If you’ve been waiting for the Apple Car to come out before buying another automobile, you don’t have to wait any longer.
Yes, as you’ve probably heard by now, Bloomberg reported last week that Apple had canceled its automotive project (known as Project Titan) and would redirect some workers to its AI efforts.
This closes a long and rich chapter in the Great Book of things we have discussed. Over the years, many people have said that Apple would never be able to make a car; indeed, “the PC guys aren’t going to just figure this out. They’re not just going to walk in. But this time, they were apparently right.
The Macalope was not. He saw no reason why Apple wouldn’t be able to make a car. But he was wrong, so he apologizes to those he made fun of over the past 10 years. Turns out Apple couldn’t make a car.
At least he couldn’t make the kind of car he wanted. The Macalope is not going to try to win on a technical detail by saying “Ah! They could made a car, but they selected not ! Because it’s him for not having realized that an Apple car, obviously, wouldn’t have been just any car.
According to the New York Times’ Project Titan preview, what exactly an Apple car was going to be has changed a lot over the years (which was part of the project’s undoing). Basically, though, it started out as an electric car, then was supposed to be a Jony Ive-inspired fully autonomous egg parlor with probably a velor interior and a wet bar, then eventually became an electric car again. Before being canceled.
Let’s start with the hardest part. Why couldn’t Apple create a self-driving car? Because despite Elon Musk’s assurances every year for 10 years that fully autonomous driving is only six months away, fully autonomous driving (as consumer-ready technology) is still not six months away. It probably won’t even be six years from now.
Yes, some self-driving cars are currently operating on limited routes in certain areas. And even in these relatively controlled conditions, people are dragged onto the streets. This is not the kind of business Apple wants to get into.
IDG
Okay, so why not just create an electric car? Is it difficult? Macalope still firmly believes that Apple could have done this. It’s not just because he couldn’t make the type of electric car he wanted to make. Of course there would be CarPlay. Sure, it would look cool. Of course, Apple would take 30% of any business deals you make. But other electric cars have CarPlay and look pretty. The Macalope believes that Apple simply hasn’t found enough ways to make its car stand out that would justify how much it would have to charge for the car in order to get the margins it wants.
You think the Vision Pro is expensive, imagine what an Apple Car would have cost. This is why the Apple Zeppelin never left the drawing board.
There may be some benefit to this other than saving us a lot of money. As automakers are now less inclined to view Apple as a potential competitor, perhaps some of them, who pushed CarPlay to the scrapheap, will reconsider their position. At least we’ll still be able to have some sort of Apple experience on the road.
