With the leak that the Apple car has been canceled, a long history of the Apple company with the automotive sector comes to an end. Meanwhile, one of its big rivals is taking center stage with its first electric car, the Xiaomi SU7.
For too long, Chinese manufacturers have been accused of producing mere copies of superior American industry; and it is true that some brands started this way, with phones strangely similar to iPhones, but much cheaper. But that is a thing of the past and today Chinese manufacturers are not only going their own way, In many ways, they are more innovative than Americans.
There’s no better example of how things have changed than looking at a recent trend in the technology sector: investment in the automotive sector. All major technology companies have a foothold in the automobile industry, most through specialized products; from Google with Android Auto to Qualcomm with automotive processors.
Goodbye to the Apple car
It was only a matter of time before a tech company dared to create its own car from scratch, and for years it looked like that company was going to be Apple. The Titan project was one of the Californian company’s worst-kept secrets, but also one of the most ambitious; now everything indicates that The Apple car project has been permanently canceled. The resources will be dedicated to the production of generative artificial intelligence, an area in which Apple is far behind its competitors.
The concept of the Apple Car has evolved over time. There was talk of a revolutionary car, equipped with long-range batteries and autonomous technology that would create an interior in which occupants could spend time using augmented reality technologies. And when it turned out that this was not possible, the possibility of selling the platform to manufacturers was raised internally; a strategy similar to that of Huawei cars, which are actually manufactured by established companies in the sector.
Conceptual design of the Apple Car.
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Finally, everything indicates that Apple has definitively closed the project, which will in no case reach the consumer; although other sections related to cars like Apple CarPlay (the alternative to Android Auto) have not been affected and will soon introduce new features. In this way, Apple had to admit, at least internally, that failed where Xiaomi succeeded. And no one is more surprised than the founder of Xiaomi himself.
Xiaomi’s automotive success
Lei Jun, CEO of Xiaomi, confessed on the social network Weibo feeling “shocked” upon learning of Apple’s decision to complete the electric car project. And this is not surprising, because the decision to create a car was influenced first of all by Steve Jobs himself.
It’s no secret that Lei Jun is a huge Apple enthusiast and has been caught on occasion using an iPhone (along with many other cell phones that pass through his hands on a daily basis). Steve Jobs was a hero to Lei, so much so that the book Fire in the valley inspired him to found his own tech company. So it’s no surprise that in 2021, Xiaomi announced its own electric car to compete with the upcoming Apple car of the time.
Xiaomi SU7 Max
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Xiaomi’s journey was very similar to Apple’s. Instead of licensing its software to manufacturers, it decided to invest more than 1.28 billion dollars and create a global team of 3,400 engineers and 1,000 technical experts to develop its own vehicle. A task that many companies would not even consider, but which For Xiaomi, it was a “strategic choice”according to Lei.
The result is the Xiaomi SU7, the electric car that conquered the MWC in Barcelona and which makes manufacturers like Tesla or Porsche nervous. And even if Lei now finds himself “alone”, he does not intend to follow in the footsteps of those who were his idols, and reiterated its commitment to the projectwith an investment of nearly 10 billion dollars over 10 years.
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