“With word recently leaking that high ranking officials from Apple and Tesla have met, observers have been whipped up into a frenzy about what the two parties, from two very different industries, could have discussed,” AppleInsider reports. “But there is one major tech component that is especially crucial to both Tesla and Apple: Batteries.”
“When talks between Tesla CEO Elon Musk and Apple’s mergers and acquisitions chief were first revealed on Sunday, immediate speculation centered around whether Apple, with some $160 billion in cash, would buy Tesla, which has a market cap of about $24 billion. Most, however, have dismissed that possibility, and are instead focused on potential partnerships between the two companies,” AppleInsider reports. “One possible alignment could be for Apple to offer tighter integration of its iOS devices with Tesla’s vehicles, or even to help design the user interface, which is already heavily reliant on touchscreens. However, that move would have limited reach for Apple, which sells tens of millions of devices every quarter, while Tesla for now remains a high-end brand with limited mass-market appeal.”
AppleInsider reports, “Thinking in the more immediate term, some market watchers have speculated that Apple could be interested in Tesla’s proprietary battery technology…”
Read more in the full article here.
Related articles:
Apple acquisitions chief met with Tesla CEO Elon Musk – February 16, 2014
Tesla hires Apple VP of Mac Hardware Engineering Doug Field to lead development of new vehicles – October 24, 2013
Larry Page and Sergey Brin have been backing Tesla since it’s inception… Wouldn’t Tesla go to Google for anything they’d go to Apple for? Sounds more likely that Apple is simply meeting with all car companies on tighter iOS integration and the meet with Tesla got noticed since they are also in Silicon Valley.
Google has not been known for battery development or research as far as I know. Apple, on the other hand, already has some patents in this field, and has shown more interest in improving the technology.
When I first came across Tesla some years back now while researching their ‘electrification’ of the Lotus Elise for their Roadster I noted that they were evangelising about how their approach to selling their cars, the whole experience both online and in their showroom(s) owed everything to the way that Apple was making and selling its computers. The similarity back then was clear and I assume that a lot of that must be down to Musk himself and certainly the assembled team around him, as it was a small set up back then. How much of that connection & inspiration remains I can’t say, but certainly there is a cultural link there that Im sure remains strong if not literally then certainly in the mindset.
Current mobile devices and auto integration still leave much to be desired. Nobody seems to have gotten just right yet. I have UConnect in my 2012 Jeep Wrangler, but it has some major shortcomings. The biggest I see, is my iPhone connects to the stereo system via Bluetooth.
There is no way I can get my navigation app voice navigation to work through Bluetooth. I’d really like to have it so it could. The only way you can get it, is to hook the phone up to the stereo with a 1/8″ male to male mini stereo jack connected to the radio’s auxiliary jack and the phone headphone port, you also have to turn off Bluetooth. Of course with this hookup, you lose the ability to make hands free phone calls.
I’m surprised this hasn’t been to my knowledge addressed yet, since it’s such a key factor. Addressing this one issue would go a long way to a much needed and seamless experience integrating the phone, stereo, and applications like navigation apps.
I can’t call it as far as why these two got together, but it would be nice to see Tesla get the Apple touch and way of doing things into their cars. You could pretty much ditch the stereo and have an iDevice do everything that’s currently handled by the two separate devices, i.e.: playing stored music, streaming radio, voice navigation, and making hands free phone calls.
One can always hope!
Bluetooth remains a clunky, low bandwidth, inferior technology to Wi-Fi or a plain old wired connection. I’ve never understood why anyone ever bothered to integrate it into communicating computer devices or why this limping technology still has legs.
Well simply because at short range and low power there is nothing that appears to be better. Wi-Fi at this stage is overkill for many tasks and much more costly and considering that NFC a joke standard that makes Bluetooth look like Fusion power was threatening to become the norm for similar if even more limited uses, seems that Bluetooth still has legs for the foreseeable future.
Any standard can be improved if you wait long enough TV is proof of that, we could have had digital TV a decade earlier if we were not committed to the then existing tech but you have to commit at some stage or fall behind, its those ‘political’ decisions that count in the real world for good or bad.
I forgot about NFC.
Clearly, an advantage of BlueTooth is the low power requirement. That’s obvious from the fact that my super incredible Apple Magic Trackpad runs on two AA batteries.
As for waiting for technology improvements, I have to point out that FAIL that is worldwide digital radio. Here in the USA, we were SCAMMED into a monstrosity called ‘HD Radio’ that has NOTHING ‘HD’ about it. That scam moniker was merely tacked on by the company that suckered the FCC into adopting the crap standard. The quality of both the radio signal AND the audio quality is LOWER than standard FM radio. Unforgivable. #MyStupidGovernment in action.
Tesla is also into solar energy and has said it is developing batteries to store solar power for use during peek times. Apple has a need for this in its large server farms where it has committed to produce and use its own Green energy. Apple has done a lot of research and holds it’s own patents in energy storage so we know this is of interest to them.