Apple s car was miscarried, and Xiaomi was mixed

Visual China.

Text |Tram pass.

The "Titan" is widely regarded as Apple's next pillar project, but the progress is really not idealIn 2020, it was reported that more news would be announced in 2024, but in 2024, according to Bloomberg's exclusive revelations, the project has come to an abrupt halt.

Citing Apple insiders, Apple Chief Operating Officer Jeff Williams and Vice President of the project, Kevin Lynch, jointly decided to terminate the project, and the 2,000 employees involved in the project will mainly turn to the artificial intelligence department, and focus on projects such as generative AI in the future.

As a potential main competitor, Elon Musk praised the news of the termination of the Apple Car project on "X", presumably Tesla's dominance in North America will become more solid.

However, as one of the originator projects of "cross-border car building by technology companies", the fall of Titan may bring some negative emotions, such as "whether it is not possible for technology companies to build cross-border cars".

In China, Apple's leading role has attracted many technology companies to imitate it, and Xiaomi has put it into practice and invested $10 billion in car manufacturing plans. The failure of Apple's car-making plan is believed to have more eyes focused on Xiaomi, whether cross-border car manufacturing will work in the end, and Xiaomi has become a model for the whole industry to pay attention to.

The reasons for the unfavorable progress of the Apple Car project have been explained in great detail on the Internet, and we can also see some clues from the progress of the project.

Looking back on the course of the entire "Titan" project, one "good thing is more grinding" is highlighted.

The Titan project is rumored to have been approved by Tim Cook in 2014 by John Junwit, the former president and CEO of Mercedes-Benz R&D North America.

In 2016, Apple successfully brought Bob Mansfield, a retired senior head of hardware engineering, out of the mountain and took over the Titan project, thus starting the road of frequent changes in the Titan project.

In 2018, Tesla's former senior vice president of engineering, Doug Field, became the new leader of the Titan team, and in the same year, a series of negative news came out, pointing out that Apple's cooperation with BMW, Mercedes-Benz, Nissan, BYD, and McLaren all failed, and the latest partner was Volkswagen - this series of failures may be the fuse for a change of leadership.

As time went on, Apple's possible cooperation with Hyundai Motor became the hottest news in 2021, but in the end, both parties denied it, and the cooperation was aborted. At the same time, rumors of a change of leadership continued, to say the least, that Doug Field was now a senior executive at Ford Motor Company, and that the current Titan project was led by the reported Kevin Lynch until it was cancelled.

Based on the frequent change of coaches, we can at least speculate that Apple's internal definition and goals for the Titan project are not clear. As the report revealed, the Titan project has experienced at least repeated horizontal jumps between multiple definitions such as "complete vehicle" - software - autonomous driving, and the repeated change of leadership has also exacerbated the uncertainty of team members to a certain extent.

The second reason, which is widely mentioned, is that Apple is setting its goals too high and thinking too far.

By integrating information from the Internet, we can derive a general appearance of the Titan project: ** more than 120,000 US dollars, the shape design is sleek and more sci-fi, there is no steering wheel, accelerator or brake pedal, because it will be equipped with L5 (one says L4) level autonomous driving capability. In the interior, the center console is directly equipped with an iPad, and it is equipped with Apple's own A-series chips, and of course, there are many "revolutionary" sensors on the car.

Not to mention anything else, technologies such as L5 and L4 autonomous driving alone are enough to make the development of Apple's car in trouble. At this stage, L4 autonomous driving is widely used in Robotaxi products, while L3 autonomous driving technology is tested in a limited range, and the most mainstream is L2 assisted driving.

Perhaps it is because too many resources have been invested and there is still no hope, according to Bloomberg and other ** reports, Apple's requirements for autonomous driving technology have also been declining, falling to L3 in 2022 and L2 in 20235……

However, in general, combined with the previous modification of Lexus models to do road tests, the acquisition of autonomous driving company DriveAI and other actions can be seen that Apple has regarded self-driving technology as one of the killer features of the Titan project from the beginning, which is also in line with their product philosophy - once the product is born, it must have a high degree of maturity and usability, but such persistence may also lead to product miscarriage, and the Apple car is not the first and will not be the last.

