Best of both worlds for me, AAPL up, TSLA up.
I suspect the little downturn earlier today was due to something other than the Apple news.
Even if you assume Apple’s car effort turns out to be fantastic, it is still not going to impact Tesla significantly in the short or even long term. Far more likely it will just accelerate the rest of the industries meeting with oblivion. Apple doesn’t have the (auto/ battery) manufacturing in place to put a dent in Tesla’s volume.
If Apple can't put a dent in Tesla's sales then they wouldn't have enough volume to significantly accelerate the demise of legacy makers.
More interesting is the reason why Apple can't compete head to head with Tesla. Because there is no way they could offer competitive pricing, contract manufacturer or not.
Elon was not joking when he said their not-so-secret weapon is excellence in manufacturing. Elon is making sure they can make and sell cars for less money than everyone else. To a non-visionary CEO this means cutting salaries to the bone and using cheaper components. To Elon it means streamlining the design, manufacturing and selling/delivery processes to take less time, less labor, less floor space, less robots, less shipping, less suppliers, less batteries, no advertising and fewer materials to build and sell them. It took Tesla nearly two decades achieve the huge lead they currently have and no other manufacturer is going to be able to catch them because Tesla is continually widening the gap.
Apple can't just magically design a car that is more efficient to build or a better value and, even if they could, they couldn't design the manufacturing process to 'one up' Tesla because it's necessary to use reiterative improvements to get there. It's not something that can be done in 3-5 years. Legacy auto can't do it because they have too much bureaucracy and cutting the fat is harder than herding cats - everyone resists it because they are part of the fat. Not to mention they forgot what real innovation entails and how to do it quickly. Looking at legacy auto, a company like GM cannot do it without a major, multi-year, ground up corporate restructuring. And they are making no move in that direction for the reason above. And, even if they did suddenly hit the "reset button" and try to start over, they have huge debt and lack the necessary talent. I don't like to say something is impossible, but it's impossible.
The only chance legacy auto has is to hope that somehow Tesla would suddenly lose it's will to succeed. I don't see that happening even if the worst should happen.
Apple would theoretically have had a chance if they started at the same time as Tesla. But they didn't. Now they have zero chance at a real car they can sell in a sustainable manner (with a profit). Maybe they want to create a small, light, mostly plastic urban transport vehicle with a top speed of 30-35 mph that is not even what we think of as a real car. But that's not what these fake "reliable sources" have been announcing and Tesla could quickly crush them in that space if it turns out there is a market for such a thing and they wanted to compete there. Reading between the lines of many 'news' stories and rumors, it looks to me like Apple has given up on their own car and might be hoping to create a smart Apple automotive ecosystem including autonomy that they can sell to other makers. This would be a tall order but one with at least the potential for success. The biggest problem is it relies on having significant non-Tesla customers left standing. Because Tesla is not going to buy an Apple automotive ecosystem. It goes against their focus on offering the consumer the most value for the money. Tesla already has an excellent ecosystem that is continually improving and they can replicate it in unlimited volumes without incremental costs like royalties per car.
seekingalpha.com
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