"The tech giant could leverage its $203 billion war chest to scale up in even the capital-intensive auto industry."
Electric Car Industry: Is Apple the Latest Member? | Wall Street Daily
The article does sort of seem written by an Apple fanboy. He seems to think Apple is going to be first to market with the ultimate battery for EVs and Tesla won't have the Model 3 on the market by the time Apple launches their car. Tesla will likely beat them to market in both areas. JB Straubel and Elon Musk have said the Gigafactory will allow them to not only make batteries cheaply, but optimized for the EV application and the Model 3 is scheduled to be on the market by late 2017, but even if it's delayed, it should be out by the end of the decade when Apple says it will have its first car out. It makes the mistake a lot of writers do of dismissing Tesla as a maker of cars for the wealthy, even though Elon Musk has been clear about his three step plan from the beginning.
Apple may succeed and become the dominant player in the BEV business. They have the money to make a lot of mistakes before getting it right, which gives them a very good shot, but they also have some things working against them too. This is the first major project they have taken on since Steve Jobs left. Jobs left extensive notes on his vision with Cook before he died, but this is the first project Apple has taken on in 20 years that doesn't have Jobs tweaking the vision as it unfolds. I think that was the secret sauce that made the iPod, iPad, and iPhone such huge hits and transformers of their market niches.
Another thing against them is a car is very different from anything they have done before. Apple is a computer designer and software developer. Everything they have ever done is essentially a computer. I've done a lot of embedded firmware development in my career and when your in there developing the code, whether the package is a music player, phone, or handheld computer makes little difference. That's why the iPod Touch, iPad, and iPhone use the same OS. The other iPods probably run a stripped down version of iOS too.
With Apple products, there are only a few physical world object the programmers need to control, and controlling moving parts is even more minimal. Most of the parts with motors already have their own control firmware they just need to interface with.
With a car, there is a lot of work programming servos to take input from the environment (both driving conditions and human input) and output control to various parts of the vehicle. Obviously it can be done, but it's a very different programming problem than an iPhone and people can get hurt if you do it wrong. Even something as innocuous as a motorized door can injure or kill someone if not programmed correctly.
Apple has the cash to hire servo programmers by the bushel, but that experience doesn't exist within Apple's corporate culture. That's a critical difference with Tesla. Tesla has grown up with that sort of expertise as part of their DNA. They started learning those lessons with the Roadster and learned even more with the Model S and Model X. The entire management chain is familiar with all the considerations even if they don't know how to do it themselves. Apple's management chain only has car development experience gained from bought talent rather than ingrown, and the Apple people put on the project aren't yet aware just how different this project is from previous Apple projects. Managers tend to want to do things like it's always been done and will often try to force people into doing it the same old way. That's likely going to cause delays as the Apple managers moved over from other projects figure out they can't just do everything like they did in their old job on the iPhone or whatever.
When Apple gets to market, their car will have the advantage of fitting into the existing Apple eco-system, but I doubt it will have much to offer over other cars from Tesla and possibly some other companies. Apple has succeeded by jumping into markets that were being under served with an innovative new product that shook up that market niche. They have never jumped into a market with an established player like Tesla. Tesla is as innovative as Apple and they have a 10 years head start. If Jobs was alive, he might have decided to give the iCar a pass and concentrate on something else, or work on technologies for the next generation of cars short of bending metal and getting their hands dirty.
Time will tell, but Apple might be at its peak now. 20 years ago it was inconceivable that Microsoft would not be making headlines as one of the innovation leaders in the software biz 20 years later. But while they try to make waves and still have a very big market share of the desktop and laptop business, they don't really make headlines much anymore. Windows 10 came out a few months back and it made a little splash, but mostly the public yawned and went back to their Android or Apple phone. Microsoft has tried to break into the phone business with a Windows based phone, but while it's out there, it's sales numbers make it an also ran.
It's possible that the Apple car will be like the Windows phone, too little too late. Apple has a more die hard fan base than Microsoft does these days, so there will be some people lining up to get the first Apple car, even if it's not that great, it may not sell outside it's fan base eco-system. We'll see what the next 5-10 years brings.
