Apple is trying to create a self-driving electric car in 2024. There are claims they will have breakthrough battery technology. Apple’s electric car effort is called Project Titan and the effort started in 2014.
Apple has a monocell battery design. This design allows for more space inside the battery pack. It eliminates pouches and modules.
Tesla does not have pouches and Tesla Battery Day plan is to remove modules.
Apple’s monocell means more active material can be packed inside the battery. Apple is looking at LFP (lithium iron phosphate) batteries. These are the batteries used for Made in China Tesla cars.
Apple’s car might have several lidar sensors for its self-driving. Apple has internally developed lidar units which are used in the iPhone 12 Pro and iPad Pro smartphones.
I own Tesla shares and am a strong believer in Tesla. I see no reason to believe that Apple will be able to leapfrog Tesla. There is nothing in what Apple is doing that indicates their batteries or self-driving will be better.
The speed of Apple’s electric development is unimpressive. They have worked for six years and produced no product.
Apple’s factory and production capabilities does not look impressive. Apple has Foxconn, the Taiwanese manufacturing company with China factories to make their smartphones.
I also own Apple shares. Apple’s electric car efforts will not be lost effort even if the Apple electric self-driving car is too little too late. Apple research into electric car batteries and electric car technology can be used in smartphones and other successful Apple products.
Apple can try to make superior smart electric car systems. Any superior components or software can become part of the systems integrated into cars made by other carmakers. Apple can fail on the whole car but succeed in spinning off superior gadgets, robots, non-car vehicles, drones and other products and services.
I predict that Tesla is still dominates the decade with electric cars and self-driving. I predict Apple continues to dominate in Smartphones and Tablets. Apple will get nice components and batteries that will help extend Apple’s consumer product offerings. Apple will have products that will improve the experience in future self-driving electric cars. I will believe Apple can compete with a self-driving electric car if they come out with something compelling in 2024 or earlier. Until Apple starts releasing some kind of products or services spinning out of Project Titan, I cannot believe that Project Titan is really awesome.
SOURCES- Reuters and analysis by Brian Wang
Written By Brian Wang, Nextbigfuture.com
Brian Wang is a Futurist Thought Leader and a popular Science blogger with 1 million readers per month. His blog Nextbigfuture.com is ranked #1 Science News Blog. It covers many disruptive technology and trends including Space, Robotics, Artificial Intelligence, Medicine, Anti-aging Biotechnology, and Nanotechnology.
Known for identifying cutting edge technologies, he is currently a Co-Founder of a startup and fundraiser for high potential early-stage companies. He is the Head of Research for Allocations for deep technology investments and an Angel Investor at Space Angels.
A frequent speaker at corporations, he has been a TEDx speaker, a Singularity University speaker and guest at numerous interviews for radio and podcasts. He is open to public speaking and advising engagements.
And, the Microsoft car will track your usage details, making you a great target for hackers.
Just close all the windows and open them again. Should fix it.
The only way apple could pull that off is if they have partnership with another electric vesical maker…. what good is an electric call if you can only manufacture a few of them…
Car.exe has crashed. Please tell Microsoft about this problem. We have created an error report that you can send to help us improve Car.exe. We will treat this report as confidential and anonymous.
What data will this report contain?
Why should I report crashes to Microsoft?
As opposed to the Microsoft car, which will tell you where you are, document it, and be technically correct, yet none of this will be helpful in solving the problem at hand.
We don't really know how many miles of data they have, do we ?. Why do you think that they haven't reached an agreement with a level 2 driver assistance system, like Mobileye, to use their data, the same way that Tesla is using the data from their Autopilot level 2 driver assistance ?.
I personally don't even think that Apple would be interested in building their own factories, but to get those huge manufacturing Chinese companies, Foxconn-like (Magna, …), to build the cars for them. And we know how fast those people are.
And the article says that Apple has been developing their own batteries technology. I can't understand why Tesla fanatics think that Tesla is the only one developing them, we see every month plenty of breakthroughs coming from other sources (lately in solid state batteries, for example, which Tesla doesn't even consider).
