On February 27, Mark Gurman, a world-renowned technology journalist, released a bombshell news: Apple may have decided to cancel the electric car project that has been engaged in for more than ten years!
Gurman said that Apple's chief operating officer, Jeff Williams, and Kevin Lynch, vice president of the car-building program, had already announced the decision internally on Tuesday, and people familiar with the matter said the news came as a surprise to the project's nearly 2,000 employees.
After the news was released, Apple **not**, but ** 024%
Li Xiang, CEO of Li Auto, said that Apple's abandonment of car manufacturing is the right strategic choiceScreenshot of Weibo.
Regarding Apple's withdrawal from the field of car manufacturing, a number of car circle bigwigs commented on social **:TeslaceoMusk replied with two emojis on social **: one is a salute and the other is smoking；Lei Jun said: I was very shocked when I saw this news; Li Xiang, CEO of Li Auto, believes that Apple's decision to give up building cars and focus on artificial intelligence is an absolutely correct strategic choice, and the timing is also appropriate; He Xiaopeng, chairman of Xpeng Motors, said that it was also discussed last year that all new entrants in the automotive industry would be released in 2024, but except for Apple. But I didn't expect Apple to come out with such a card in 2024.
However, the end of the Apple Car project did not come suddenly. As early as October 2023, analyst Ming-Chi Kuo, who has been following Apple's movements for a long time, warned that the Apple car project has disappeared at this stage, and if you want to go into production in the next few years, the best plan is to use the existing plan to enter the car market by acquiring car companies. If Apple doesn't take an acquisition strategy to enter the car market, I doubt that the Apple car will be able to go into mass production in the next few years. 」
This decision has attracted a lot of attention, especially about how Apple's electric car project has gone through and why it ultimately chose to abandon the electric vehicle field.
Apple's car project is considered one of the most ambitious projects the company has ever had, with billions of dollars invested in research and development since its inception in 2014. But over the past few years, Apple's in-house automotive team has gone through multiple restructurings and strategic adjustments and has been looking for a way forward. Some high-level executives have proposed in-depth cooperation with automakers or even outright acquisitions, but none of them have come to fruition.
The earliest rumors of Apple's foray into the automotive industry date back to the fall of 2014
At the time, Apple was actively recruiting engineers in the automotive sector, rumored to be working on a project known as Titan. However, these rumors were not confirmed at the time.
It wasn't until February 2015 that Apple board member Mickey Drexler first confirmed that Apple was working on a car. The news has led to widespread belief that Apple is on track to overtake Tesla in the field of electric vehicles. Since Tesla launched the Roadster in 2008, Apple co-founder Steve Jobs has been considering the possibility of designing and building electric vehicles
At the same time, Tim Cook, the current CEO of Apple, was one of the first to recognize that the automotive industry was about to undergo a sea change. In October 2015, Cook highlighted the importance of software growth, the rise of self-driving cars, and the transition to electric vehicles. At the same time, Apple launched a project called Baja to install sensors on a batch of Lexus SUVs.
However, in 2016, news broke that Apple had suspended the recruitment of the Titan team, which led to speculation that Apple might feel that the car project was too large to move forward as expected.
In May 2023, an Apple test car converted into a self-driving car was unveiled in Silicon ValleyVisual China.
Follow-up news shows that Apple has begun to focus on the research and development of autonomous driving systems. In June 2017, Apple CEO Tim Cook publicly discussed the progress of Apple's electric vehicles in the field of autonomous driving, and we are focusing on autonomous driving systems. This is a core technology that we believe is very critical and one of the most challenging of all AI projects. 」
However, Cook did not say whether Apple is making a complete vehicle. A year later,Apple has registered 70 self-driving cars with the California Transportation Authority, second only to Cruise and Waymo, hinting at its investment in autonomous driving
Interestingly, Apple tried to find partners to advance the development of self-driving cars during this period, including Volkswagen, BMW, Mercedes-Benz, Nissan, Hyundai, and Kia, but all attempts ended in failure.
Faced with the breakdown of the partnership, Apple revisited its options and re-advanced its car-building project. However, the focus of the project during this period is less clear, and it is not clear whether it will be in the development of autonomous driving or the manufacture of vehicles.
In a 2021 interview, when asked about the focus of Apple's car-building project, Cook sidestepped the question of whether it would get involved in vehicle manufacturing, saying that Apple prefers to integrate hardware, software, and services. Although Apple is not the company that makes its own devices, this may be reasonable in the current integration strategy of Apple products.
