The next-generation CarPlay interface previewed on June 6th at WWDC 2022 is a precursor to an eventual “Apple Car,” Mark Gurman writes for Bloomberg News.
Mark Gurman for Bloomberg News:
When Apple Inc. unveiled a new version of CarPlay at the Worldwide Developers Conference last week, it was more than a software update—it previewed one of the most exciting products in the company’s pipeline: an electric car.
The move fit a pattern for Apple. Before the company enters a major new product category, it usually releases something that serves as the foundation.
• In January 2001, Apple launched iTunes. Ten months later, the iPod arrived.
• In 2014, Apple released HealthKit and the Health app, which heralded the Apple Watch’s debut in 2015.
• Also in 2014, Apple introduced HomeKit. That predated the HomePod smart speaker, as well as smart-home hub technology being integrated into the iPad and Apple TV…
I don’t believe we’ll see the new CarPlay system on public roads until 2024, but Apple had to announce it, in part, to help pressure automakers to adopt the software. It’s a source of tension: Some car companies don’t want Apple to take over their interface, and the software could ultimately be used in a future vehicle that they have to compete with.
MacDailyNews Take: Yup.
Also, remember the “iTunes phone,” i.e. Motorola ROKR. Apple used that, and Motorola, to learn about the cellphone industry (and dealing with carriers, with Cingular Wireless (AT&T) as its initial carrier). The rest is history. Everyone with a smartphone today is using an Apple iPhone or an iPhone imitation.
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The article’s analogy of the 2005 Motorola Rokr (“iTunes phone”) (2 years before the iPhone) is interesting, because many of the companies that Apple was competing with at the time in the cell phone industry, ceased to exist 5 years later . . . similarly, if you look at the dozens of brands that make ICE cars today, you can imagine that many of them will cease to exist in 10 years, as the winners will be EV cars (and TAAS– Transportation as a Service, will likely replace today’s norm of individual car ownership).
EV’s may succeed, they may not. For one, prices are only increasing, not falling regarding EVs. Battery materials are not expanding at the rate of EV’s nor expanding and becoming less in pricing that the industry as a whole predicted they would.
That’s a huge problem. As in huge.
As more and more dive into EV’s, if raw materials and costs can’t keep up for batteries, prices cannot fall, but only increase. And that will leave a lot of auto-makers with a lot of models quietly being ended, or pushed out, roadmaps changing, etc…
EV’s will be and are beginning to be, stuck at the high-end of the pricing spectrum. Makers are not content to lose money, and will slow their roll-out plans accordingly, leaving the lux space for EVs only.
Ironic, Biden rolls out his hydrogen production (because we can all put that in our gas tanks!), but how is the majority of hydrogen made? Converted natural gas. Hilarious… And yet it IS Hydrogen vehicles in the net 5-10 years that may show EV’s as being a gap technology. Anyone with natural gas to their home could put in a hydrogen converter kit and presto – fuel up at home for the cost of your natural gas (cheap!), and fuel up in 5 minutes or less, not 5 hours.
EV’s are a vast market build on hope, and as they say, hope ain’t a strategy.
That would be an easier “car play” for Apple, to become the de facto common smart interface for every new car. But then, Google will create a copy and future MDN will say something like “everyone driving a car today is using Apple CarPlay or a CarPlay imitation” 😉 Making the whole car (that’s autonomous) isn’t happening any time soon, so refining the human-car interface is smart.
Gurman gets it wrong, so does MDN. What we witnessed at WWDC was Apple officially giving up on a physical car. After 10 years of Project Titan and all the staff turnover etc., they failed to create and make a car.
They have clearly ditched the physical car idea and have decided to just give away the software to be licensed to 3rd party auto manufacturers. As they announced, they are working with several automakers to make this work. They are not going to give their software away like this if they actually were going to launch their own physical car: Apple would cede a critical competitive advantage which would hurt its own physical car sales.
I believe Apple realized the car industry is not only very difficult to break into, but it would also not be easy for it to dominate because many new vehicles have excellent engineering and design. With that being the case, Apple would not be able to dominate the market which is a precondition for them to enter a market.
So they salvage something out of Project Titan to try and become the “Windows” of the car world which they will hope and expect will lead to more of their own device sales since mobile Apple devices will be tightly integrated into this new CarPlay.
If they can’t execute as they want to yet because technology needs to advance first, I think things could be on hold for that reason (if they’re even on hold)– i.e., solid state batteries, or the old patent for fuel cells that came out years ago and everyone laughed at because they thought it would be for an iPod, etc. Give them time. Apple goes to market when they have something different enough to offer that it shakes things up.
Stop man. How ridiculous. They have had 10 YEARS! This is a complete failure. We have lots of evidence of that failure. Many reports including on here of internal issues on the project, high turnover, etc.
Apple cannot dominate the auto industry as there are many well designed, finely engineered vehicles in existence. They will not be able to compete no matter what to the extent that they would dominate. Apple, like every single other auto manufacturer is limited by fuel technology. Apple does not have some special power to have something significantly better in this department.
There are a lot of battery developments for instance and Apple is not part of that for automobiles. Volkswagen and Tesla are heavily invested in this stuff and have locked up many billions of dollars of batteries in the global supplychain. This is a very hypercompetitive market.
This isn’t like the cell phone business either. For instance, Apple has no dealership network. That is a huge capital investment globally. Apple has no auto-manufacturering facilities vs companies like Volkswagen who have over 20 where they can pump out and entire electric SUV in 10 hours flat controlling and owning the complete process.
Aside from all this stuff, there are other very important aspects of a car that is not in Apple’s core competency. Like HANDLING. Porsche does this well. So does my electric Audi which was stress tested on the Nuremberg track like pretty much all german vehicles including their internal stress testing. This aspect of their vehicles has been developed over decades of engineering and they are the leaders in it.
All of this and more is why we will not see a physical Apple car.
Don’t forget about Motorola Marco: Apple Netwon + Motorola data radio. Predated Palm Treo and was an amazing device for its time. Jobs made a mistake killing it.
Ha, loved my Handspring Treo. Phone, email, web browser, downloadable software apps, music — all very rudimentary in 2002 but made all mobile phones old fashioned.