In 2021, Lei Jun threw a bolt from the blue to the technology world: Xiaomi wants to build a car! Now, three years have passed, and in 2024, Xiaomi is finally about to be mass-produced and delivered.
However, Apple, the world's most valuable technology company, launched a car project in 2014. However, 10 years have passed, and the Apple Car, which was 7 years earlier than Xiaomi's project, is still being postponed indefinitely.
It is reported that the Apple car was originally scheduled to be released in 2025, but in 2022, Apple postponed the release date of the new car to 2026. Now, the Apple car is once again facing a delay. According to related reports, the Apple car will not be available to consumers until 2028 at the earliest.
The reason why Apple's road to building cars is so bumpy is that there is no clear strategic goal. Apple Auto is making an autonomous driving software company or making its own cars and making its own car companies, which makes it impossible to effectively promote the project.
Second, a number of core executives have left, which has delayed Apple's car-making progress again and again. In 2021, Apple Car lost three key technical personnel. In 2022, the Apple car project team was even more disbanded.
The third is that the Apple car has taken too big a step, and as soon as it comes up, it will gnaw on the most difficult "hard bone" in the automotive industry, that is, L5 autonomous driving technology. Autonomous driving is the trend of the times, and it is understandable that Apple Auto is aiming at this track, but it is not easy to achieve commercialization.
At present, there are still many difficulties in the development of autonomous driving, such as the technology is not mature enough, it cannot calmly cope with complex road conditions and unknown events, and it is limited by laws and regulations.
Perhaps because of being too confident in itself, Apple Car underestimated the difficulty of L5 autonomous driving, causing it to hit a nose and downgrade its autonomous driving goal all the way.
In 2022, Apple Auto is ready to abandon the production of Level 5 fully autonomous vehicles. This year, Apple Car lowered the requirements again, lowering the level of autonomous driving to Level 2+.
From the initial L5 level to the current L2+ level, it can be seen that Apple, which is known for its technology, has also had to compromise with autonomous driving. If Apple Auto had started the development of L2 autonomous driving technology from the beginning, it would not have been delayed in the development of cars.