“Johann Jungwirth, the Mercedes Benz R&D exec that Apple hired last September, worked on infotainment systems, which makes him a natural for Apple’s work on CarPlay,” Jean-Louis Gassée writes for Monday Note. “The mystery vans are most likely part of the company’s Maps product.”
“Apple has made a commitment to better in-car systems, not in and for themselves in isolation, but as a reinforcement of the iOS ecosystem. If the large number of engineers that they’ve ‘poached’ from Tesla seems a bit much, consider again the enormous size of iPhone (and iPad) revenue for this past quarter: $60B – compared to GM’s $40B for the same period,” Gassée writes. “To Apple, anything that helps the iOS ecosystem is well worth what looks like oversized investments to outsiders.”
“An Apple car feels good: design, quality, service, trust. A winner. I’ll buy two. It’ll work because it’d be really great if it did… but a small matter of implementation – actually the larger Moore’s Law intrudes,” Gassée writes. “The fantastic Apple Car is a fantasy.”
Read more in the full article here.
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Apple working on self-driving electric car, source says – February 14, 2015
Apple’s project ‘Titan’ gears up to challenge Tesla in electric cars – February 13, 2015
Apple’s next big thing: The Apple Car? – February 13, 2015
Apple hiring auto engineers and designers – February 13, 2015
Hope Apple does not jump the shark.
Apple DID once ‘jump the shark’ back in 1996 when they ended up with $1 Billion in unwanted warehoused Mac Performas. That’s what happens when you allow Marketing-As-Management. Apple learned. Steve Jobs brought the company back into entrepreneurial mode.
As long as Apple stays entrepreneurial and doesn’t go the way of Sony, there will be no further jumping of sharks.
🎣 🏄
Exactly.
Finally, somebody called all this ridiculous, click-whoring BS for what it is: a pink unicorn.
Merci, Monsieur Gassée.
Agree; there is nothing to confirm that Apple does anything more than street mapping and in-car systems. WSJ and Reuters have made unprovable contradicting claims that are probably just made up. They are competing with who will make more publicity from this, and those lies are totally safe for them since there will be no official rebuttal.
I suspect Apple is having fun of its own milking these rumours. Expect an invite for an April 1st event sometime soon.
I expect Samsung announcing “Galaxy Car” soon. Samsung has already tried cars in 1990s, but failed and sold 80% of their business to Renault, with Samsung branding gone.
But Samsung can actually buy WSJ/Reuters story and start anew. 🙂
I *hope* Samsung does that actually. Their brand is starting to take a negative tone recently, with their self-inflicted Smart TV problems (privacy issues with voice recognition, and inserting ads into the *user’s* own movies during playback), so Samsung being led down a fake rabbit trail and wasting tons of money would be an awesome thing.
I concur, Apple car, someone’s fantasy, and Apple insiders a giggling to themselves.
Is a pink unicorn any less likely that a unicorn of any other color?
All unicorns are pink. Everybody knows that.
And what in the world does Moore’s Law have to do with building a car?
That’s right, nothing.
shuuuush, we’re about to get samsung waste whats left of their cash by developing a car!
Ahhh now I get it, more corporate espionage.
I disagree with the concept that this is for only CarPlay as strictly an entertainment and mapping system .
There is a lot of computers and software in modern vehicles and I have heard experts say a lot of it is buggy.
What is at stake here is no less than the operating system for vehicles and how about Apple powering and selling the operating system for a lot of the vehicles sold each year.
Except apple historically has leaned towards making the hardware on which their software runs !
Thats one of their main claims to fame and slogans !
What you are suggesting is more a Google or MS approach !
I agree with you and am suggesting they may make the CPU + software i.e. the guts of an electric car
I think that they also have some kind of deal on the Tesla battery plant
There are also reports that they have been talking to Magna which is a major parts supplier.
The conflict is a situation where they get in to conflict with other OEM’s kinda like Google did when they bought Motorola mobile.
Whatever happens this is going to be interesting
That’s true of products that Apple bran manufactures. But CarPlay is an Apple product intended to go into someone else’s product (cars).
I expect that Apple is extending CarPlay from a dash controller OS, to include a self driving controller/sensor system as well. It would be just like Apple to buy the best sensor manufacturer (including patents) to go with its software.
I agree with MattyG, and would take it further. Apple should hire some of Elon Musk’s other employees from SpaceX and leak hints that it’s working on space exploration. SpaceX could even be in on the gag. Then we’ll all sit back and smile knowingly as Samsung spends its future trying to make space vehicle clones.
Hopefully ShameSkunk is now wasting money in an attempt to build its own SmartCar. May they go bankrupt attempting to do so! 😀
You never know. Apple does not disclose what it is working on. (Even if they are.)
Apple R&D should get into hi tech barges and deliver a knockout blow to Eric Schmidt’s floating masterpiece.
Did anyone notice if “The Van” had a rotor on top?
Don’t be so quick to dismiss the Apple Car. Remember before the iPhone came out, Apple dabbled in this area of adding iTunes first to the top selling Motorola RAZR phone in late 2005 while also developing an iPhone to come out about 18 months later
Which was a stopgap until the iPhone came out, nothing more (and a big flop, BTW).
