The Apple car, which had been in the making for ten years, eventually became an Apple "abandoned" car.
Recently, well-known whistleblower Mark Gurman said that after a decade and billions of dollars of efforts, Apple finally canceled the Apple Car project and turned some employees to a generative AI team. This means that the project, called "Project Titan", which burns billions of dollars and seeks to propel Apple into a new industry, has officially come to an end.
Come with excitement and return with defeat
In the current automotive industry, it is very simple to build a car, and it only takes about 4-5 years from market research to manufacturing when the cash flow is abundant. But Apple has been exploring this field for a decade, and it still hasn't seen a real car on the ground.
This may be because the genes engraved in Apple's bones are "disruptive innovation" and "extremely high requirements for quality", which support Apple's eventual ascension to the throne of the mobile phone industry, and also restrict its development in the automotive industry to a certain extent.
In the past ten years, Apple has put forward a lot of disruptive innovations. For example, Apple once envisioned the Apple Car as a highly autonomous vehicle, with the steering wheel and pedals even eliminated inside, leaving only a central display as a safety redundant for human driving in emergency situations. There is the C1 chip, which is based on the A12 Bionic processor, as well as revolutionary sensors and, more importantly, L5 autonomous driving.
The introduction of these concepts has raised the curiosity of a group of spectators. However, such an advanced design, even the current head car companies to achieve mass production is quite challenging, as for Apple, which has no experience in automobile manufacturing and has always relied heavily on the hardware manufactured by the first company, the difficulty can be imagined.
In addition to technical difficulties, the unclear route is also an important obstacle to the landing of the Apple car. Different from Huawei and Xiaomi, which have a firm route, in the seven years from 2014 to 2021, Apple's car manufacturing project has changed four leaders, and the technical route has repeatedly jumped between the whole vehicle and autonomous driving technology. In the ever-changing electric vehicle industry, Apple's continuous "deletion and reopening" wasted a lot of time and resources, resulting in the serious consequences of "anticlimactic", which not only failed to achieve mass production of models, but also lost its technological leadership.
In January, Gurman broke the news that after discovering that it could not complete a fully autonomous car in the foreseeable future, Apple began to turn to the next best thing, developing an electric car with relatively few features, that is, developing less automated driver assistance features, or on par with Tesla's current level. And Apple's L2+ car may not be officially launched until 2028.
This means that the Apple car, which is likely to be released after 4 years, cannot achieve a higher level of unmanned driving as originally planned, but uses ordinary L2+ technology.
In fact, as early as September last year, Ming-Chi Kuo, an analyst who has accurately announced Apple's dynamics many times, said that AppleCar's development seems to have lost all visibility at present. If Apple doesn't take acquisitions as the best strategy to enter the car market, "I doubt that the Apple car will be mass-produced in the next few years." Now it seems that the words are a prophecy.
The strong man broke his wrist and stopped the loss in time
In addition to the reasons for its own R&D progress, the market recession may also be one of the factors that prompted Apple to "break the wrist of a strong man".
Although electric vehicles are widely considered to be the dominant force in the automotive industry in the future, the recent weakness in the demand for electric vehicles in the United States and the changing market environment have forced many American automakers to rethink their strategic direction.
According to Bloomberg Industry Research**, U.S. EV sales are expected to grow by just 9% this year, compared to a 65% CAGR over the past three years. Even Musk, who has always liked to release aggressive targets, did not even provide specific sales expectations this year, only saying that Tesla's sales growth rate in 2024 may be significantly lower than in 2023.
Tesla has put a halt on the construction of its Mexican plant, followed by GM and Honda, announcing the termination of their entry-level EV partnerships. At the same time, GM has abandoned its goal of producing 400,000 electric vehicles in North America by mid-2024 and slashed billions of dollars in budget. Ford also lowered its production target for the F-150 electric pickup truck in 2024, cutting its weekly production capacity by half.
Giants have cut production, and startups are generally struggling. Rivian Automotive expects this year's output to be the same as last year due to sluggish sales and severe cash burns, and said it will lay off employees, causing the company's stock price to record the largest drop in history. Lucid Group will produce only 9,000 cars this year, adding to its already weak financial foundation.
Although Apple has more cash flow than other startups, according to Bloomberg, the Apple Car team is also under pressure from the top and the board. "Either the delivery is finalized or the project is cancelled altogether. That's the directive given last month after a series of meetings between Kevin Lynch, Apple's head of the car-building project, and CEO Tim Cook.
Judging from the final result, Apple finally chose to stop the loss in time. Compared with the regret of the "fruit fans", the capital market seems to be happy to accept this matter. 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.
Perhaps, as Li Xiang, CEO of Li Auto, said, 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. "First, with the artificial intelligence of TOC, Apple will become a $10 trillion enterprise; If AI loses, Apple will become a $1 trillion company. Artificial intelligence will become the top-level entrance to all devices, services, applications, and transactions, and Apple's battle. Clause.
Second, if the car is made and successful, Apple will increase its market value by $2 trillion, but the necessary condition for the success of the car is still artificial intelligence. The electrification of cars is the first half, and artificial intelligence is the final. Li Xiang said.
However, it is worth noting that Apple's exploration in the field of AI has not been smooth either.
Sora's imagination is killing Apple
Apple, which uses the iPhone to always top the mobile Internet, is a well-deserved technology leader in the past decade. But now, the dividends brought by smartphones are no longer there, and the technology industry prefers the phenomenal power of artificial intelligence, just like the ** large model Sora launched by OpenAI, which is rewriting the course of new technologies and waking up Apple's sweet dream.