I've heard about the Apple Car. You can tell it where to go, but not how to get there, that's proprietary.
True, I expect that Apple will be bringing out their car in conjunction with an existing manufacturer who already has all that boring welding robots and panel stamping machinery.
Apple can provide design and image. And to be fair Apple is much, MUCH better at that than so many car makers we can name. Most of the GM group for example.
In my dreams ….
Oh wait, this is a SFW site.
Never mind.
That's just ad hoc fanboy rationalization on your part.
They're developing the tech so they can create and sell their product.
Whatever you think apple or any company is fatally lacking in their attempts to compete with your hero, the solution is to build/acquire that missing factor.
Any company with enough funding can catch up with Waymo in a few years.
They can go from 0 to 99% faster than Waymo can go from 99% to 99.1%.
Waymo is the one to beat with self driving, the rest of the car is academic.
Passion for a market-leading product at a $1000-2000 price point does not translate to passion for the same brand at $25k-45k.
e.g. Many people buy iphones who can barely afford it – those people can't buy new cars.
What is Apples next project? How about Apple City? A place where all of Apple's customers can move and live out their days in happiness … all for an outrageous fee and zero privacy, of course.
It will be oh so much better than the Facebook Slums.
OK, granted, Apple has a lot of fans, but how does that change the reality on the ground?
Apple has zero miles data for self driving, since they have not had cars on the road to collect data. They have zero manufacturing capability. Let's think about that for a minute. It would take them at least a year to build a factory, if they could match Teslas speed (unlikely).
And how about batteries? There is going to be a shortage on the general market, and Tesla is the only car manufacturer that invests in their own battery cell factories. And they are buying all batteries they can get on the general market. So how would Apple even be able to scale the production?
It think we should withhold our enthusiasm until they unveil a car. Then we can be moderately impressed. If and when they start building factories, then we can start hoping for good products, but not a day before this.
Unlike Blue Origin, Apple has a ton of fanatics, much more than Tesla, that will buy their cars no matter how good or bad they are.
I don't think that your analogy is correct.
Tim Cook is no visionary like Steve Jobs. Apple's been plateauing since Jobs died. They'll merely coast into the electric car market, rather than roaring in with a bang.
That would be my assumption: they'll try to win on style and image.
I'm not sure what the most style and image centered car brand is. The Mini range? Fiat 500 range? (Both have an electric version already, but not to Tesla standards.)
Suzuki Wagon R?
Full autonomous go anywhere car by 2024?
I think you underestimate the complexity of interactions with human in real world for the machines. AI is great in their own domain, outside of it..
AI might as well be acronym for artificial idiot.
But Apple does not necessarily need their cars to be fully autonomous, where you can watch a movie or take a nap. People will still buy their cars if they lag a bit in certain areas. They probably will be produced by OEMs or partnering with big auto manufacturers.
In my dreams Apple is secretely making a PRT system.
This is a bit like Blue Origin vs SpaceX. We’ll see what happens but I doubt that spending a lot of money in secret to try to create a technology all at once will ever compete with making a real product and rapidly iteratively improving it.
Why do you think Apple can build assembly lines quickly? I'll grant you they have the funding to buy engineers but at this point there aren't enough good ones to keep Tesla happy.
I'm interested in hearing about Apple going into cars. My completely empty headed thinking says it is a no go. They do have the cash to spend though.
I predict Tesla will either lower the price of it's self driving software, or it's cars will be retrofitted with after market software. By the time self driving is common, there are going to be enough of it's cars on the road to make a juicy target. I think the going rate is $10,000 for future self driving.
With Apple being a lifestyle brand, will Apple try to market the iCar as something more like a Mercedes or BMW?
Your predictions are likely to prove hollow as they are based on sketchy details. Your assumptions that Apple batteries are similar to China's Tesla are not backed up, Apple has kept the veil on their autonomy effort and on much of what their EV effort includes. Apple has its own crowd of fanatic advocates and much more resources than Tesla and can build an EV assembly lines quickly, if anything can be predicted is that the whole industry is moving to the same level of technology line and the field is getting crowded. This is how a free market is supposed to work.