The Apple Car is Dead
**Apple’s Ambitious Car Project: A Decade of Challenges and Lessons**
In a recent discussion on This Week in Tech, hosts Sam and Leo delved into Apple's long-awaited foray into the car manufacturing industry. The conversation revealed a decade of twists, turns, and ultimately, the decision to abandon the project. Here’s an in-depth look at how Apple approached this ambitious endeavor, the challenges it faced, and what the outcome signifies.
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### **The Revolving Door Between Apple and Tesla**
Sam kicked off the discussion by highlighting the recurring pattern of leadership changes within Apple's car project. Doug Field, who moved from Tesla to lead the initiative at Apple, is now back at Ford. Sam mentioned that he knows several individuals who worked on the project over the years but left due to the difficulty of aligning the car venture with Apple’s unique business model.
Leo added that this revolving door between Apple and Tesla was evident throughout the decade-long effort. He noted how Apple rarely looks to competitors for inspiration, but in this case, it seemed to be trying to "out-Tesla" Elon Musk, which didn’t work out as planned.
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### **Two Paths: Building an EV or Revolutionizing Self-Driving Technology**
According to Mark German’s Bloomberg article, when Apple first began exploring the car project a decade ago, there were two main schools of thought. The first path was to build an electric vehicle (EV) similar to Tesla's existing models. The second idea was more ambitious: to create a fully autonomous vehicle that would redefine transportation by offering point-to-point travel with zero driver intervention.
German described Apple’s vision as akin to "changing the world" with a car that looked nothing like anything on the market. The plan included vehicles without steering wheels or pedals, controlled entirely via Siri—though Sam and Leo both laughed at how impractical that idea seemed given Siri’s notorious unreliability.
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### **The Business Model Dilemma**
Sam reflected on the difficulty Apple faced in developing a viable business model for its car project. Unlike traditional automakers, Apple thrives on selling high-margin products directly to consumers through its tightly controlled ecosystem. However, entering the automotive industry meant dealing with complexities like dealer networks, service centers, and零部件供应链—areas where Apple has no expertise.
Leo pointed out that this mismatch between Apple’s business model and the car industry likely contributed to the project’s eventual demise. He compared it to the challenges of managing a subscription-based Robo-taxi service, which Sam had previously suggested as an alternative to selling vehicles directly.
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### **Missed Opportunities: Why Buying Lucid Motors Wasn’t on Apple’s Radar**
Sam proposed that instead of building its own car from scratch, Apple could have saved time and resources by acquiring an established EV company like Lucid Motors. He noted that Lucid already had the expertise in luxury electric vehicles and advanced technology, with Mike Bell—a former Apple employee—leading its software development.
Had Apple acquired Lucid, Sam argued, it could have leveraged its strengths in supply chain management and design to turn Lucid into a more viable competitor in the EV market. Instead, Apple chose to go it alone, which led to years of delays and ultimately no commercial product.
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### **The Shift in China’s Automotive Landscape**
Sam also highlighted the growing difficulty of entering the Chinese automotive market, which has become increasingly dominated by domestic brands like BYD. Just a few years ago, foreign automakers like Tesla and BMW held significant market share in China. Today, however, local brands account for over 60% of EV sales.
Apple’s car project would have faced stiff competition from these domestic manufacturers, which are producing vehicles at lower price points and with cutting-edge technology. Sam suggested that this shift in the market likely made Apple reconsider its ambitious goals.
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### **The Vision Pro and Lessons from the Car Project**
As the discussion shifted to Apple’s other recent product, theVision Pro, Sam drew parallels between the augmented reality headset and the car project. Both initiatives were long in development and faced challenges in execution. However, unlike the car project, theVision Pro—though flawed—is already shipping to customers.
Sam noted that while the car project didn’t result in a commercial product, it wasn’t a complete loss. Lessons learned from developing autonomous driving technology have likely influenced Apple’s camera and perception systems in other products. These advancements may yet find their way into future projects, even if not in the much-awaited Apple Car.
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### **The Bigger Picture: Apple’s Search for the Next Big Thing**
Throughout the conversation, Sam and Leo emphasized how crucial it is for companies like Apple to identify and capitalize on the next major technological trend. The iPhone revolutionized mobile computing, but finding its successor has proven elusive for Apple. Whether it’s self-driving cars or augmented reality, the company must continue innovating to maintain its edge in the tech industry.
Sam expressed optimism that Apple would eventually find the right product to reignite its momentum. He pointed out that the company is sitting on significant cash reserves and has a talented workforce, which gives it the resources to pursue ambitious projects.
