At the critical juncture of success or failure, Apple chose to give up.
Apple canceled the Apple CAR project, and some employees turned to the generative AI team".
In the early morning of Wednesday, Beijing time, foreign media released a message sayingApple announced internally on Tuesday that it would cancel its electric vehicle program, and that some employees would be transferred to the machine learning and AI department to move to generative artificial intelligence, which is also a project that Apple is more focused on internally. In addition, hundreds of hardware and automotive engineers have the opportunity to apply for work in other project teams; At the same time, layoffs are also possible
If the above news is true, it means that the 10-year, multibillion-dollar Apple car project from its secret launch in 2014 to the end is coming to an end.
In the face of this news, Tesla CEO Elon Musk rushed to the "scene" as soon as possible. When replying to a netizen's sharing, he posted an emoji of "salute" and "light a cigarette".
Subsequently, electric vehicle analyst Sawyer Merritt commented:"Apple spent 10 years trying to build an electric car, with $162 billion in cash reserves, but ultimately came to the conclusion that it was too difficult and too small a profit — even if it was priced at $100,000。Initially, Apple wanted it to be a fully self-driving car, but they didn't have a fleet, no real-world data, and no experience to make that happen."
He also said that there are only two major automakers in the United States that have not gone bankrupt: Tesla and Ford.
To this, Musk responded: "The natural state of a car company is death. ”
Despite the heated discussion, Apple has always refused to comment in the face of the above news.
However, the capital market seems to be optimistic about Apple's abandonment of car manufacturing. After the news came out, the U.S. stock market fell nearly 09% of Apple's stock price continued to rise, rising more than 1% after midday, and as of **, Apple reported 182$63 shares, up 081%, market capitalization 282 trillion dollars
Leaders and strategies are always adjusting
Although Bloomberg reported that the 2,000 employees of the Apple Car team were surprised by the cancellation of the project.
But in fact, the outside world is not too surprised that Apple canceled the car. After all, Apple has always been in a state of vacillation when it comes to building cars.
AlthoughApple CEO Tim Cook has always been a staunch supporter of autonomous driving technology, but he is hesitant about whether to choose autonomous driving technology or layout vehicle manufacturing, which is an important reason for the continuous strategic adjustment of Apple's car project to a large extent
Apple CEO Tim Cook.
Apple officially started to build cars in 2014, when Apple launched the intelligent driving project"Titan project"More than 1,000 automotive experts and engineers are working on an electric vehicle with limited self-driving capabilities in a secret location near the company's headquarters, and its research and development in the automotive field extends from software to hardware.
The Titan, once considered Apple's most ambitious project in a decade, was also the most swinging project, and the project has been divided since its inception
When Project Titan was founded, it was centered on four senior Apple employees, Steve Zadesky, Benjamin Lyon, John Wright, and DJ Nonotney. Steve Zadesky, the project leader, wants Apple to develop a car with semi-autonomous driving capabilities, while John Wright believes that Apple should focus on software and completely reinvent the car's product form to create a fully autonomous car without a steering wheel.
Due to different strategic choices, Zadesky, who was more inclined to build a production car to compete with Tesla, left the project team at the end of 2015. In mid-2016, Bob Mansfield, a retired former Apple executive, took over and changed his strategy to "focus on fully self-driving software."
At that time, Apple also said in a letter to the U.S. Department of Transportation that Apple would not build cars like Tesla, but would focus on the research and development of self-driving software technology
Apple uses Lexus-related models for self-driving testing.
In 2017, Apple received a license to test self-driving cars in California. Apple has since fallen into"Presentation software"The trap is to continuously develop and demonstrate autonomous driving software, but there is no way to expand the functions and implement it.
The swing of the route soon reappeared in 2018. Doug Field, the former vice president of Mac hardware engineering at Apple and a senior executive at Ford, Tesla and other companies, took over the Titan project and changed his goal to: design the whole vehicle.
