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Apple Car apparently back on

Discussion in 'Electric Vehicles' started by FreqFlyer, Dec 21, 2020.

  1. banned-66611

    banned-66611 Guest

    Apple don't exactly have a good record with batteries. Lots of premature failures over the years.

    Their version 1 products are usually terrible. Any issues are denied for a few years until most people have given up and bought a new machine.

    I'm sure their car will be terrible, and lots of people will buy it.
     
  2. banned-66611

    banned-66611 Guest

    They weren't, in fact they were relatively late to the game on that. Apple is often quite slow to adopt new battery tech and often seems to have problems with batteries.

    The worst part of course is that they started the trend of making batteries non-replacable. Could seriously devalue used Apple cars if they can't be maintained.
     
  3. banned-66611

    banned-66611 Guest

    Fortunately in Europe they would have to fit CCS by law.
     
    • Like x 1
  4. drtimhill

    drtimhill Active Member

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    Nah they will use a Lightning port .. and USB-C on the Apple Car Pro :)
     
  5. voyager

    voyager Member

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    Apple iCar: Specs and Rumors

    A couple of snippets:
    Apple’s investment in the automotive field has not stopped. According to incomplete statistics, Apple has applied for nearly 100 automotive patents since 2017, covering charging, autonomous driving, AR navigation, biometrics, and smart hardware.

    In 2020, Apple has obtained at least 10 autonomous-driving patents, which involve the three major areas of autonomous driving sensors, communication, and control.

    Cars use gestures (AR recognition) or eye movements (eye-tracking technology) to determine the driver’s intention to perform related operations.

    According to Goldman Sachs, Apple can use cars as a hardware platform to support its services. However, the low level of profit in the auto industry may mean that investors can see a limited contribution to profitability from this move.

    In the automotive industry, Apple also wants to control only the parts that represent high technological manufacturing and high profits in the future. After all, the industrial chain of the automotive industry is much more complicated than that of the mobile phone and PC industries.

    Apple’s product ecosystem will achieve a closed-loop of overall travel from home, mobile travel to the company, and realize a unified lifestyle. Station-style “smart service”.

    Therefore, in this sense, it depends on whether Apple is willing to sacrifice short-term returns and profits and use it as a core long track in the future for continuous investment.
     
    • Informative x 1
  6. banned-66611

    banned-66611 Guest

    I doubt they are worried about low profit levels. They will be able to charge a hefty premium.
     
  7. Black306

    Black306 Member

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    Apple Car ~ Model 3/Y
    Apple Car Mini ~ 25K Tesla
    Apple Car Pro ~ Model S
    Apple Car Pro Max ~ Model X

    LOL
     
    • Like x 1
  8. dgatwood

    dgatwood Member

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    January of 2006 isn't particularly late. Here's an article from 11 months later saying that notebook manufacturers were likely to start switching to lithium polymer from lithium ion.

    Apple wasn't the first by any means. A few companies built a few laptops with lithium polymer batteries prior to that (as far back as 1997). Unfortunately, most of them had awful battery life, which is why they were rare. I'm pretty sure Apple was the first company to make a popular laptop with lithium polymer batteries, or if not, then it was certainly one of the first.


    Hear, hear.
     
  9. Silicon Desert

    Silicon Desert Active Member

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    ha ha. good one. And hopefully users won't have to pull over to reboot the car every few minutes.
     
  10. dgatwood

    dgatwood Member

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    I can't remember the last time I rebooted my personal Mac. Maybe you're thinking of the Microsoft car.

    "You have closed the door. You must reboot for this change to take effect."
    "You are trying to unlock the car. [Abort] [Retry] [Fail]"
     
    • Like x 1
  11. CyberGus

    CyberGus Not Just a Member

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    I'm thinking that if phone batteries were user-serviceable, there would be millions of tons of lithium in landfills.

    The Tesla HV pack is not user-serviceable, either.
     
  12. uujjj2

    uujjj2 Member

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    A lot of people commenting here don't understand Apple. Mr. Uujjj worked for Apple and can correct some misunderstandings.

    First off, people are speculating about the business model for the Apple car. They wonder how Apple will make money in a "low margin business". They posit all sorts of fancy ideas about how Apple will monetize data, or sell lifestyle services, or partner with an OEM to add Apple technology to some other brand's cars. None of these are the Apple way. Apple's business model is old school. The business model for the iPhone is straight out of DEC and IBM, a vertically integrated computer where one company makes the chips, the box, peripherals, compiler, OS, dev tools, and many applications too. Apple makes money on the iPhone by manufacturing it cheap and selling it for more than it costs to make. Old school business model.

    Second, people wonder about Apple "partnering" with an OEM for the car portion. That's not gonna happen. Apple has a pretty high opinion of itself. The belief inside Apple is that our engineers are the best, and that if we wanted to, we could make a better product in any industry we want. We just choose not to, because we are a focused company. So if Apple makes an Apple car, it's going to be an Apple car. They may outsource the physical assembly, but they're not going to outsource anything else. They're not going to sell technology platforms to an OEM. They're not going to "monetize data", whatever that means. They're going to sell a car, and they'll make money by manufacturing it cheap and selling it for more than it costs to make.

    Third, the cost of the car. People think of Apple as an expensive brand, but Apple is actually very cost conscious. This dates all the way back to Woz and the cost reduced version of Breakout. The Mac has a reputation as an expensive computer, but the original Mac was actually a version of the Xerox Alto built to be sold for $1000 instead of $10000. When the original iPad came out, people around the industry (I was at Nvidia at the time) were shocked at how cheap it was; previous tablets were over $2000 while the iPad was $500. Don't be surprised if Apple goes for the low end of the car market instead of the high end.
     
    • Informative x 1
    • Like x 1
  13. voyager

    voyager Member

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    If so, then I hope that Apple will be faithful to its core philosophy to "Think Different" and that it will come up with something truly different. Not some sort of Bang & Olufsen minimalist styled SUV, as a lot of artist impressions have been speculating over the past years.
     
  14. uujjj2

    uujjj2 Member

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    I hope so. If the Apple car is just a car, what's the point? I expect something much more interesting, perhaps like a Canoo or perhaps a two wheeler like Lit Motors or what's speculated in https://seekingalpha.com/article/4007588-tesla-when-apple-icar-arrives
     
    • Like x 1

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