The last reason to be mentioned is the market environment. Bloomberg said that the U.S. new energy market is cooling, and even Tesla has issued a warning that the growth rate of electric vehicles will slow down significantly, and the growth rate will drop sharply to 11% in 2024 from 47% last year, and it will fall into negative growth in less than two or three years - which is very likely to be the direct reason for Apple's decision to abandon car manufacturing.

Li Xiang, the founder of Li Auto, commented on Apple's car:"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."

Obviously, AI is more practical value for Apple than cars, and it can empower all the current Apple hardware ecosystems, and once it is completed, it will push Apple towards a market value of 10 trillion; Secondly, Apple's trend over the years has been to shift from hardware sales to service**, and making mediocre cars will not help Apple much. Finally, looking back at the new VISION Pro, the market response and actual experience can almost be described as Waterloo, and we can see that Apple's ability to lead the industry and create and seek is gone.

It can be seen that stopping car manufacturing is completely timely for Apple to pull back from the precipice, despite the fact that tens of billions of R&D expenses have been burned. Objectively speaking, this is also good news for the majority of new car-making forces, after all, there is one less potential competitor. For Xiaomi alone, Apple's failure to build a car may have some unintended consequences.

Cross-border car manufacturing has existed in ancient times, but the starting point of cross-border car manufacturing by technology companies is still here at Apple. With its incomparable influence in the industry, when Apple participates in car manufacturing, it shows from the side that this behavior is the trend of future development, which is also one of the origins of the "rationality" of technology brands such as Xiaomi to participate in car manufacturing.

Therefore, the abortion of Apple's car-making plan will naturally make the technology companies that are still insisting on it be questioned and put under great pressure, perhaps this is why Lei Jun said "very shocked" when commenting on Apple's stop making cars.

Apple has failed, can Xiaomi cars succeed? "I believe that such doubts will continue to arise before and after the launch of the Xiaomi Su7.

If it is to evaluate "technology companies", then Apple is naturally the greater one, but today's evaluation is "making cars", and I think Xiaomi is the professional one. Apple's car has failed de facto, but Xiaomi's car has a chance to usher in success.

First, in terms of products, Xiaomi's cognition has always been clear and down-to-earth.

What needs to be known is that Apple is not "unable to build a car", but "unable to build a car that changes the industry". But on Xiaomi's side, from the very beginning, the goal of Xiaomi Auto was not to change the perception of the industry, but simply to "be the best of its kind".If the goal is set reasonably, it is naturally possible to achieve it.

At the end of 2023, Xiaomi used a 3-hour press conference to introduce the new car SU7 in detail, to be honest, the "innovation point" of Xiaomi SU7 is mainly focused on the re-innovation of functional experience, rather than the definition and innovation of product requirements.

For example, Xiaomi used a long article to talk about the SU7 technology accumulation in the three electric capabilities (battery, motor, electronic control) and intelligent experience (intelligent driving, cockpit), and the new experience it brings, but in general, it is still in the category of traditional car experience.

It can be understood that Xiaomi is adding some of its own technical advantages on the basis of existing electric vehicles, such as intelligent networking, human-computer interaction, etc., and the car still sits and drives like that. Xiaomi su7 is indeed not a subversive product like Apple's car, but Apple's own experience also fully illustrates that there is no value in drawing a pie and putting satellites, and the final product cannot be taken out.

Second, China's market soil makes Xiaomi cars more likely to succeed.

Bloomberg believes that the failure of the Apple car project is directly affected by the slowdown in the growth of the new energy vehicle market in the United States, and new energy vehicles are a niche demand in the world, and the expected electric car revolution has not come. In fact, according to our observations, other new car-making forces other than China are not in a good situation, Vietnam's Vinfast, the United States' Fisker, etc. are all in trouble, strictly speaking, the only overseas pure electric vehicle brand with real combat effectiveness is Tesla.

The fundamental reason for the collapse of the new overseas car-making forces and the triumph of the new Chinese forces lies in the market. The Chinese market is more receptive to new energy vehicles, especially pure electric vehicles, and the energy infrastructure is more complete, and consumers are more willing to buy.

