Apple’s car manufacturing plan can be described as the 500-episode TV series “Memories Are Hard to Forget” in the automotive industry.
Two months ago, well-known analyst Ming-Chi Kuo revealed that Apple’s car manufacturing had stalled and the team had disbanded. Two months later, there was new news about Apple’s car project.
On May 3, according to foreign media reports, Desi Ujkashevic, a senior executive in charge of safety and vehicle engineering at Ford, officially joined Apple’s car division, reviving the previously frozen project.
Since the release of the “Titan Project” in 2014, Apple’s car plan has undergone eight years of ups and downs, changing hands five times. From the budding period of electric cars in 2014 to the current explosive growth of electric cars, Apple’s car project is still in a nascent stage. Some say the slow progress is due to internal conflicts and power struggles, some say it’s due to the uncertainty of product positioning, and some say Apple is deliberately controlling the pace.
The true reason for the slow progress of Apple’s car project is unknown, but the addition of the new executive to some extent dispels the rumors of Apple’s car project being shut down. And what this experienced senior engineer possesses may be exactly what Apple’s car project needs to land.
In 2021, Doug Field, the former project executive director of the Titan Project, left the company, and Kevin Lynch, responsible for Apple Watch and health software, took over the car project. The “lack of automotive background” became one of the reasons why some people belittled the prospects of Apple’s car project.
Now, Ujkashevic, an experienced auto engineer, has joined the team. Since starting work at Ford in 1991, Ujkashevic, formerly the global automotive safety engineering director at Ford, has been responsible for the engineering of interiors, exteriors, chassis, and electronic components for multiple vehicle models. He has worked on the development of Ford’s new electric vehicles and has extensive experience in handling regulatory issues, which can help Apple overcome the regulatory obstacles faced by testing autonomous prototype cars on public roads.
With the injection of fresh talent, there have been many more speculations about Apple’s car.
Apple’s Car: “Blind Men Touching an Elephant”
Although the Titan Project has been underway for eight years, and people are even familiar with the comings and goings of the team’s executives, Apple has never officially reported on the progress of its car manufacturing. Everything is left to people’s imagination: spherical wheels? A car body as round as a mouse? A sharp-edged design like Cybertruck? Cars without windows or pedals for fully autonomous driving?These scraps, guessed from patents or snippets from whistleblowers, make people try to piece together what AppleCar looks like like blind people touching an elephant. Recently, a new “piece” has come out.
“Premium electric car model priced at $100,000, competing with Model S”
According to industry insiders, Apple does not plan to launch an affordable electric car, and plans to position AppleCar in the high-end electric car market with a price of more than $100,000, competing with Tesla’s Model S.
Judging from Apple’s products in the past, whether it’s computers, phones, headphones, or watches, “budget route” is never Apple’s first choice. Even the recently launched budget version of the iPhone SE series in the past two years is an attempt to further expand the market after the incremental growth of the original mobile phone market has become stable. Therefore, for Apple’s first car, the focus on high-end electric cars has become reasonable.
We often question whether Apple’s car making is too slow, and whether the car that will debut in 2025 is too late. Now it seems that the Apple car that will debut in 2025 is not too late.
Compared with the fiercely competitive mid-to-low-end electric vehicle market, the $100,000 price range targeted by Apple is not a fiercely competitive interval in either the current US market or the domestic market. Tesla’s Model S, Lucid, BBA’s several traditional luxury brands’ electric vehicle models, are all competitors that Apple’s car will face in the future. Except for the Model S which has been on the market for nearly ten years, the rest have not “taken the lead” for too long, and 2025 is also the time node for many traditional automakers to launch the next-generation flagship electric vehicle models.
At the same time, compared with the mid-end intelligent electric vehicle market where intelligent software and hardware are “close combat”, for cars priced above $100,000, the refinement of experience details and the portrayal of brand genes may be more important.
“The body may use a large amount of high-end titanium”?
According to the whistleblowers, Apple’s car may use a large amount of high-end titanium in the car body.Using titanium alloy on car bodies on a large scale has not been seen on mass-produced cars before. Titanium, a lightweight, high-strength, and heat-resistant metal, is certainly advantageous for lightweighting of car bodies, but its price is not cheap and it is not conducive to the processing of complex processes. Therefore, it has only been seen on small parts such as engines, exhaust valves, and brake calipers in the past, or on the body of the limited-edition supercar Volcano Titanium worth 60 million US dollars.
