Apple and BYD collaborated on a long-range electric vehicle battery project from 2017 to develop a lithium iron phosphate battery system that was intended to be more advanced than existing EV batteries, Bloomberg News reports citing “people familiar with the situation.”
Gabrielle Coppola and Mark Gurman for Bloomberg News:
Though Apple doesn’t own any of the technology used in BYD’s current Blade batteries, the partnership shows just how far the iPhone maker went in its efforts to produce a car. The tech titan spent roughly $1 billion a year over the past decade on the vehicle project — often seen as one of the company’s “next big things” — before scrapping it in February.
The technology that Apple developed with BYD would have been highly customized for the once-planned vehicle, according to the people. As part of the secret partnership, Apple engineers brought expertise in advanced battery packs and heat management, they said. BYD contributed manufacturing know-how and advancements using lithium iron phosphate cells — better known as LFP.
BYD said in an emailed statement that “the concept for the Blade battery originated with BYD engineers, who independently developed this LFP Blade battery. BYD holds complete property rights and patent rights for the Blade battery.”
Today, BYD’s entire car lineup is powered by the Blade system, which uses a battery pack design that people involved in its development say was informed by lessons from the Apple work.
MacDailyNews Take: In March, Gurman described the Apple Car cancelation as “a massive disappointment that will alter the course of the company’s history, perhaps for decades to come.”
As we wrote at the time, in a Take that ages like fine wine:
This is not the only project inside Apple that’s wracked with indecision, disagreement, and waste. This is not an anomaly, it’s closer to the norm.
What if a major company had a CEO who was out of his depth, but who could look wildly successful for a decade simply by building out the company’s retail chain that his predecessor devised and iterating/not screwing up products that, again, his predecessor devised?
What would happen when real vision was finally required, but the company was hamstrung with an indecisive, myopic CEO with a seemingly unending list of misplaced priorities? – MacDailyNews, March 11, 2024
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I agree with Gurman’s take. I personally think Apple would have been much better off pursuing the car project and scrapping the Vision Pro.
I’m not sure if I completely agree with MDM’s take on this one.
No, I don’t think Timo is the “perfect,” but really, who could possibly fill those big Jobs’ shoes?! I used to think it was Elon Musk, but now I’m glad that never happened.
But seriously, who do we think specifically could do a better job? Federighi? Shiller? Cue? Maybe, possibly, but honestly, I really don’t know. No, Cook was never the visionary. I don’t think there’s any dispute there, but he did wonders continuing the legacy of Jobs’ turnaround tale of Apple. As a guy who bought AAPL 25 years ago, I can’t say I’m displeased. Additionally, the vast wealth of the company has also given it a cushion to make mistakes.
But I get it. I’ve never stopped missing S.J.’s vision.
But my non-rhetorical question is: “WHO could replace him then or now?”
🤷🏻♂️
Why are you glad it’s not a visionary like Elon Musk leading Apple today?
Because Musk believes in freedom of speech (unlike Mark Zuckerberg, see: In Undercover Video, Meta Software Engineer Explains What Happens to Anti-Harris Posts)
Because Musk believes in smaller government and capitalism?
Because Musk proves daily that centralized gov’t agencies (NASA, for one example of many) are inept?
Because Musk backs a proven American President rather than a vapid, empty vessel installed by the corrupt establishment swamp?
Apple would be worth over $6 trillion (at least) today had Musk had taken over from Steve Jobs instead of feckless, boring, woke, myopic Tim Cook (Steve Jobs was awful at choosing Apple CEOs).
Because Musk isn’t a leftie, that’s the only reason. Cook was great as a caretaker for about 5 years not 13 and counting. Jobs was fallible and Cook may just have been his biggest mistake, Apple has lost its soul in exchange for trillions of dollars, bad deal.
I think Musk has lost too many of his marbles to be of use to Apple. Have you checked Twitter’s valuation before and after his purchase? It’s worth almost 80% less than two years ago when Elon bought it, according to estimates from Fidelity. Those facts don’t bode well for the argument that he’d have done anything different with Apple.