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### **Conclusion: A Decade of Learning**
In the end, Apple’s decade-long effort to build a car taught the company valuable lessons about strategy, execution, and collaboration. While the project didn’t yield a product, it provided insights that could influence future innovations. As Sam and Leo concluded, Apple’s ability to adapt and evolve will be key to its continued success in an ever-changing tech landscape.
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This article captures the essence of the This Week in Tech discussion about Apple’s car project, offering readers a comprehensive look at the challenges, decisions, and implications of one of the most ambitious endeavors in Apple’s history.
"WEBVTTKind: captionsLanguage: enthis is Twi lots to talk about but I'm very glad you're here Sam because uh it was a bit of a shocker this week Apple C canceled a product it never announced and as far as be a shock to you as far as anybody knows it was all imaginary it was just a dream for the last 10 years project Titan widely rumored to be Apple's uh car project Mark German who's very reliable uh said that on Tuesday the memo went out that we are canceling the project we're going to try to move everybody uh from Project Titan over to our AI efforts but the Apple car is unofficially dead because it never lived you said you're not surprised no uh I mean when first reports of project Titan first came out in early 2015 um I I had written I wrote a series of articles on my personal blog back then basically uh indicating my skepticism that Apple would ever follow through and actually build a car uh having spent the last 30 plus years in the Auto industry I you know it it never seemed probable that they would actually do this because you know apple as we know is a company that generally only likes to go into market segments where they can make really large profit margins like 35 Plus percent profit margins and pretty much nobody in the Auto industry comes even close to that kind of profit margin um and so it just it never really made sense that Apple would do this um you know I figured you know they would play around with it for several years um try some things I did you know at the time you know lay out a few scenarios where that could be possible scenarios for them because among the other things they had been doing at the time was they had invested a billion in DD which is a Chinese ride hailing company similar to Uber and left di di DD yes and they were also uh you know doing a bunch of other things they had uh purchased the company forget the name of it now but it was the company that developed the original Microsoft Connect was an Israeli company oh yeah uh which had some really interesting sensing and perception technology um you know and what you know what I figured that if if one one potential scenario that could work for Apple would be if they could um do a premium Mobility service um rather than selling cars because again one of the the challenges for for apple is they like to control their entire ecosystem and you know once you sell a vehicle to Consumers you lose control of that you can't control for example what tires they put on it what parts they might replace over the life of that vehicle um what other modifications they might make but if they had done something like a uh a subscription uh Robo taxi service you know a premium subscription Robo taxi service then you know they could retain control of those Vehicles they can ensure that nothing gets modified um they don't have to deal with for example setting up a dealer Network and a service network uh to maintain these vehicles they I mean they would have to do that anyway if they're own these vehicles but uh that would be one potential scenario that they might have followed but doing that would require that they actually have uh you know a working automated driving system which they also worked on for much of the last decade and never really seemed to make much Headway with um although I think that there you know there were Lessons Learned From that effort um that you know probably uh filtered into other products like for example the live RAR that they put on iPads and iPhones uh I suspect that that at least in part uh came from Lessons Learned in the in Project Titan uh in the in the automated driving effort um various other things some of the perception things um that you know where you're trying to detect and classify different objects is probably filtered into some of the work they've done on the the camera side so there's a lot of a lot of things that you know they they've probably benefited from it from this effort But ultimately um you know I I am not at all surprised that they abandoned the the project they've had so many twists and turns over the last decade so many different people leading the program I know I know a number of people that went to Apple left Apple uh after working on it for a number of years um and you know PE and then you know there's people like Doug field who went from Tesla to Apple to work to lead this project and then went to Ford he's at board now and there's a lot of other people that I've known that have spent some time at Apple working on this over the last decade but it just never they never really could figure out a business model that fit with Apple's way of doing business it uh it certainly felt like a revolving door between Apple and Tesla and I'm reading Mark German's uh piece in Bloomberg titled Apple car was doomed by its lofty ambition to outd do Tesla and you get the strong impression that Apple did something with the car that they rarely do which is look over their shoulders at another company and say oh you know we we should do that and we should beat them at their own game and uh that has not that doesn't seem like that's going to end well especially against Tesla Tesla really just dominant in this market German says they had two schools of thought 10 years ago roughly when they started this and I I'm going to you have inside insight to this Sam too so if you hear me say something that German said that's wrong let me know but German also has really good sources he says when they started thinking about this 10 years ago they had two choices either