But the good times didn't last long, and in the fourth quarter of that year, iPhone sales rarely fell sharply, and the mobile phone business, which mainly generates revenue**, fell into trouble, which forced Apple to carry out reforms, including the restructuring of the Titan project. In January 2019, Apple announced the transfer of 200 employees from its self-driving car division.
Just when the outside world was discussing whether Apple was going to abandon the Titan project, it acquired self-driving startup Drive. in June 2019AI, including self-driving cars, engineers, and other company assets. Confirmation of the acquisition of DriveOn the same day of AI, the U.S. Patent and Trademark Office also published Apple's patent for remotely controlling and driving a car.
Since then, the Titan project has ushered in a period of relative stability.
However, due to the delay in realizing the mass production of vehiclesIn September 2021, Field announced his departure and the head of Apple Watch, Kevin Lynch, took over. The latter has made it clear that it wants the car project to have a clearer and more urgent goal, including the launch of fully autonomous vehicles as early as 2025
However, at the end of 2022, Bloomberg quoted sources familiar with the matter as saying that Apple postponed the release of its first new car by one year to 2026, and abandoned the L5 fully autonomous driving route to support full autonomous driving capabilities on highways, and adjusted the price of each car from more than $120,000 to less than $100,000.
In January 2023, Apple adjusted the direction of car manufacturing again, not only lowering the autonomous driving level of the vehicle from L4 to L2+, but also delaying the final release time again and again, from 2026 to 2028, that is, 4 years later.
"Either the delivery is finalized or the project is cancelled altogether. This is the directive given by Kevin Lynch and Apple CEO Tim Cook after a series of meetings when the extension was announced again.
Unexpectedly, in the past month alone, Apple announced the termination of the project
It's not hard to build a car. The hard part is making money
It's not that hard for Apple to build a car.
On the one hand, Apple has a rich reserve of vehicle manufacturing patents. Since 2000, Apple has published more than 250 patents related to smart cars, covering autonomous driving technology and related sensors, lidar, projector systems, chassis and body-related suspension systems, lighting systems, seat bodies, and steering systems, according to Patently Apple. In addition, there are navigation, battery management, V2X vehicle-to-vehicle communication, and more.
On the other hand, Apple's ** chain has laid out the automotive field. At the beginning of Apple's car manufacturing, Foxconn, Lixun Precision and other companies in its core ** chain have entered the automotive field, or are preparing for the listing of Apple cars, and it is not difficult to go public.
Apple had planned to adopt a Canoo-like lifestyle vehicle design.
Actually,The Apple car already has a rough prototype
In terms of chips, the Apple Car core is an on-board computer system and a series of customized sensors, the performance of the processor is about the same as the sum of the four Apple's highest-end Mac chips, and has entered an almost production-ready state. However, Apple may scale back performance before the launch of the car to reduce costs.
It was previously reported that Apple's self-developed chip will be based on the A12 Bionic processor with 7nm process, which will be manufactured by TSMC, and the South Korean FC-BGA substrate will be used for packaging and testing.
In terms of perception solutions, unlike Tesla, which takes a purely visual route, Apple cars will be equipped with multi-sensor fusion solutions such as lidar and cameras. As early as September last year, it was reported that Apple had sent a request to global auto parts manufacturers, and was in contact with South Korea and Japanese auto parts manufacturers.
In terms of sliding chassis, it is reported that Apple has negotiated with Volkswagen a few years ago on the car base, wheel system and battery, etc., and has also discussed cooperation with a number of leading companies based on the electric vehicle platform, and is still looking for partners. However, last year, it was also reported that Apple prefers to produce Apple Car batteries in the United States, rather than purchasing from ** manufacturers in other countries.
In addition to in-vehicle hardware, Apple's car business plans to deploy cloud-based components for AI-related processing. The plan will rely on Amazon Web Services for hosting and will cost about $1 per year$2.5 billion.
