Author: French fries

Today’s headline belongs to Apple Cars.

At 7 am this morning, Teacher Chang, who is far away in Europe, previewed today’s hot topic on Weibo.

Quoting Bloomberg’s exclusive news, the long-standing Apple Car, which has been circulating for nearly 10 years, has finally begun to change its thinking. They are no longer entangled in cars with fully self-driving capability, but are focusing on more realistic products with slightly lower positioning.

Apple compromises with the current situation, but the first thing I think of is roasted sweet potatoes in the winter.

Fatties and hot tofu

In December in Beijing, with temperatures below zero and shivering while waiting for the car, a cup of fancy hot coffee is not enough. Only the roasted sweet potatoes full of local flavor in memory can warm me physically and mentally.

Though hot roasted sweet potatoes are superb, but warming up requires a bite by bite. However, when Apple makes cars, it seems that they want to take a shortcut from the beginning.

It is not that they don’t understand “haste makes waste”, “slow and steady wins the race”, “Rome wasn’t built in a day”, but this technology giant company is just “too big”.

Previously, the iPod revolutionized music players, the MacBook Air taught all lightweight notebooks how to make something, and later the Retina display, Touch ID, Face ID… Apple is used to suppressing the industry with larger scales, or in other words, the “larger scales” strategy to some extent, which sent Apple to the top spot in the global market value.

When it comes to the field of car manufacturing, Apple habitually has ambitious plans. Their ambitions can be glimpsed from the project name-“Titan”. According to Apple board member Mickey Drexler, Steve Jobs had already had the idea of making a car as early as 2008 when Tesla released its first car.

According to Apple’s original plan, the Titan project will produce a level 5 intelligent electric vehicle with automatic driving function in all scenarios, without a steering wheel, accelerator or brake pedal.

To achieve this, Apple has invested a lot. This is best reflected in the human resources they have allocated to the Titan project. Apple also apparently understands that when entering a new field, the best choice is to pick a group of experts.

It is rumored that the Apple car project was approved in 2014, and its first leader was Steve Zadesky, a former Vice President of Ford with a strong engineering background. Later, Johann Jungwirth, former Vice President of R&D at Mercedes-Benz North America, is said to have joined as well. Apple has never officially admitted to making a car, but many years of occasional recruitment for automotive R&D and manufacturing-related positions have left us with a lot of imagination.

Unfortunately, cars, or cars with full autonomous driving capabilities, are ultimately a more complex and large-scale systems engineering than consumer electronics. Bloomberg’s report hinted between the lines that even a company as strong as Apple seemed to be acknowledging the difficulty of the project.

Therefore, Bloomberg’s article about Apple’s strategic shift in its car project has emerged.

A More Realistic Apple Car

In the report, Bloomberg mentions that the person in charge of the “Titan” project at Apple is Kevin Lynch. Since joining the project at the end of last year, his primary goal is to bring more stability to the Apple car, focus on and address some more practical goals.

At WWDC in June of this year, Apple released a new generation of Carplay. This in-car interactive system will no longer be limited to voice, navigation, music and other functions, but will extend its reach to more vehicle hardware such as the dashboard and air conditioning. In retrospect, this could also be seen as indirect evidence of Apple’s strategic contraction, after all, Apple has never left room for competitors in its excellent tradition.

Returning to the topic of Apple’s cars, in reality, firstly, Apple has temporarily abandoned level 5 autonomous driving cars and instead limited the scenario of autonomous driving to highways. This is also the current technological route being approached by the leading players in the industry.

Along with the functionality and positioning, there is also the price of Apple cars that has fallen. Initially, Apple expected the new car to be priced over $120,000, but now their goal is to offer consumers a product with a price tag of less than $100,000, which is still comparable to the price range of Mercedes-Benz’s top electric product EQS.

Secondly, Apple has refreshed the “Titan” project roadmap. Currently, Apple has yet to determine the specific design of its car products, which will be completed by the end of next year, and the specific functions will be determined by the end of 2024. Testing will then begin in 2025. Once this process is complete, the target release time for Apple’s new car product will be delayed by another year, until 2026.

Thirdly, Apple has once again defined its advantages. The core competitiveness of Apple’s cars comes from a powerful in-car computing system. They use Denali, the highest mountain in North America, as its code name, and a custom array of perception components.

Apple’s chip design department will design a dedicated processor for Apple’s cars, which will perform as well as four of Apple’s most powerful M1 Maxs. Currently, this chip design work has entered the final stage and is almost in mass production. The only variable is whether Apple will reduce its performance scale to reduce costs.

As for sensors, Apple and mainstream domestic manufacturers have made the same choice —— to use a multi-sensor fusion solution including lidar, camera, millimeter wave radar, and ultrasonic radar. In addition, this manufacturer, which is familiar with cloud ecosystem gameplay, is also exploring the establishment of a remote command center to assist drivers in controlling vehicles remotely in emergency situations.

However, ultimately, Apple has stepped back from reality.

The Reality of Beating the Fat Guy

My impression of Apple probably needs to start from the iPod era, and in my memory, this guy who was “bitten off” would rather cut off products than compromise positioning. “Titan” can probably be counted as one of the few “Waterloos” since its resurgence.

There are probably two reasons for Apple’s helpless choice.

Firstly, technically, autonomous driving, especially in urban environments, is just too difficult. According to the development details of Apple’s car that we cannot touch, but the development process of competitors is enough for reference.

Taking the current leader in smart cars, Tesla, as an example, Musk began discussing self-driving in public in 2013. From the release of the first version of intelligent driving assistance in July 2015, Tesla has experienced a transition from cooperation with professional intelligent driving company Mobileye to self-developed hardware; a transition from Autopilot to FSD in terms of nomenclature; and multiple technical system reconstructions in terms of algorithms. Until the end of November this year, Tesla officially pushed FSD in North America.

Secondly, commercially, Apple’s pursuit of smart car projects is to find a new cash cow other than the iPhone. However, continuous investment, endless delays, unknown future, at this stage, the Titan project has not only failed to achieve the initial revenue-generating vision, but has even begun to affect Apple’s current stock price.On Tuesday, Apple’s stock price fell by over 2%. Looking at the whole year from the end of 2022, Apple’s stock price has already dropped by 19%. Despite the unfavorable market conditions this year, Apple’s performance has been better than most technology stocks in the NASDAQ index, but this is still Apple.

In the past, the weak Apple changed history with disruptive products. Now, the strong Apple seems to want to maintain history with tactical retreats. Can the Apple on four wheels create history again in the future?

At this moment, the countdown of four years has started, and Apple is approaching.

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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.