build an electric vehicle basically functionally the same as the Tesla or be more ambitious and and I'm going to quote Gman change the world with a full blown self-driving vehicle taking passengers from point A to point B with zero intervention from a driver and make it look like nothing anyone else had seen before he says they plann these cars without steering wheels or pedals that you would drive it using Siri which anybody who's used Siri for any length of time knows is a nightmare idea Anthony had you have you been following this story also for a decade yeah absolutely I mean I I don't have any inside sources but just just reading about it it's been this constant far off dream um and I think yeah it was it was surprising in the sense that it felt like apple had been pursuing this for so long I just thought it would be kind of like um you know kind of like Zeno's Paradox like just continually like the the the Finish Line never actually reaching the finish line but they just continue putting money into it but in retrospect it makes sense that at a certain point they'd say well maybe not like we don't actually want to like do this for 20 years and have nothing to show for it I mean it sounds like from what Sam was saying not nothing but no real commercial product to show for it show for it or the estimated 10 billion dollar that they pumped into it there were at one point there were thousands of people working on this car Sam didn't they have a facility in Sunnyville where they were trying to assemble the vehicles yeah I it's it's hard to say what they were assembling you I mean they did have a fleet of Lexus rxs that they had their um people seen those driv system yeah and I I i' I've seen them driving around as well uh but um and it may you know it may be that you know that that was just a facility that they were using for assembling those Vehicles you know to to upfit those vehicles with all the sensors and compute that they needed they may have been building you know prototyping some stuff there um you know I think you know German's second idea you know which is what I was talking about um is probably what they ultimately wanted to do but I think the the reason probably the reason why they got into this in the first place is you know they they recognized that at some point the the market for the products they were already doing like phones and tablets and computers was going to get saturated and of course we know that the the financial markets want growth and big stock prices big share prices are based on this having a a a growth narrative for a company and if there if a company is just stagnant and not really growing which is what the traditional Auto industry is you know where they still have huge cash flows and make turn huge profits not Apple scale profits but you know big profits uh but they they're not growing and so they have low stock prices and apple did not want to be in that position and you know one of the places where Tim Cook probably thought well here's an area where we could potentially really boost our Revenue numbers at least if not necessarily profits in the near- term at least revenues because even though they wouldn't sell anywhere near the unit volumes of vehicles uh that they that they do with phones or tablets they would you know the the cost of a vehicle especially the kind of vehicle that Apple would build you know which not would not be you know a Ford Focus type of vehicle it's going to be something more like a lucid air um it that you know that even if you're you know selling 50 or 100 thousand of those a year that at 100 to $150,000 a piece that's a huge boost to your Revenue line um and so I think that's probably what the thinking was uh but you know the it just actually executing on that turned out to be way harder than they anticipated and I've said on a number of occasions over the last several years that you know if Apple you know as as this thing dragged on if Apple really wanted to just get into the car business what they should have done was just bought Lucid because Lucid is a company very much in the Apple mold in terms of the types of vehicles they build the design uh ethos that they have um you know very very Advanced uh Technologies and of course lucid's head of software is a guy named Mike Bell who was formerly at Apple um so I think you that's what they probably should have done if they if they wanted to continue that down this path and apple you know could have taken what Lucid is already doing and take the expertise that Apple has in Supply Chain management for example and really addressed some of the big problems that lucid has which has been as a startup just dealing with suppliers and getting components and getting better pricing on components Apple probably could have fixed that and probably could have turned Lucid into a really viable business but you know they decided they wanted to do it all on their own and and now they didn't they're not yeah according to German Who quotes somebody involved in decision- making it was as if Apple had tried to skip all the early iPhone models and jump right to the iPhone 10 instead of just putting a flag in the ground with a good enough car with an Apple user interface slick Johnny I design interior and exterior by the way Johnny I very involved in the early days of this we hear and an iPhone like buying experience the company bet everything on the wrong horse autonomy how important Anthony is it for a company like apple to have the next big thing on the burner I mean Apple Google's kind of a lot a lot of our big tech companies are kind of in this position right now where they're looking for the next thing traditionally that next thing came from somebody in a garage not from in this case right and yeah it seems like in general also there's this um this search for kind of what is the next big form factor the next wave of computing after the iPhone um and it feels like you know there have been successes in in that in terms of obviously like new Apple products new products from other companies but nothing that sort of redefined the game in the same way that the iPhone did it's kind you'd be hard pressed to have the same impact on on on the world that the iPhone had I mean that's I think the main thing is you just