Shares of Apple rose in morning trading on Tuesday, a day after Reuters reported that the world’s most valuable company aims to produce an “Apple Car” by 2024 with its own revolutionary battery technology.
Central to Apple’s strategy is a new battery design that could “radically” reduce the cost of batteries and increase the vehicle’s range, Reuters reported Monday, citing a “person who has seen Apple’s battery design.”
Gene Munster and Andrew Murphy for Loup Ventures:
While the timing of an Apple car or a software licensing approach for traditional automakers is hard to predict, we continue to believe it’s likely Apple has a business related to autonomous vehicles in the next decade.
Regardless of their approach, it is clear to us that Apple has ambitions in the transportation space, which could result in meaningful revenue for the company, the emergence of Tesla’s first true competitor, and further evidence that traditional auto is in a tight spot, absent any partnership with a tech giant.
The bigger question is whether Apple will have a car on the road ten years from now. We continue to view this as a likely scenario, given Apple has invested in mobility for the last seven years, and the auto market is massive and at the cusp of a transformation. This is Apple’s wheelhouse: find a big market that a competitor has already made progress in, enter the market a few years later, and revolutionize it.
Why would Apple build a car?
• Large addressable market as cars become computers on wheels.
• Design.
• Apple knows the anatomy of the future car.
MacDailyNews Take: In their full article, Munster and Murphy make a good point about Apple, or any tech company having to get comfortable with the fact that there will be accidents, people will die, and there will be negative press, so the company may be reluctant to build a standalone car given this fact. The reality is that cars are dangerous – in the U.S., 36,120 died in motor vehicle accidents in 2019 – but technology is making and will continue to make them safer.
If Apple made a car with an ICE I would be interested.
How about a coal-stoked steam car?
You mean an electric car.
Seems everyone believes it is a car, there are so many other EV opportunities In transportation industries besides passenger cars, especially with patented highly efficient cost-effective battery technology.
Kudos to companies like Apple for pioneering electric cars. The current stink about electric cars is not enough electrical power for them if world suddenly converted to electric. Will capacity be there by 2024?
Tesla’s first serious competitor. That’s being optimistic. If it was launched now that might just be arguable but in 1924 some manufacturers selling millions of cars will be electric/hybrid exclusive or close to it. It’s going to be a tough market that yes Apple can revolutionise but it’s not going to be a sure thing for electronic entrants by any means.
Seems like I remember a now nobody CEO saying something like this back in 2004 or 05: “We have been working at this (making phones) for years. They (Apple) are not just going to walk in . . .”
But usually Apple sees a hole that needs to be filled, to intro a whole new product. I don’t really see the hole that needs to be filled.
People never see the hole. Nobody thought that computers needed a graphical interface with a mouse pointing device, That laptops needed wifi. That laptops needed to be ultrathin and ultra portable. That mp3 players needed to be revolutionized, that phones needed to be computers. Others tried all these things to one degree or another and in some cases did ok, Apple revolutionized each.
If they do have a car, I hope it’s akin to maybe the cars in the Demolition Man movie, with Auto drive or self drive, and/or if fully electric solve the range/charging time issues.
You mentioned the solid-state battery in another post. I think that’s a “hole,” or at least the current batt-tech is a hole. It wouldn’t surprise me at all that Apple would fill that hole…that’s gaping.
With the Blackberry ruling the world and everyone but Apple chasing them, no one except Steve Jobs/Apple saw the hole that needed to be filled. And almost everyone outside of Apple ridiculed the iPad. Going back to the laptop, all laptops had the keys at the front edge of the laptop until Apple saw the “hole” and put the keys at the back and let the front be a palm rest.
It is both the little things and the big things that Apple works on. Because we, or you, don’t see the hole that needs to be filled, that doesn’t mean that there isn’t a hole there. Maybe we/you need new glasses.