In addition, Apple is exploring remote command center programs to assist the driver from a distance in case of an emergency, as well as to control the car. The program also involves the provision of insurance to customers, among other things.
It can be said that everything is ready, only mass production is needed.
But after repeated swings,Apple still chose to terminate the project, largely because it may not make money
Apple's annual R&D expenditures.
According to foreign media reports, the Titan project has cost more than $1 billion a year in recent years, and Apple's expectations for it are huge.
In 2021, when Kevin Lynch took office, there was a ** said,Its more aggressive goal is to achieve a mass production target of 100,000 units around 2024. At that time, Harsh Kumar, an analyst at investment bank Piper Sandler, also said that based on this, Apple was only less than 0A 1% market share would generate about $5 billion in revenue. If it reaches a market share of 1% by 2030, it will bring Apple $50 billion in revenue
However, the reality is cruelApple's profit model is destined not to fight with other manufacturers.
In the later stages of the project, Apple had envisioned pricing the car at about $100,000. However,Company executives have expressed reservations, fearing that such a pricing strategy would undermine Apple's consistently high profit margins, especially as the auto market becomes increasingly competitive.
As a result, the executives have expressed concern about continuing to invest hundreds of millions of dollars each year on a project with an uncertain future.
With a huge amount of money and an uncertain future, it is not surprising to give up.
Automotive investment has weakened, and generative AI has increased
Apple has abandoned a number of projects, including plans to make televisions that were shelved around 2015.
But the termination of the electric vehicle project is particularly remarkable, not only because it lasted for a decade, but also because of the large number of employees involved and the amount of money involved.
After shutting down the car-building project, Apple's biggest business in the automotive field is CarPlay software, which allows drivers to use the iPhone's maps, Siri and other functions in the car.
Software capabilities are one of Apple's core competencies. As early as 2013, Apple launched the "iOS in the Car" program, which was later renamed "CarPlay" in-vehicle intelligent system and entered the field of smart cars.
carplay 2.0 screenshots**.
CarPlay once occupied an absolute leading position in the in-vehicle system market, according to Apple, in 2020, more than 80% of the world's largest new cars support CarPlay. According to Haitong International data, by the end of 2021, CarPlay had cooperated with more than 70 car companies around the world on 720 models, ahead of competitors such as Carlife, Huawei Hicar, Tencent Auto Link and Ali Alios.
Apple is still working on upgrading CarPlay to better integrate with the car's control and entertainment systems, but the investment and influence are weakening
There is an opinion thatCarPlay is to solve the intelligence of non-intelligent cars, but in the future, smart cars are more and more deeply integrated in software and hardware, and concerns about data security solutions are increasing, the value of CarPlay will be further weakened, and the global market share is also further **
Taken together,Apple is putting more of its sights on generative AI, which is hotter at the moment
According to foreign media reports, many employees of the Apple car team will be transferred to the artificial intelligence department under the leadership of senior vice president John Giannandrea, and these employees will focus on generative AI projects, which are increasingly important to the company.
In fact, in May last year, Tim Cook said that Apple has been experimenting with generative AI for years. He believes that the potential of AI is very interesting, but there are "many problems that need to be solved" with technology. It is very important to be thoughtful and thoughtful when deciding how and when to use AI".
In August last year, Apple has released dozens of positions in California, Seattle, Paris, Beijing and other departments to recruit large model technical talents, especially on large models on the end side.
In recent months, Apple has been testing "Apple GPT" that can compete with ChatGPT.
At Apple's quarterly earnings conference** earlier this year, Cook also said that the company is investing a lot of time and effort into integrating artificial intelligence into its software platform. The company is developing generative AI software features that will be available to customers later this year. "I think there's a huge opportunity for Apple in generative AI and AI, but I don't want to go into more details. ”
In this generative AI boom, Apple has started late, and I don't know if it can stick to it and achieve the last mover first come.