want to make sure that if if it does happen that that Apple if you're you know Tim Cook you want to make sure that Apple has is is in the game for whatever the next wave is and hopefully is the one leading the way I mean obviously that's the same reason why they're you know invested so much in you know what ultimately became the Vision Pro and and I've been thinking about that you know also in terms of the discussion of like oh was there could they have done something that was a little bit you know a good enough car and I mean it feels ridiculous to say this at it's price point but the Vision Pro in some ways seems like a compromise good enough product where you know I think there are certain things they wanted in terms of the battery in terms of the transparency of the lenses that probably are not what they started with but at a certain point they realized okay we need to get something out there and this will eventually lead to the thing that we're dreaming about maybe um and it seemed like they couldn't figure out a path to do that with the car it's interesting compare the car to the Vision Pro I mean Apple's a big enough company and has enough money to have separate parallel tracks but it does feel like The Vision Pro beat the Apple car and one of the problems according to German and others that the Apple car had was it was going to have to be a $100,000 car meaning it's already in the super luxury category and even then that the profit margins would be Z non-existent so it wasn't a traditional apple right now its profit margins hover around 40% uh of course it didn't happen initially with the iPhone it takes a while you know build up that ability but still 0% is not not close to 40% and so this would have been a tough a tough Roo I don't think Apple's making much money on the Vision Pro but it's probably not losing money on it either I think you know the the interesting thing about Apple when you look at the new products they've launched iPhone iPad uh you know the The Vision Pro the watch you know each one of these was strangely enough both good enough and also Lea frogging the competition but the competition existed which is why the car might have made sense for them because we could take an existing category and put the app sprinkle the Apple magic dust on it and suddenly you know profit except except that you know in those other segments where Apple had entered none of the competition that was already there was actually really very good true and so even though dominant well Blackberry was dominant I guess but yeah but I mean you it wasn't it wasn't really that great a product um and so you know with uh with the car you know there's a lot of really really good products out there from a lot of Manufacturers around the world and um you know being good enough would not be enough and I don't I don't know that there's enough Apple Magic that you could sprinkle on that unless you've you know Apple would really need to find a way to be not just good enough but in find some fundamental way that Leap Frogs the competition like they did with the iPhone you know with with the touchcreen and the the multi-touch interface with the the uh the watch you know and its form factor and even though it was limited in battery life you know some of the things it could do and even the the The Vision Pro you know for all its flaws and foibles you know it does you know it is the you know in many ways you know the best VR headset that's been created um and could they have done that with a car could they have created the best car ever well I think that's what they were trying to do with the move towards automated driving right I you know I think just creating another EV would not have been enough right it it would it would not be sufficient to you know given the the level of competition that is in that market and there's some pretty good people I mean Tesla's good I mean lucid's good uh I love my I5 I just bought a BMW that's a really really nice vehicle it' be hard for apple apple would have to do something special like not putting a steering wheel or pedals in it to and that's I think that's what they were trying to do um you know and now you know over the last couple of years in particular um you know I think a a big part of Apple's strategy would have been to really try to make some inroads into China you know which is by Far and Away the biggest Automotive Market um and you know until a few years ago foreign Brands you know had dominated the the Chinese market you know there were a lot of Chinese Brands but in terms of of sales the majority a significant majority of sales were Western Brands you know brands from Europe from even from North America um but over the last few years that has really shifted B is dominant is is B Chinese domestic Brands now have a significant majority sales in China about 60% of Chinese sales now and especially on the EV front so it would have been really hard and and they make they are making some really great EVS for a lot less than $100,000 right and I think it would have been nearly impossible for Apple to really be competitive in that Marketplace I think this is the problem Apple has with Vision Pro 2 which is it takes a while to get to this point and you're you're shooting at a moving Target and you can you could try to skate to where the puck is going but it's hard to know I think they they developed the Vision Pro they started developing it eight years ago when it looked like VR was going to be the next big thing uh the problem with the cars is autonomy didn't happen so they didn't really have anything they were skating to a place the puck never went I think they may have the same problem with Vision Pro to be honest I think this was something that people were excited about 5 years ago but are much less excited about now so has Apple lost its uh it's Mojo Anthony or is it too early to say um I think it's probably too early to say it feels like again if if if I feel like if Apple doesn't have its Mojo I'd be hardpressed to think of a company that I could point to and say oh this is sort of setting the agenda that's that's you know at The Cutting Edge um in a way that and in a consistent way that apple is not um because again it feels like we are in this in between period where there's