The Apple car, which has been built for ten years, is actually unfinished?
Recently, a person familiar with the matter said that Apple will abandon the electric vehicle project that has been followed up for nearly ten years, and most of its employees will be transferred to the AI department, which also means that the billions of dollars Apple has invested in this project will be wasted.
In fact, Apple's plan in the automotive field is very early, but unfortunately, in the past ten years, Apple has not made any results, it can be said that it got up early, but it did not even catch up.
Since 2008, Apple has had the ambition to build a car, and in that year, Apple's co-founder Steve Jobs proposed to build Apple's smart car brand "icar". In 2014, Apple officially launched their car-building program and named it "Titan".
Subsequently, Apple began to poach people from various car companies with high salaries. Power testing and hybrid engineers at Tesla, Ford, and many other companies have been poached by Apple. And Tesla CEO Elon Musk also posted a post mocking Apple's poaching behavior, saying, "They hired the people we fired." ”
In the past 10 years, due to the continuous change of management and the vacillation of car-making thinking, the person in charge of Apple's car-making project has changed one term after another, and the mass production time of Apple's car has been repeatedly postponed.
As soon as the news of Apple's car construction was unfinished, many potential competitors immediately rushed to the front line of eating melons.
First of all, Musk responded to Apple's news with salutes and smoking emojis on social platforms, after all, for Tesla, the Apple car has always been a potential threat, and the death of the Apple car plan is undoubtedly good news for Tesla now.
Later, Li Xiang, CEO of Li Auto, also posted that he believed that it was an absolutely correct strategic choice for Apple to give up making cars and focus on artificial intelligence.
The various reactions of friends seem to hint at the end of Apple's car. But Apple spent a lot of time, money and energy on the project, so why was its plan to build a car stillborn?
Don't look at the time when Apple proposed to build a car very early, but in fact, it has not grasped the opportunity to enter the new energy intelligent automobile industry. If Apple has the same entry time as Tesla and BYD, then Apple is likely to kill all sides.
However, the competition in the automotive industry has entered a white-hot stage, and car companies are not only fighting for strength, but also for speed. Weimar, Gaohe and other car companies have fallen in the painful competition of new energy vehicles. If Apple enters at this time, even if it has strong R&D capabilities, it may not be able to adapt to the rapid iteration of the market, and the Titan project may not meet people's expectations.
Looking back at Apple's history, Apple is a leader in smartphones. They were the first to evolve the old-fashioned flip phone into a multi-purpose, intelligent electronic product. Among them, Apple has always been committed to the pursuit of the ultimate user experience. But this time, Apple's pursuit of the ultimate is a bit too far away.
Apple wanted to build a driverless car from the beginning. However, unmanned driving requires the collection of massive amounts of data, and today's technological development cannot fully support the passage of unmanned vehicles on open roads. But Apple is known for its product requirements and its rigour, and if it doesn't meet its own standards, it won't go to market.
Apple's obsession with autonomous driving and the fierce competition eventually led to their indecision on the car-building strategy, and in the end, they could only watch their car-building plans fail.
At this time, Apple chose to turn to the field of AI, whether it is a wise move or retreating, which may be the best choice for itself.