Then, in March 2022, it was rumored that Apple was disbanding and restructuring its automotive team, and the project underwent another major change. Apple's automotive team has actually been disbanded for some time and will have to be restructured in the next three to six months to start mass production of cars by 2025.
After much trial and error, Apple decided that it was unrealistic to pursue Level 4 autonomous driving technology.
In January 2024, Gurman broke the news that Apple's self-driving electric vehicle plans had undergone a fundamental change. The original plan was to launch an electric vehicle with Level 4 autonomous driving capabilities, but now it has moved to more realistic Level 2+ autonomous driving technology and delayed its release until 2028 or later.
This means that Apple is no longer sticking to its self-driving car program, but has decided to follow Tesla's model and first launch a high-end electric vehicle product that meets the current market demand, which is expected to cost around $90,000.
However, in the end, the project was aborted. According to people familiar with the matter,Recently, the board of directors has been putting pressure on Apple's leadership over the car program. They are concerned about whether Apple can deliver high profit margins with this **, and about spending hundreds of millions of dollars a year on projects that may never bear fruit。This eventually led to Apple's decision to end its car manufacturing program.
Apple's interest in electric vehicles stems from the fact that it is facing an increasingly saturated smartphone market and is in dire need of new business areas to drive sales growth. This is one of the reasons why Apple previously launched the Vision Pro, a mixed reality (MR) device. The huge potential of the electric vehicle market presents an excellent opportunity for Apple.
The reason for this abandonment of car manufacturing is that Apple's strategic priorities have changed. Previously, Apple's new businesses at the strategic level were spatial computing and smart cars. Meituan founder and CEO Wang Xing said in May 2020It's as strong as an apple, and it shouldn't be bet on at the same timearvrand smart cars. Two birds in the forest are not as good as one bird in hand. This is a real test of Cook's strategic ability
But with the boom brought by ChatGPT, generative AI will bring a new round of technology and industrial change, which has become a consensus in the industry. Li Xiang said on Weibo that Apple will increase its market value by $2 trillion if it is made into a car, but Apple will become a $10 trillion company if it is made into TOC's artificial intelligence. Therefore, it is an absolutely correct strategic choice for Apple to give up building cars and choose to focus on artificial intelligence, and the timing is also appropriate.
Previously, Apple was thought to have had little voice in this wave of generative AI craze. In a recent earnings briefing, Apple CEO Tim Cook only mentioned that the company has invested a lot of time and effort in the AI space, but specific details of AI progress will be shared in the future. Some analysts believe that Apple may release the latest iOS 18 operating system at the WWDC conference in June, and will fully introduce generative AI technology.
However, Apple is stepping up its pursuit (see Geek Park's report on Apple's AI for details). According to Bloomberg, in July 2023, Apple built its own large language model, AJAX, and launched an internal chatbot codenamed Apple GPT for testing, according to Bloomberg. This is considered to be a major adjustment to the AI space within Apple before.
john giannandrea ｜*apple
John Giannandrea and Craig Federighi are leading the effort at Apple's senior vice presidents of artificial intelligence and software engineering. In Cook's team, they are known as the executive sponsors who drive generative AI projects. It is reported that Eddy Cue, Apple's head of services, was also involved. The trio currently spend about $1 billion a year on the project.
At the same time, Apple has not only set up a dedicated AI team and developed large language models, but also widely applied speech and image recognition technologies on the product side. Federigi leads efforts to develop new AI-powered app experiences such as iOS, iMessage, and Siri. Apple is said to have given instructions to include features that run on large language models in iOS to boost AI capabilities, while the new features will improve the processing power of Siri and messaging apps and the ability to complete sentences automatically.
Incomplete statistics of Apple's acquisitions in the AI space from 2010 to the present day Geek Park.
Meanwhile, since 2017, Apple has acquired 21 AI startups, almost twice as many as Microsoft and Meta. Although Apple's AI company acquisition has slowed down since 2021, it has still successfully acquired start-up AI companies such as Curious AI, AI Music, and W**Eone. Overall, Apple's investment and layout in the field of artificial intelligence shows a high degree of attention to future technology development, which is also in line with its consistent ecological construction and innovation strategy.
Apple's termination of its car-building program is not bad news, but a strategic choice. With the rise of artificial intelligence, which will become the core entry point for all kinds of devices, services, applications and transactions, Apple is preparing for this battle. Strategically, it is a wise choice to focus on the areas with the most potential and the most in line with the core strengths. Choosing this direction can not only more effectively cope with the fierce market competition, but also better meet the needs of users.