In addition, China, as the world's largest automobile consumer market, has left room for Xiaomi to survive. Coupled with the advantages of the first chain, the Chinese market is indeed the most suitable soil for the development of new energy vehicles in the world, and under the nourishment of such soil, Xiaomi Auto has a higher chance of success.

Third, Xiaomi has a software and hardware ecology that can justify itself, and the car can find a reasonable ecological niche.

What role the car will play in the ecology is an open question for Apple, but it is clearly defined for Xiaomi. According to Xiaomi's strategy of "people, cars, and homes", The Paper OS serves as a bridge to connect the three major scenarios of people, vehicles, and homes, and information can flow freely on different hardware, so as to provide users with customized services.

The "people, car, home" strategy has given an important ecological niche to Xiaomi Auto and constitutes an important part of the hardware strategy, because of this, it is impossible for Xiaomi Auto to end up without a problem because of the ambiguity of positioning.

On the other hand, under the empowerment of the ecosystem, Xiaomi Auto has a certain opportunity to form experience stickiness to Xiaomi users, thereby enhancing the attractiveness of the product. Apple's smart ecology is also one of the best, but because of the existence of carplay, the necessity of the existence of Apple's car is weakened, and due to strict privacy protection and other reasons, it cannot set the best business for individual users and cannot meet the needs of users.

All in all, the unique market soil and user needs allow Xiaomi to find opportunities to find a breakthrough point in the traditional "driving and driving" scenario.

Of course, after Apple does not build a car, there is less application of the template to tell the capital story, and the bargaining power will be affected to some extent. Xiaomi can only rely on products and real results to prove the prospect of the "people, cars, and homes" ecology and the value of the car-making business, which naturally becomes more difficult.

Next, it's time to look at the Xiaomi Su7.

With Apple's cancellation of car manufacturing, Xiaomi has become the only seedling of "technology companies making cross-border cars", which means that this round of cross-border car manufacturing boom has officially come to an end.

The qualifiers are over, and then the knockout rounds are on. Li Xiang mentioned in his comment on Apple's cancellation of car manufacturing that AI, or intelligence, will become the focus of competition in the second halfApple's AI foundation is unstable, and there is no advantage in competition, but now it has shifted its focus and laid the foundation.

So what enlightenment can be given to China's new car-making forces?

I think China's new power car companies should realize that Apple's abandonment of car manufacturing is actually a good opportunity, at least in the future, they will face one less powerful opponent at the level of Tesla. However, the current competition may be more urgent, China's auto market under the leadership of BYD set off a first-class war, and a variety of new products are about to be launched, these alone are enough to make car executives exhausted.

The other point is to pay attention to the underlying technology, especially intelligent driving, AI, etc.

Dig deeper, the difficult birth of the Apple car is related to the backwardness of Apple's own autonomous driving technology, even L2Level 5 assisted driving can't be obtained, and the Apple car is naturally not competitive. Fortunately, China's new car-making forces have chosen intelligent driving as a differentiated track early, and they have achieved fruitful results, even competing with Tesla's most advanced intelligent driving technology.

What's even more rare is that China's new power car companies attach great importance to the research and development of AI underlying technology, and new power car companies have followed Tesla's example to build intelligent computing centers, Xiaopeng has "Fuyao", Great Wall's Momo Zhixing has "Snow Lake Oasis", Geely has "Xingrui", and Ideal and Byte's Volcano Engine have cooperated to build intelligent computing centers......Tesla's "dojo" is not alone.

In terms of algorithms, one is the research and development of "end-to-end large models" at the level of autonomous driving, and the other is the generative AI large models at the bottom of the system. At least in terms of technical routes, China's new power car companies have been keeping up with Tesla's pace and have not fallen behind, so they have always had strong competitiveness in the intelligent track.

Apple is not omnipotent, and what Apple can't do has been done by many Chinese car companies. Apple's failure to build a car also officially announced that the dust has settled on the global competition pattern of new energy vehicles, and only Tesla is the only overseas new energy vehicle brand that can take on the role, and the dominant power will be in the hands of Chinese car companies.