plenty of interesting new products but nothing that's sort of setting the agenda in in that way and sort of you get companies kind of flailing around a bit well you could what if the agenda is now ai and the company setting the agenda are open AI uh Microsoft Nvidia uh what if Apple said well we think the next big thing in 2024 is going to be self-driving vehicles and 2025 is going to be VR and they just they miss missed and it turned out to be AI well it's interesting I mean those things are not completely separate right because if AI yeah you know is turns out to be the next big thing then actually maybe aut if autonomy has sort of stalled right now that may five years from now we might say oh actually maybe they should have kept the project going cuz there were leaps forward and suddenly cell driving seems like a good bet again it's it's hard to say and I I agree I think you that given the the need you know or at least the perceived need to make a big push into the AI front you know another reason for killing the car project at this point is you know there were a lot of software Engineers working on this you know modern modern vehicles are all softwar defined and a lot of that software definition is around AI related uh capabilities um particularly the automation but even even other elements within the vehicle and so there's probably a lot of skill sets that were tied up in Project Titan that they can utilize better in the near term for generative AI efforts around the throughout the rest of the company well it may be that in fact that's what they did right they took those Engineers um I'm suppose there's some metal Benders in there that won't have a job at Apple I mean AI doesn't really but they they'll find they'll find they've got apple on their resume they will find other places to work plent of without too much difficulty yeah we' love to see what Apple was doing and say what could we what could we use what could we apply to our current projects you know a Fisker is looking for a a a white knight at this point right um well actually it's been reported it was reported uh they on Thursday they did their Q4 earnings and issued a going concern warning in their earnings report the next day a report came out from Reuters that they're in talks with Nissan uh Nissan potentially um uh providing you know investing $400 million to help uh with development of the fisker's next batch of products uh including the Alaska pickup truck and uh part of that is Nissan wants to be able to build uh a Nissan branded version of that truck they would love to get a midsize electric pickup truck into the marketplace yeah it's hard I mean look I don't I don't think Apple's screwed up in any way it's very hard to predict the future uh and in projects like this where it takes years to develop it's easy to miss the boat I it's clear the car missed the boat I kind of in my heart think Vision Pro might have missed the boat as well that it it was not the product that we need right now it's too expensive it's too complicated to build and most importantly I think the mass audience doesn't really want to wear a computer on their face hey thank you for watching this little snippet from our big show the news Roundtable This Week in Tech I'm Leo leaport each week we cover the week's Tech news in-depth analysis but it's also fun and engaging you'll find it at twit.tv along with all of our shows and if you want more just hit the Subscribe button and uh we'll be sure to bring you a lot more great content thanks for listeningthis is Twi lots to talk about but I'm very glad you're here Sam because uh it was a bit of a shocker this week Apple C canceled a product it never announced and as far as be a shock to you as far as anybody knows it was all imaginary it was just a dream for the last 10 years project Titan widely rumored to be Apple's uh car project Mark German who's very reliable uh said that on Tuesday the memo went out that we are canceling the project we're going to try to move everybody uh from Project Titan over to our AI efforts but the Apple car is unofficially dead because it never lived you said you're not surprised no uh I mean when first reports of project Titan first came out in early 2015 um I I had written I wrote a series of articles on my personal blog back then basically uh indicating my skepticism that Apple would ever follow through and actually build a car uh having spent the last 30 plus years in the Auto industry I you know it it never seemed probable that they would actually do this because you know apple as we know is a company that generally only likes to go into market segments where they can make really large profit margins like 35 Plus percent profit margins and pretty much nobody in the Auto industry comes even close to that kind of profit margin um and so it just it never really made sense that Apple would do this um you know I figured you know they would play around with it for several years um try some things I did you know at the time you know lay out a few scenarios where that could be possible scenarios for them because among the other things they had been doing at the time was they had invested a billion in DD which is a Chinese ride hailing company similar to Uber and left di di DD yes and they were also uh you know doing a bunch of other things they had uh purchased the company forget the name of it now but it was the company that developed the original Microsoft Connect was an Israeli company oh yeah uh which had some really interesting sensing and perception technology um you know and what you know what I figured that if if one one potential scenario that could work for Apple would be if they could um do a premium Mobility service um rather than selling cars because again one of the the challenges for for apple is they like to control their entire ecosystem and you know once you sell a vehicle to Consumers you lose control of that you can't control for example what tires they put on it what parts they might replace over the life of that vehicle um what other modifications they might make but if they had done something like a uh a subscription uh Robo taxi service you know a premium subscription Robo taxi service then you know they could retain control of those Vehicles they can ensure that