It’s hard to tell if it’s actually his vision leading things, but SpaceX is very cool, and the robots and driverless vans are equally interesting. “The Boring Company” may be one of the best names for a company I’ve ever heard. Tesla Powerwalls are fantastic (I have 3), but sorely neglected along with that solar panel company (SolarCity) he also bought.
Seems to me Musk has tech ADHD.
Tesla, the car, could do with a lot of improvement. Have you ever ridden in the back seat of one, with plastic backs to front seats rubbing your knees with the suspension of a backboard? And we really need to ban his designers from playing Minecraft. The cybertruck has its geeks, but I think it just looks stupid.
Musk should keep supervising the creation of sci-fi stuff, stay out of politics, and stop trying to buy votes in PA. I believe in free speech, too, but not the freedom to shout “FIRE” in a crowded theater. The blatant spreading of completely baseless lies and hate speech might be covered under the First Amendment, but it’s still horrifically irresponsible and morally corrupt. It appears to be fanning the flames of another civil war and is endangering the lives of volunteers who want to serve their democracy honorably around election day.
We now live in a culture where the education level of Americans is so poor that folks cannot do basic critical thinking. They don’t seem to know the difference between natural, unavoidable human bias and blatant partisan lies. They don’t know the difference between an opinion (wild or otherwise) and fact. They don’t understand that social media is not journalism. Good journalism, regardless of whether it’s liberal or conservative, requires fact-checking and (as the saying goes) at least 2 verifiable sources.
History will be the judge of guys like Musk, and perhaps we’ll know if they gave more to humanity than they took. But no, I’ll take Tim Cook over Elon Musk any day. Steve Jobs is probably a unicorn in terms of being a true visionary, but I hope Apple is already thinking long and hard at who could replace Cook one day.
X’s value is not measured in money, but in freedom of speech.
X is invaluable.
Corrupt corporate media is not journalism, it’s Democrat establishment propaganda. See this post and watch the short video clip with an open mind, if you can:
https://x.com/davidsacks/status/1848643524197048673
The U.S. gov’t skirted the Constitution to censor free speech on Twitter, Facebook, etc. by leaning on companies with the threat of antitrust and other regulatory action. They do not want people to be able to hear the truth. They want to go back to the days before the internet where they easily controlled the narrative. Back to the days of Cronkite and Co. It’s not going to happen. The genie is out of the bottle. Everyone with even half a brain knows ABC/CBS/NBC/NYT/CNN/MSNBC are lying propagandists. Fake news.
Tim Cook is even more of a joke than usual when compared to Elon Musk.
First Then,
Agree 100%. The U.S. media are clearly corrupt propagandists. Only the fully-blown (by Kamala?) TDS-afflicted don’t understand it.
Musk would have Apple offering real AI years ago – a real SIRI that works – not peddling vaporware while they feverishly try to catch up.
Cook is a virtue-signaling yawn.
Apple exited the car project because they recognized the very thing that’s taking down Tesla: that EV hardware is becoming a commodity market.
Within a few years the automotive market will look like the PC industry. A hundred generic hardware manufacturers, and two or three operating systems (Google & Apple).
Gen Y & Gen Z don’t care about cars like the rest of us. They care about experiences. And it will be difficult to make cars profitably outside of China and India.
The only question is, will Tesla try to be the “Apple” of the car business? (Offering a tightly-coupled hardware/software/services product.)
I don’t think there will be a sustainable business there (and if there is, it’s Apple’s for the taking if and when they want).
This is laughable.
I agree and we have Rivian to watch and see where EVs go. I bought BYD earlier in the year as I suspect the cheap Chinese EVs will do well over time. But generally, the margins in the auto biz are just not great.
I think the plug-in hybrids that Toyota is making today (love my 2024 Rav4 Prime) are going to be the more successful stopgap for the time being until the extended-range EVs get out into the market. Those are the ones with the tiny gas tank that charges the battery, but doesn’t connect directly to the drivetrain.