Rumors that Apple plans to enter the electric vehicle market have circulated for years and have been gaining momentum as of late. The debut of an “Apple Car” could power Apple stock to new heights.
Patrick Seitz for Investor’s Business Daily:
The speculation is sparking the imagination of both investors and consumers, who wonder if the Apple car will be something revolutionary or just a me-too electric vehicle to compete with the likes of Tesla.
MacDailyNews Take: No. Apple’s doesn’t do “me-too.” That’s not how Steve Jobs designed the company to work.
Apple is working on actual vehicles, not just some “vehicleOS” they’d license out to others (which was always a stupid proposition, as anyone who’s studied how Apple works for more than 3 minutes knows implicitly). — MacDailyNews, August 28, 2018
I’ve always wanted to own and control the primary technology in everything we do. — Steve Jobs, October 12, 2004
As we wrote back in March 2015: “When Apple enters markets, it’s because they can bring something(s) so unique to the table that significant disruption is inevitable.”
When Apple looks at what categories to enter, we ask these kinds of questions: What are the primary technologies behind this? What do we bring? Can we make a significant contribution to society with this? If we can’t, and if we can’t own the key technologies, we don’t do it. That philosophy comes directly from [Steve Jobs] and it still very much permeates the place. I hope that it always will. – Apple CEO Tim Cook, March 18, 2015
The stakes could be enormous for Apple stock. An Apple car would allow the company to target a market exponentially larger than phones. Global auto sales totaled $2.55 trillion in 2020, vs. $420 billion for the smartphone market. An electric car also would fit with the company’s environmentally friendly image.
Speculation that Apple would build a car shifted into high gear in December when Reuters reported that the company was planning to roll out a passenger vehicle in 2024. The report said Apple has developed “breakthrough battery technology” with designs that could “radically” reduce the cost of batteries and increase the vehicle’s range…
Don’t expect the Apple car to have a steering wheel, Morgan Stanley automotive analyst Adam Jonas said in a recent report to clients.
“We have a hard time imagining Apple entering the automotive market with a vehicle design that involves human intervention in the driving process,” Jonas said. “An Apple car with a steering wheel is like an iPhone with physical buttons and a coiled rubber cord connected to a wall.”
MacDailyNews Take: Wrong.
Apple Car will have a steering wheel (and other human controls like brakes, etc.) because Apple will want people to actually buy them. — MacDailyNews, February 5, 2021
When Apple will come out with an electric vehicle is a moving target. Noted Apple stock analyst Ming-Chi Kuo of TF International Securities believes the earliest that Apple could launch a car would be 2025. And it would be on a “tight schedule” to meet that launch time frame, he says.
Other reports say Apple is targeting 2024, but many analysts say it could be anywhere from five to 10 years away.
MacDailyNews Take: Apple stock won’t move on “Apple Car” until some much more concrete information than we’ve seen up ’til now appears.