It might be best to say that Apple is a company known for its ambition rather than its innovation. The Cupertino tech giant created an alternative to the personal computer that has amassed a dedicated following, they changed the landscape of the music industry, and they revolutionized the way we think about our mobile phones. Apple didn’t invent the computer, music, or the smartphone, but it did take each of those ideas to the next level in a way that people identified with.
So what will an Apple car look like?
All the news related to Apple’s secretive Project Titan in the past year pushes it past what we generally think of as a rumor. It even has its own Wikipedia page now. The company is definitely doing something related to automotive technology, and we want to ask ourselves what challenges Apple will have to overcome to make a car that’s an analogue to the Mac or the iPhone.
Development
We can be pretty plain with the first challenge: automobiles are not simple machines. It took 100 years of research and development to get where we are, and Apple has not previously been a part of that. All of the company’s experience is in computers, mobile devices, and the software that runs on those machines.
To overcome this knowledge deficit, Apple has proceeded to hire many of the brightest minds in the auto industry, in many cases hiring them away from existing car manufacturers. The kinds of people Apple is hiring also hints at what kind of project it is. If you look at the list, you’ll see many who specialize in automated driving, autonomous systems, and battery technology (to boot, several names came directly from Tesla, the upstart electric car manufacturer from California). Based on the expertise they’ve imported, one could make a hasty deduction and conclude that Apple wants to build a self-driving electric vehicle.
But it could be less than that. Perhaps Apple wants to create a platform for autonomous driving, a system that they can license to existing car manufacturers. If twenty minutes into the future every car on the road has a little piece of Apple tech, then that would be a highly lucrative venture for the Silicon Valley giant.
In any case, the project is a large one under the leadership of Apple’s Vice President of Product Design, Steve Zadesky, who has permission to recruit 1,000 employees from within the company. If most people at Apple didn’t know how to design a car before, things are about to change very fast.
Production
Knowing how to build a car is only one challenge, though. Actually manufacturing cars is a whole other struggle. It’s a prohibitively expensive and complex undertaking, especially for a company that builds most of its products via a third party in China.
Granted, these kinds of barriers to entry are not so high when you have $180 billion in cash reserves, as Apple does. A small chunk of that should be enough to build an assembly plant and acquire materials, just to see how things go. Apple CEO Tim Cook also met with BMW over the summer to explore, as many reports said, the possibility of using components of the i3 electric car for Project Titan. Those negotiations were quickly put on hold, but Cook also toured BMW factories while visiting Germany, so it’s reasonable to say Apple has shown interest in what it takes to put cars together.
After building a car, you also have to test it, and most recently, reports have surfaced about Apple looking for a secure test track for whatever it’s making. Again, outlets jump to the most obvious conclusion that Apple is building a self-driving vehicle, when all we can say for certain is the company has contacted a private facility that specializes in testing vehicles of that nature. Still, such a proving ground, which has already played host to experiments by Mercedes-Benz and Honda, would be valuable if Apple does jump into the deep end of car manufacturing.
Distribution
All the evidence so far allows us to infer what Apple is thinking to a point, but after that, we end up having to speculate a lot more. For instance, after an Apple car is designed and produced, how will Apple sell it?
Nothing about Apple’s business demeanor leads us to think they would franchise out the rights to sell their cars to dealerships the way most cars are sold. It becomes even more necessary and prudent to compare Apple’s plan to Tesla’s existing path.
People doubted Apple when they first opened brick and mortar stores, but now Apple stores produce more profit per square foot than any other retail store on the planet. It’s not so farfetched to imagine some of Apple’s stores being upgraded to handle auto sales.
Tesla sells their cars directly to customers, and they have been fighting legal battles around the country against laws designed to curb that practice. It could be that as Tesla continues to win those fights, they might be paving the way for Apple to step in and do the same.
By itself, Tesla has not proven very disruptive to the auto industry, but if both companies were to compete in a similar space with similar high-quality products, the landscape of car buying could be in for dramatic change.
Infrastructure
Whether Apple’s car is self-driving, electric, or both, our present infrastructure might not be able to adequately accommodate such a vehicle in high volume.
EVs by themselves present less of a challenge, though that’s assuming you live in a developed area. An electric car would undoubtedly come with a home charging station, but what if you need to charge while you’re out and about? Electric charging stations are not ubiquitous in the way gas stations are yet, and while Tesla has its nation-spanning network of supercharging stations, it’s unreasonable to assume an Apple car could partake from the same sources.
Let’s not forget that Apple is also infamous for releasing products with new proprietary ports and charging cables every several years. For Apple to sell the car they are rumored to be building on a large scale, it will likely require a significant investment in infrastructure to succeed, which, cash pile or no, they probably can’t manage alone.
This is to say nothing of the uphill battle facing widespread adoption of autonomous vehicles. The legal framework for self-driving cars doesn’t extend beyond a handful of states. We’re talking about a new class of vehicles that will probably require its own standards and regulations.
Self-driving vehicles will also require updates to existing infrastructure. For them to operate on a large scale, it will likely require advances in vehicle-to-vehicle communication, as well as communication between cars and traffic systems like stoplights.
Expectations
Finally, by virtue of being an Apple product, the Apple car will be saddled with incredible expectations. Closer to the time of its release – if it’s released at all – the company will need to answer several very important questions.
Who is the Apple car for? Is it a luxury product, aimed at the elite? Is it geared toward widespread adoption, something that every household might own? These questions will serve to answer the issue of pricing, which is critical.
Why is Apple developing a car? Do they seek to change transportation as a whole, or are they following the likes of Tesla, Google, and Uber into this space that Silicon Valley has yet to conquer?
Steve Jobs subscribed to the belief that in order to predict the future, you had to invent it. Perhaps under Tim Cook, Apple is still following that path. We’ll have to wait for more answers before we have any real idea what Apple’s prediction turns out to be.
If anything, we do know that we’re a ways off from learning the answer to any of these questions. Most agree that the earliest release of the Apple car would be 2020, and Apple is probably playing the long game. Until then, we can only observe and speculate. Apple has succeeded in keeping its projects close to the chest in the past, but they might find it harder to subvert intrepid automotive journalists and wily spy photographers. We’ll wait and see just how many pieces of the puzzle fall into place.
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