So, has Apple already solved the cost problem of titanium alloy raw materials if it wants to use them on its own car body on a large scale, or is there some unavoidable reason to do so?
iPhone as Car Key
Another rumor about AppleCar is that the iPhone will become a car key, realizing keyless entry. This is not a brand new feature. Apple’s CarKey function has been installed on the BMW 5 series as early as last year, supporting keyless entry. Some models of Genesis and Kia also support CarKey function. For Apple’s own car, is there any reason not to use this function?
Autonomous Driving – the flagship of the first AppleCar
Autonomous driving can be said to be the most concerned about the whole industry at present, and it is also the focus of attention since the release of Apple Titan project. Around the autonomous driving system, Apple is building a series of software and hardware ecosystems, including the car-level autonomous driving chip, which is said to be composed of neural processors that can meet the AI requirements of autonomous driving. The chip may require a complex internal cooling system when operating at high power consumption.
Therefore, the idea of “an autonomous driving car without a steering wheel and not much brake pedal” has become everyone’s imagination of Apple’s car.
However, the development of autonomous driving is far slower than expected. Cook once said that Apple sees autonomous driving as the mother of all AI projects and one of the most challenging projects in practice. This can also be seen from the on-road test results.
Since 2017, Apple has been testing its self-driving cars on California public roads. According to the 2021 autonomous driving mileage and takeover data released by the California DMV, the scale of the testing fleet in 2021 included 35 vehicles, with an average takeover mileage of only 20 miles. Compared to familiar self-driving players like Waymo and Cruise, this number is not ideal.
Therefore, it is unrealistic for Apple’s first car model, which will be released in 2025, to use fully autonomous driving as a trump card to overturn the table.
Can Apple’s outsourcing model continue in the auto industry?
Accompanying the progress of Apple’s car-making is speculation about Apple’s car outsourcing.
In the smartphone and other consumer electronics industries, Apple has always used a light asset model of outsourcing. Meanwhile, two important companies in the Apple supply chain, Foxconn and Luxshare Precision, have also entered the automotive industry, intensifying these speculations.
On May 4, some media outlets leaked that Apple is likely to entrust Hon Hai (Foxconn’s parent company) to be responsible for the assembly and production of its cars, by the end of 2024 or 2025. Rumors of Foxconn’s manufacturing for Apple have caused a sensation.
Compared with whether Apple will choose Foxconn to handle its manufacturing, what I am more concerned about is whether Apple’s outsourcing model, which has been skillfully used in the consumer electronics industry, can still be viable in the automotive industry.
Outsourcing is not a new concept in the electric vehicle industry. At the initial stage, XPeng Motors cooperated with FAW Haima, and NIO cooperated with JAC Motors, which to some extent lowered the threshold for new electric vehicle players. However, this outsourcing model seems to have changed now. XPeng Motors ended its outsourcing cooperation with Haima and chose to build its own factory, while NIO established a joint venture with JAC, deepening the bond between the two companies.
At present, electric vehicles are in the large-scale R&D stage, and various product standards have not yet been completely unified. Core data between various automakers is still confidential. This means that outsourcing for intelligent electric vehicles needs deeper cooperation, rather than just exchanging technology and products.
Therefore, whether the future outsourcing of Apple’s cars will fall into the hands of which manufacturer, this cooperative relationship may be even closer than the outsourcing cooperation of the iPhone and iPad.
Last Words
Maybe today’s intelligent cars cannot meet everyone’s imagination, or maybe Apple’s attribute of overturning industries is too prominent. Since the “Titan Project” was exposed, Apple has been regarded by many industry peers as a “player redefining intelligent vehicles.”
Whether for outsiders or for Apple itself, this high expectation has to a certain extent limited the progress of Apple’s car project. Even what kind of car Apple wants to build is unclear.
I don’t know how many “to be continued…” we need to wait for, to see what Apple’s car will look like.
This article is a translation by ChatGPT of a Chinese report from 42HOW. If you have any questions about it, please email bd@42how.com.