“The basic word on the street is Apple has a secret lab and has various car prototypes they are working on with the idea of creating an actual car that would have an Apple logo on it. While this speculation is interesting, count me as one of the serious skeptics on Apple actually making a branded car and selling it as a stand-alone vehicle regardless of how smart it could be,” Tim Bajarin writes for Tech.pinions. “If they really wanted to get into the smart car business, just buy Tesla and work with them to add Apple’s intelligence and services to this vehicle. Clearly, they have the money to do this if it was strategic to their future.”
“I believe Apple’s plans are much grander than doing their own car,” Bajarin writes. “I do believe Apple has car prototypes in their labs as some have suggested. But I believe they are there to help them create a radical smart/intelligent connected car architectural design that could be licensed to all car companies or be part of an integrated solution. They would work with car companies to customize future models that would be smarter and perhaps safer than any car on the market today. The operative word here is safer.”
“What if Apple was able to present to car makers a rich solution behind iOS that connects sensors and cameras along with music, apps and services that helps them create a car that has multiple cameras as well as a 360 degree camera on top so there are never any blind spots,” Bajarin writes. “Sensors inside and out could be used to add additional safety features including collision avoidance and the like. Add to that the music and entertainment features that are part of iOS as well as the fact that iOS is a platform app developers could create apps for a car. Apple could create the architecture that sits at the center of all future smart cars.”
Much more in the full article – highly recommended – here.
MacDailyNews Take: Would the vehicle makers really work with Apple and actually cede the “brains” of their vehicles to Apple? Or would they fight them tooth and nail as it seems we are seeing in the media realm with Apple’s difficulty putting together the deal to launch an Internet TV service?