nothing gets modified um they don't have to deal with for example setting up a dealer Network and a service network uh to maintain these vehicles they I mean they would have to do that anyway if they're own these vehicles but uh that would be one potential scenario that they might have followed but doing that would require that they actually have uh you know a working automated driving system which they also worked on for much of the last decade and never really seemed to make much Headway with um although I think that there you know there were Lessons Learned From that effort um that you know probably uh filtered into other products like for example the live RAR that they put on iPads and iPhones uh I suspect that that at least in part uh came from Lessons Learned in the in Project Titan uh in the in the automated driving effort um various other things some of the perception things um that you know where you're trying to detect and classify different objects is probably filtered into some of the work they've done on the the camera side so there's a lot of a lot of things that you know they they've probably benefited from it from this effort But ultimately um you know I I am not at all surprised that they abandoned the the project they've had so many twists and turns over the last decade so many different people leading the program I know I know a number of people that went to Apple left Apple uh after working on it for a number of years um and you know PE and then you know there's people like Doug field who went from Tesla to Apple to work to lead this project and then went to Ford he's at board now and there's a lot of other people that I've known that have spent some time at Apple working on this over the last decade but it just never they never really could figure out a business model that fit with Apple's way of doing business it uh it certainly felt like a revolving door between Apple and Tesla and I'm reading Mark German's uh piece in Bloomberg titled Apple car was doomed by its lofty ambition to outd do Tesla and you get the strong impression that Apple did something with the car that they rarely do which is look over their shoulders at another company and say oh you know we we should do that and we should beat them at their own game and uh that has not that doesn't seem like that's going to end well especially against Tesla Tesla really just dominant in this market German says they had two schools of thought 10 years ago roughly when they started this and I I'm going to you have inside insight to this Sam too so if you hear me say something that German said that's wrong let me know but German also has really good sources he says when they started thinking about this 10 years ago they had two choices either build an electric vehicle basically functionally the same as the Tesla or be more ambitious and and I'm going to quote Gman change the world with a full blown self-driving vehicle taking passengers from point A to point B with zero intervention from a driver and make it look like nothing anyone else had seen before he says they plann these cars without steering wheels or pedals that you would drive it using Siri which anybody who's used Siri for any length of time knows is a nightmare idea Anthony had you have you been following this story also for a decade yeah absolutely I mean I I don't have any inside sources but just just reading about it it's been this constant far off dream um and I think yeah it was it was surprising in the sense that it felt like apple had been pursuing this for so long I just thought it would be kind of like um you know kind of like Zeno's Paradox like just continually like the the the Finish Line never actually reaching the finish line but they just continue putting money into it but in retrospect it makes sense that at a certain point they'd say well maybe not like we don't actually want to like do this for 20 years and have nothing to show for it I mean it sounds like from what Sam was saying not nothing but no real commercial product to show for it show for it or the estimated 10 billion dollar that they pumped into it there were at one point there were thousands of people working on this car Sam didn't they have a facility in Sunnyville where they were trying to assemble the vehicles yeah I it's it's hard to say what they were assembling you I mean they did have a fleet of Lexus rxs that they had their um people seen those driv system yeah and I I i' I've seen them driving around as well uh but um and it may you know it may be that you know that that was just a facility that they were using for assembling those Vehicles you know to to upfit those vehicles with all the sensors and compute that they needed they may have been building you know prototyping some stuff there um you know I think you know German's second idea you know which is what I was talking about um is probably what they ultimately wanted to do but I think the the reason probably the reason why they got into this in the first place is you know they they recognized that at some point the the market for the products they were already doing like phones and tablets and computers was going to get saturated and of course we know that the the financial markets want growth and big stock prices big share prices are based on this having a a a growth narrative for a company and if there if a company is just stagnant and not really growing which is what the traditional Auto industry is you know where they still have huge cash flows and make turn huge profits not Apple scale profits but you know big profits uh but they they're not growing and so they have low stock prices and apple did not want to be in that position and you know one of the places where Tim Cook probably thought well here's an area where we could potentially really boost our Revenue numbers at least if not necessarily profits in the near- term at least revenues because even though they wouldn't sell anywhere near the unit volumes of vehicles uh that they that they do with phones or tablets they would you know the the cost of a vehicle especially the kind of vehicle that Apple would build you know which not would not be you know a Ford Focus type of vehicle it's going to be something more like a lucid air um it that you know that even if you're