Keep in mind that Apple is also in the chip design business.
If I recall my computer history correctly, the Power PC partners sold far more Power PC chips to car manufactures than they did to Apple for their Mac’s.
No longer!
What apple makes goes in apple products now !
Apple promised to keep making chips for missiles when they bought the chip design firm.
Apple will never do a cellphone. The iPad will fail miserably because nobody needs one. The apple car is a fantasy.
We shall see. just because they are mapping stuff in minivans that fact has zero to do with whether or not we get an iCar. I believe.
Apple isn’t gonna make a standalone TV and isn’t gonna make a car.
Not a car. It’s a Galaxy Class Starship. Period!
Thank god! These people that have been wildly speculating have no idea what goes into making a car. I’m not saying Apple couldn’t tnake a car, I’m saying they wouldn’t.
Its as much a guess by Gaseee as anyone else..
But there us building evidance that apple is up to something big there..
Apple does not enjoy the margins they do by being wasteful …a team of a 1000 auto engineers of all sorts and offers of 60% pay raise and 250k bonus sound way more than Carplay implementation!
It’s a wake up article for sure. I particularly enjoyed how the authors played with Moore’s Law.
By definition: “Moore’s law” is the observation that, over the history of computing hardware, the number of transistors in a dense integrated circuit doubles approximately every two years.
The authors point out that there is no Moore’s Law for cars, notably for “Batteries, which contribute the most to the price, don’t double in power or halve in cost every 18 months.”
However there is an opportunity here to look at early reactions to the fantastical Apple Car as it applies to bottom feeding populations of jouranalists and analysts.
There are roughly 50 headlines currently on the main MDN page, seven of them relate to the Apple car in some way. A doubling and plateau in just under 24 hours, blowing the rate of Moore’s law out of the water.
Feb 12: Elon Musk compares Tesla to Apple
Feb 13: Three mentions for something about Tesla and Apple and cars.
Feb 14: Another three mentions of Apple cars.
Of course this all stems from a mysterious Apple van that showed up a while ago. The authors thought of writing up a parody about an Apple car and quote several Apple car articles. Could this be an indication of Moore’s law?
Possibly but there is another consideration, that of the piss law. Those of you who have been out riding horses in the great beautiful wilderness of the planet know that when a group of pack horses stop for a break they all piss themselves at the same time. This is probably more accurate than a reference to Moore’s law, especially since everyone knows how much modern day jouranalist like to horse around with speculation instead of presenting hard facts.
The law of urination for mammals however states that mammals pee for an average of 21 seconds (plus or minus 13 seconds). I don’t know about you but some jouranalist seem like they are constantly urinating waste material on anyone they can. Kind of takes them out of mammals and back into the bottom feeder zone. However I don’t know of any animal that pees constantly but I’ll be keeping an eye out. Who knows, jouranlists just may be a new form of deevolving life.
A compelling and entertaining analysis, Road Warrior.
The statistical laws describing the rate of propagation of rumours are most similar to those found in epidemiology. Isolating a virus, however, is more difficult when the infected source is as prominent and influenzial as the Wall Street Journal. Which is how this damn story got any legs to begin with. – WSJ, spreading STD. They’re even dirtier than I thought.
But your second theory is even better. It easily explains the quality of the ordure we mistake for information these days, by pointing out how it issues from the wrong orifices.
I could disagree with your piss ‘law’, having wrangled a few horses in my time. But your theory of pissing jouranalcysts is so compelling and delightful that I only want to extend a hearty handshake and tell you ‘Well done sir!’
What is truly impressive is that tech journalists and analysts seem to piss a lot of crap, which normally would be painful yet they seem to thrive on doing so . . . .
I was listening to a particularly painful crap pissing session on NPR this afternoon. Two journanalcysts chattering total vapor about ‘The Apple Car’ for over five minutes. VERY painful.
Apple’s not making a car……….they’re making a flying car!
OK, fine Mr. Gassée. The magic Apple van is obviously being used for adding imagery to Apple Maps. Good call.
So why did you fall for the ‘Macs are moving to A-Series ARM chips’ nonsense?
If Apple was going to make a car then they’d surely make a number of purchases to jump them up to the required level. Just hiring a hundred staff is not enough. To start from scratch will take time, and there is no way they will be able to maintain the level of secrecy they like, if only because they will need to do testing and meet safety regulations etc. They obviously have the money, but strapping something to the roof of a mini van does not strike me as being a first step to building an entire car.
Something all these people writing these articles have missed: Tesla has released its battery patents free for any manufacturer to use.
Apple, a huge user of solar/wind/alternative energies and using more of it daily, meets with Tesla.
Tesla announces this week that it will begin building battery packs for residential use within 6 months, allowing people using alternative energy (solar/wind) to take their home completely off the grid because they can store power for times when the sun doesn’t shine/wind doesn’t blow.
Gee, could Apple maybe have been talking to Tesla about massive battery packs for its data centers/factories in order to store all this energy it is producing and reduce its conventional energy use even further?
No, no, must be an Apple car, because Tesla builds cars. Or Apple’s buying Tesla. Or Apple’s buying SpaceX. Or something much less rational.