“Much has been made of Apple’s competition with electric car pioneer Tesla Motors. But Larry Burns, GM’s former VP of R&D, expects Cupertino to radically reimagine the automobile rather than just delivering incremental change,” Lewis Wallace writes for Cult of Mac. “‘Over the years I’ve seen Apple’s strong tendency to change the design language of the incumbent solutions,’ said Burns. ‘For example, the iPhone dramatically changed the design language of the BlackBerry. I am speculating that Apple is not just seeking to make a better Tesla, but aiming to change the design language of automobiles based on what is now technically possible.'”
“The Apple Car could benefit from the rise of ride-sharing, which eliminates the hassle of ownership (especially in urban areas). Imagine a fleet of driverless Apple vehicles that arrive when beckoned using an app,” Wallace writes. “Apps, and connections via the iPhone and Apple Watch, could yield a car that can be customized on the fly to accommodate the needs and desires of any and all passengers. Seat height could be adjusted to suit your body size, temperature could be tweaked to make you comfortable, and your favorite Apple Music playlists could be cued up as you approach an Apple Car with your iPhone in your pocket. Even license plates could be digitally rendered for each driver.”
“The Apple Car could take advantage of the millions of iPhones on city streets to make urban transportation simpler and safer, said Tim Huntzinger, ArtCenter professor of transportation design,” Wallace writes. “‘With iPhones in the pockets of many non-Apple Car drivers (and pedestrians), the whole urban system could be communicating with itself,’ he said.”
Read more in the full article here.
MacDailyNews Take: Yup, Apple will “radically reimagine the automobile rather than just delivering incremental change” or they won’t enter the market.
Who says Apple’s working on an electric plug-in car, for example?
Apple blows up markets and current technology for grins.
If you looked at the mobile phone market in 2002 and told people that, in five years, Apple begin to completely remake the cellphone industry, soon reaping nearly all of the profits in the process, with a $799+ pocket computer, you’d be laughed out of the room. (Of course, that didn’t stop us.)
Yes, it makes no sense for Apple to be developing a “car.” Apple developing a car makes perfect sense when you expect them to bring new things to the table to the table that will blown up and remake the current market. That’s what Apple does. If Apple can’t deliver paradigm shifts, then they don’t enter the market. — MacDailyNews, March 12, 2015
Chemistry and physics have laws that can’t be broken… What if the secret to the “Apple Car” isn’t the battery, but the fuel cell? — MacDailyNews, February 25, 2015
SEE ALSO:
The Apple Car, as imagined by Motor Trend – April 14, 2016
Avoid Tesla because hydrogen is the new electric – March 7, 2016
Apple leases 96,000-square-foot industrial facility as car talk swirls – March 3, 2016
Apple’s lease of old Sunnyvale Pepsi bottling plant hints at Project Titan expansion – March 1, 2016
Apple silent on mysterious noises coming from clandestine complex – February 27, 2016
Loud, late-night ‘motor noises’ emanate from Apple’s secret vehicle testing center – February 11, 2016
Apple Car: Forget ‘electric,’ think hydrogen fuel cells – February 20, 2015
Inside Apple’s top-secret ‘Titan’ electric car project – March 13, 2015
Apple working with Intelligent Energy on fuel cell technology for mobile devices, sources say – July 14, 2014
North Carolina regulators approve Apple’s 4.8-megawatt fuel cell facility at Maiden data center – May 23, 2012
New aerial images of Apple’s planned NC fuel cell, solar farms published – April 7, 2012
Apple’s massive fuel cell energy project to be largest in the U.S. – April 4, 2012
Apple patent application reveals next-gen fuel cell powered Macs and iOS devices – December 22, 2011
Apple patent app details highly-advanced hydrogen fuel cells to power portable devices – October 20, 2011
Sorry, but I can barely trust Tim Cook to keep personal electronics up to date without screwups… So there is no way on earth I would trust this guy with my life in a Tim Cook car!
This man is truly an incompetent and if most can’t see it, that’s fine, but many do and he sucks big time. He’s lazy, boring, and little more than a caretaker who’s distracted with personal issues unrelated to his job description.
Apple needs a new leader like yesterday.
I hope they have something more interesting in mind than what amounts to an automated zip car.
Maybe I’m the minority on this but what this guy just described didn’t sound all that exciting to me.
Conservation, cost and safety, and if you haven’t been doing any research into autonomous vehicles, or really thought about where they’ll take us, you may not yet realize just how compelling those arguments will be.
Kicking and screaming, the new world will be dragged into a transition in transportation like the one that relegated riding horses to hobbies and racing. It might start in 5 years, probably won’t take 20 to complete.
Why do I think this? Look at all the attention to driver-less vehicles, when the market isn’t even asking for it. And there’s no second amendment right to drive a car, nor any protection from government regulation of the transportation industry.
When the government decides that autonomous vehicles are the future, they’ll just sin-tax personal driving rights into a privilege of the rich, before removing them completely.
What is the point of reading flimsy speculative articles with Could in the title?
Why the heck would Apple build a car? None of the reasons make any sense. It’s like saying MacDumbnolds are going to start serving Vegan Food.
Well, that famous clown is selling just that in india, so, now do you understand Apple building a car?
Hard to see “personal transport as a service” as attractive to Apple. Continuous effort to keep the vehicles clean (detritus accumulation, barfing partiers, etc, etc). Just what Apple needs to enhance its image. High quality personal transport device is a much more likely target.