Apple is well aware that the AIGC wave is coming, and it wants to continue the battle that the foundation cannot lose, and after the car-building plan is aborted, the team will move to the generative AI project. Apple plans to unveil a series of generative AI-based tools at the upcoming Worldwide Developers Conference (WWDC) and unveil a full AI roadmap later this year.
Some people say that Apple is becoming mediocre in the AI era. At a time when many tech giants are high-profile All in AI, they seem too silent, and the official has never even given an AI-based plan. Of course, there may be a surprise for fruit fans as usual, just like when Steve Jobs suddenly pulled out a Mac laptop from a thin file bag and lit up an iPhone without physical buttons.
But by looking at team changes and M&A plans, we can still piece together what Apple has reserved for AI, and perhaps what it plans to come up with in the future.
Inheriting the advantages of hardware, it is not a secret that Apple wants to make AI glasses.
It's just that the rhythm has long been messed up. In the past few years, Apple launched the Vision Pro headset with AR as its tentacles, but after its release, "expensive and heavy, eye discomfort" has become the strongest label of this epoch-making product.
In fact, from the beginning, Apple was supposed to want to make the thinnest glasses, but for various reasons, it ran aground. Although Steve Jobs is gone, his aesthetic still governs the spirit of the company, only discounted in the process of dipping his hands into the mud.
Recently, Brilliant Labs, an AR startup from Singapore, has launched an AR smart glasses frame embedded with multimodal AI capabilities. It looks unremarkable, but in fact, the frame is equipped with a head, and the right lens is embedded with a miniature OLED display.
In the VISION Pro, the frame appears small, weighing only 40 grams. As a hardware for daily wear, it can use voice, touch, and eye movement to interact with it, and there is no need to take out the mobile phone to open the APP when using AI capabilities, let alone a PC, which shortens the link.
The capabilities of Frame's large AI models rely heavily on cloud and wireless access, and are coordinated by Brilliant Labs' AI agent "NOA", which enables real-world visual processing, innovative image generation, and real-time speech recognition and translation.
From the perspective of shallow basic capabilities, FRAME is no different from today's VR equipment, such as translating a page of foreign language menus in real time, turning your head to look at a house that has not been taken care of for a long time, and you can get a complete set of cleaning solutions.
But Frame's vision for the future clearly doesn't stop there. Bobak T**Angar, founder and CEO of Brilliant Labs, hopes that the scenes and experiences that Frame learns and records can be passed down to future generations of human beings, so that the next generation can avoid some detours.
NOA is not only a multimodal AI assistant, but its knowledge graph can also continuously record, analyze and summarize the problems encountered by users, Bobak said, if we use the frame long enough, these personalized knowledge and experience can be passed on to future generations.
At that time, AI will break through the limit of human knowledge, and the predecessors will plant trees, and the future generations will enjoy the shade. Truly redefine an era.
With such a lightweight device and an thoughtful design, doesn't it sound like an apple? Bobak, who has been with Apple for many years and has been responsible for the design of several hardware projects, also said that Apple has taught him a lot and is willing to carry those ideas into the venture.
In terms of software, Apple's accumulation is mainly based on the extension of Siri. Siri's voice assistant was Apple's fruit of the AI wave, but it's not smart or popular enough, and Apple bosses, including Tim Cook, often find fault with Siri.
In order to reconstruct the much-criticized Siri, Apple has not forgotten to invest in machine learning. According to StocklyticsAccording to com, by 2023, Apple has acquired as many as 32 AI startups, while Google has 21, Meta has 18, and Microsoft has 17, buying and buying in exchange for talent, technology and intellectual property for AI expansion.
For example, Voysis, which was acquired in 2020 and is an AI startup involved in the creation of digital voice assistants, was acquired by Apple to improve the virtual assistant Siri in its devices to output more natural, logical inertia sentences to users.
It's not too late to get in, but it's certainly not exciting. While Apple is still pacing back and forth in the metaverse, the era has accelerated to the alley of AI. After the release of Sora, Apple was even more anxious and accelerated its turn in the direction of the large model led by OpenAI.
In September 2023, foreign media The Information reported that the core members of Apple's AI large model development team, including John Giannandrea, who joined Apple in 2018 as senior vice president of machine learning and artificial intelligence strategy, will report to him after the transfer of the automotive team, and his responsibilities at Apple include leading the company's AI team and driving the improvement and development of Siri and other AI projects. In addition, the core members include Arthur van Hoff, who was involved in the creation of J**A, and Ruoming Pang, an expert in the field of neural networks.
After the game, this battle about AI has just begun.
What does it mean to bet on the technical route?
For tech companies, betting on the technology route is like fighting for their lives. If the bet is right, the company may be promoted from an unknown person to an industry predator, such as Qualcomm using the CDMA stick in the 3G era to wield countless patent taxes; If you make a mistake, it is like a fall, which will hurt your tendons and break your bones.
Back then, Jobs approached Intel and wanted to make the CPU of the original iPhone, but Intel rejected it after repeated measurements. Helplessly, Apple chose to replace X86 with ARM architecture, and used an iPhone without physical buttons to lift the veil of mobile Internet at all times.
The arrogant chip giant soldered its own door to this era with its own hands, and failed to turn over in the link of 5G baseband, which is a later story. On the other hand, ARM has gradually replaced Intel X86 as a must-have for smartphones.
Over the course of history, the list of frustrated people who have clicked on the wrong skill tree is destined to get longer and longer. Now, Apple's abandonment of the car has caused countless sighs in the industry, but no one knows the underlying logic of Apple's life cycle in the future, which is just a big gamble.
Only the times have been indifferently watching, watching explorers climb mountains, and arrogant people slipping into cliffs, and at some point after many years, declaring that this is an irreparable mistake.