you know selling 50 or 100 thousand of those a year that at 100 to $150,000 a piece that's a huge boost to your Revenue line um and so I think that's probably what the thinking was uh but you know the it just actually executing on that turned out to be way harder than they anticipated and I've said on a number of occasions over the last several years that you know if Apple you know as as this thing dragged on if Apple really wanted to just get into the car business what they should have done was just bought Lucid because Lucid is a company very much in the Apple mold in terms of the types of vehicles they build the design uh ethos that they have um you know very very Advanced uh Technologies and of course lucid's head of software is a guy named Mike Bell who was formerly at Apple um so I think you that's what they probably should have done if they if they wanted to continue that down this path and apple you know could have taken what Lucid is already doing and take the expertise that Apple has in Supply Chain management for example and really addressed some of the big problems that lucid has which has been as a startup just dealing with suppliers and getting components and getting better pricing on components Apple probably could have fixed that and probably could have turned Lucid into a really viable business but you know they decided they wanted to do it all on their own and and now they didn't they're not yeah according to German Who quotes somebody involved in decision- making it was as if Apple had tried to skip all the early iPhone models and jump right to the iPhone 10 instead of just putting a flag in the ground with a good enough car with an Apple user interface slick Johnny I design interior and exterior by the way Johnny I very involved in the early days of this we hear and an iPhone like buying experience the company bet everything on the wrong horse autonomy how important Anthony is it for a company like apple to have the next big thing on the burner I mean Apple Google's kind of a lot a lot of our big tech companies are kind of in this position right now where they're looking for the next thing traditionally that next thing came from somebody in a garage not from in this case right and yeah it seems like in general also there's this um this search for kind of what is the next big form factor the next wave of computing after the iPhone um and it feels like you know there have been successes in in that in terms of obviously like new Apple products new products from other companies but nothing that sort of redefined the game in the same way that the iPhone did it's kind you'd be hard pressed to have the same impact on on on the world that the iPhone had I mean that's I think the main thing is you just want to make sure that if if it does happen that that Apple if you're you know Tim Cook you want to make sure that Apple has is is in the game for whatever the next wave is and hopefully is the one leading the way I mean obviously that's the same reason why they're you know invested so much in you know what ultimately became the Vision Pro and and I've been thinking about that you know also in terms of the discussion of like oh was there could they have done something that was a little bit you know a good enough car and I mean it feels ridiculous to say this at it's price point but the Vision Pro in some ways seems like a compromise good enough product where you know I think there are certain things they wanted in terms of the battery in terms of the transparency of the lenses that probably are not what they started with but at a certain point they realized okay we need to get something out there and this will eventually lead to the thing that we're dreaming about maybe um and it seemed like they couldn't figure out a path to do that with the car it's interesting compare the car to the Vision Pro I mean Apple's a big enough company and has enough money to have separate parallel tracks but it does feel like The Vision Pro beat the Apple car and one of the problems according to German and others that the Apple car had was it was going to have to be a $100,000 car meaning it's already in the super luxury category and even then that the profit margins would be Z non-existent so it wasn't a traditional apple right now its profit margins hover around 40% uh of course it didn't happen initially with the iPhone it takes a while you know build up that ability but still 0% is not not close to 40% and so this would have been a tough a tough Roo I don't think Apple's making much money on the Vision Pro but it's probably not losing money on it either I think you know the the interesting thing about Apple when you look at the new products they've launched iPhone iPad uh you know the The Vision Pro the watch you know each one of these was strangely enough both good enough and also Lea frogging the competition but the competition existed which is why the car might have made sense for them because we could take an existing category and put the app sprinkle the Apple magic dust on it and suddenly you know profit except except that you know in those other segments where Apple had entered none of the competition that was already there was actually really very good true and so even though dominant well Blackberry was dominant I guess but yeah but I mean you it wasn't it wasn't really that great a product um and so you know with uh with the car you know there's a lot of really really good products out there from a lot of Manufacturers around the world and um you know being good enough would not be enough and I don't I don't know that there's enough Apple Magic that you could sprinkle on that unless you've you know Apple would really need to find a way to be not just good enough but in find some fundamental way that Leap Frogs the competition like they did with the iPhone you know with with the touchcreen and the the multi-touch interface with the the uh the watch you know and its form factor and even though it was limited in battery life you know some of the things it could do and even the the The Vision Pro you know for all its flaws and foibles you know it does you know it is the you know in many ways you know the best VR headset that's been created um and could they have done that with a car could they have created