Apple's Car is Project Titan

Now. About the electric car that Apple never made? Oh, yeah. Reports earlier this spring suggested that Apple had revised its plans for "Project Titan" and would focus on developing embedded self-driving software instead of an electric car. Bloomberg now reports Apple has hired QNX co-founder Dan Dodge to beef up its efforts. …

[allthecoolshortnamesweretaken]

I seriously doubt that Apple will ever make (as in mass production) a car. Apple's business model and any car maker's business model(s) are too far apart.

Developing technologies that can be used in/for cars, in other words sold or licenced to car manufacturers - that would work.

[Anonymous Coward]

Is it all that different from selling phones?

Apple has "dealerships" that sell phones, and provide service to phones in the form of the stores. They'd obviously need a separate network of car dealerships to sell and service cars, but Tesla was able to set it up with a fraction of the resources Apple has available to them.

Selling phones means dealing with various federal regulators, and while the regulations around cars are obviously far greater, it isn't something Apple is unwilling to do. There are insurance and other hurdles unique to cars, so I don't mean to claim they're the same, but Tesla showed how easy it is to start a car company from the ground up, and they have a fraction of the resources Apple has at their disposal.

I would agree with those who suggest that contract manufacturing cars like they do iPhones is not really feasible, so they'd have to own and operate the factory themselves. While everyone assumes Apple would never make anything themselves, they ALWAYS have. They have been making iMacs at an Apple owned and operated factory in Ireland since Jobs returned. The iPod was their first real foray into contract manufacturing of an important product, but there are good reasons why they made that choice - they were nearly broke when they started selling it and setting up their own factory with a capacity large enough to meet demand was not really feasible.

Since the relationship with Foxconn worked out well for the iPod, they continued it with the iPhone and iPad. Steve Jobs was heavily involved in the planning and design of state of the art factories for both Apple and NeXT, so there would be no way for someone within Apple to oppose manufacturing cars themselves by saying "that's not what Steve would do".

If anything, licensing software instead of making hardware is totally against Apple's corporate identity. They've become the most profitable company in the world by controlling the whole stack, not carving out a piece for themselves in something someone else sells and supports. There are a lot of companies, both inside and outside the auto industry, working on autonomous driving technology. There will be a few winners who get there first, but eventually a lot of players will, and the capability will become a commodity and Apple has no interest in a commodity market. Maybe they have an easier to use more intuitive interface for dealing with the car, but as with the iPhone even if they managed to get there first, they can't stop others from following their lead.

I think they have to make cars if they want this project to succeed long term. And I find it hard to believe that the massive amounts of money they've added to R&D can be around simply doing autonomous software. Either they have some other big projects in the works that have been kept more secret than Titan, or the rumor about them not making cars and just selling software is untrue.

[Anonymous Coward]

Re: Is it all that different from selling phones?

did you _actually_ just write all that?

[Sandtitz]

Re: Is it all that different from selling phones?

"If anything, licensing software instead of making hardware is totally against Apple's corporate identity. They've become the most profitable company in the world by controlling the whole stack, not carving out a piece for themselves in something someone else sells and supports."

Apple Carplay goes against your argument. If you're having problems with it you don't call Apple or drive to Genius bar - the support is provided by the car manufacturer.

I have no idea what the supposed project titan is as this is all unconfirmed rumors. Supposedly they could go to car business but they could just spend the 10 billion to buy an established car marque (e.g. Volvo) and go from there instead of starting from nothing like Tesla has done.

[Anonymous Coward]

Re: Is it all that different from selling phones?

Apple probably charges little or nothing for Carplay - it exists only to make it easier for people to own iPhones through making it easy to use them in their car.

There really aren't any examples in the Jobs II era where Apple has made software a primary product. I mean, similar to Carplay they have iTunes available on Windows, but it is free and exists only to help Windows users own iPods (and later iPhones/iPads)

And sure, they could buy someone up, and perhaps eventually they will, but autonomous cars will take years to hit the road. Assuming that's their target (and not just an electric) they have plenty of time to build things up. They would need a new factory, it would cost more to retool a factory used for traditional gasoline cars. Probably the only thing they'd really want is the dealership/service network, but based on what they've done with Apple Stores, they'd probably like to build dealerships that look more like an Apple Store than the typical Volvo/Audi/BMW class dealership.