with the trend set by Tesla, new EVs are turning into car-sized phones. If Apple didn't get into this market, non-IOS platform will dominate the car OS platform and eventually push people to find phones compatible with their car OS.
Sanctioning Huawei gave us three generations of almost identical iPhones - 13, 14 and 15, almost no innovation when Apple didn't have any competition. Now, months after Huawei Mate 60 came out with satellite phone function, we see different p
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It's Apple. They can charge 2x what other car manufacturers charge and people will buy it.
Maybe. Let's see how long the Vision Pro lasts at $3,500.
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"Why do people insist that Apple is making a car?"
We know they have hired the people you need to make a car-related hardware, that they have been doing car-related hardware work, and that they have filed car-related hardware patents. That implies some vision to make some money somewhere down the line.
However, they have neve announced a car-related hardware product and they certainly have never set a car-related hardware product release date which could be delayed.
Re:Why? (Score:5, Insightful)
Here's a pretty comprehensive run down on the evidence. It's compelling, including applying to California state regulators for permits to drive prototypes on the roads.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/... [wikipedia.org]
Meanwhile, I live about a mile from the location where they are rumored to be developing this car and I see a LOT of otherwise unbranded white Lexus's driving around with a sensor pack on the roof that looks distinctly apple-y.
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It worries me a little how many people cannot distinguish between actual evidence vs deciding what to believe based on how it meshes with some narrative that just occurred to their imagination.
Thanks for the paywall (Score:2)
MsSmashed: Stop with the paywalled links for crying put loud.
Re: Thanks for the paywall (Score:2)
Why are you trying to RTFA, this is /.?! ;)
If you insist, here you go: https://archive.ph/2gO9q [archive.ph]
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You are correct.
I lost control for a moment, I feel so ashamed.
Also thank you for the link.
We'll see (Score:2)
After previously envisioning a truly driverless car, the company is now working on an EV with more limited features, according to people with knowledge of the project.
Deliver me a Knowledge Navigator first, then we'll talk cars.
Artificially limited battery life (Score:1)
Delay from what? (Score:4, Insightful)
An unsubstantiated delay in an an unannounced release date for an unacknowledged product.
Apple is the next HP (Score:1)
this does not end
Ten years from now, Apple will be selling its brand on “others” products
customer care product... (Score:2)
This will be interesting... (Score:2)
An ordinary car has far too many pedals and levers for an Apple product.
Once the steering wheel has been redesigned to have even rounder edges, it will probably have touch-sensitive areas. Slide your left thumb diagonally to accellerate, move your right thumb in anticlockwise circles to brake. Do both simultaneously to apply the parking brake.
the initial design had a headphone jack (Score:2)
He never got that phone call on his land line
Antitrust (Score:1)
It's anti-competitive to not allow third-party operating systems. Apple won't be allowed to ship a car unless it opens up users' Apple mobile devices to other operating systems. Enough fake money and local bankruptcy plans from corporate California.