the best car ever well I think that's what they were trying to do with the move towards automated driving right I you know I think just creating another EV would not have been enough right it it would it would not be sufficient to you know given the the level of competition that is in that market and there's some pretty good people I mean Tesla's good I mean lucid's good uh I love my I5 I just bought a BMW that's a really really nice vehicle it' be hard for apple apple would have to do something special like not putting a steering wheel or pedals in it to and that's I think that's what they were trying to do um you know and now you know over the last couple of years in particular um you know I think a a big part of Apple's strategy would have been to really try to make some inroads into China you know which is by Far and Away the biggest Automotive Market um and you know until a few years ago foreign Brands you know had dominated the the Chinese market you know there were a lot of Chinese Brands but in terms of of sales the majority a significant majority of sales were Western Brands you know brands from Europe from even from North America um but over the last few years that has really shifted B is dominant is is B Chinese domestic Brands now have a significant majority sales in China about 60% of Chinese sales now and especially on the EV front so it would have been really hard and and they make they are making some really great EVS for a lot less than $100,000 right and I think it would have been nearly impossible for Apple to really be competitive in that Marketplace I think this is the problem Apple has with Vision Pro 2 which is it takes a while to get to this point and you're you're shooting at a moving Target and you can you could try to skate to where the puck is going but it's hard to know I think they they developed the Vision Pro they started developing it eight years ago when it looked like VR was going to be the next big thing uh the problem with the cars is autonomy didn't happen so they didn't really have anything they were skating to a place the puck never went I think they may have the same problem with Vision Pro to be honest I think this was something that people were excited about 5 years ago but are much less excited about now so has Apple lost its uh it's Mojo Anthony or is it too early to say um I think it's probably too early to say it feels like again if if if I feel like if Apple doesn't have its Mojo I'd be hardpressed to think of a company that I could point to and say oh this is sort of setting the agenda that's that's you know at The Cutting Edge um in a way that and in a consistent way that apple is not um because again it feels like we are in this in between period where there's plenty of interesting new products but nothing that's sort of setting the agenda in in that way and sort of you get companies kind of flailing around a bit well you could what if the agenda is now ai and the company setting the agenda are open AI uh Microsoft Nvidia uh what if Apple said well we think the next big thing in 2024 is going to be self-driving vehicles and 2025 is going to be VR and they just they miss missed and it turned out to be AI well it's interesting I mean those things are not completely separate right because if AI yeah you know is turns out to be the next big thing then actually maybe aut if autonomy has sort of stalled right now that may five years from now we might say oh actually maybe they should have kept the project going cuz there were leaps forward and suddenly cell driving seems like a good bet again it's it's hard to say and I I agree I think you that given the the need you know or at least the perceived need to make a big push into the AI front you know another reason for killing the car project at this point is you know there were a lot of software Engineers working on this you know modern modern vehicles are all softwar defined and a lot of that software definition is around AI related uh capabilities um particularly the automation but even even other elements within the vehicle and so there's probably a lot of skill sets that were tied up in Project Titan that they can utilize better in the near term for generative AI efforts around the throughout the rest of the company well it may be that in fact that's what they did right they took those Engineers um I'm suppose there's some metal Benders in there that won't have a job at Apple I mean AI doesn't really but they they'll find they'll find they've got apple on their resume they will find other places to work plent of without too much difficulty yeah we' love to see what Apple was doing and say what could we what could we use what could we apply to our current projects you know a Fisker is looking for a a a white knight at this point right um well actually it's been reported it was reported uh they on Thursday they did their Q4 earnings and issued a going concern warning in their earnings report the next day a report came out from Reuters that they're in talks with Nissan uh Nissan potentially um uh providing you know investing $400 million to help uh with development of the fisker's next batch of products uh including the Alaska pickup truck and uh part of that is Nissan wants to be able to build uh a Nissan branded version of that truck they would love to get a midsize electric pickup truck into the marketplace yeah it's hard I mean look I don't I don't think Apple's screwed up in any way it's very hard to predict the future uh and in projects like this where it takes years to develop it's easy to miss the boat I it's clear the car missed the boat I kind of in my heart think Vision Pro might have missed the boat as well that it it was not the product that we need right now it's too expensive it's too complicated to build and most importantly I think the mass audience doesn't really want to wear a computer on their face hey thank you for watching this little snippet from our big show the news Roundtable This Week in Tech I'm Leo leaport each week we cover the week's Tech news in-depth analysis but it's also fun and engaging you'll find it at twit.tv along with all of our shows and if you want more just hit the Subscribe button and uh we'll be sure to bring you a lot more great content thanks for listening\n"