Apple Car Rumors Exhaust Me
By: Lance Ulanoff
Tags: Car, Technology, Apple, AI, Analysis

Apple Car Rumors Exhaust Me

Photo by Andy Wang on Unsplash

Project Titan is an apt name for an illusory effort to build transportation vaporware. The idea of Apple building or branding its own car full of Apple-engineered goodness is so big and exciting, it’s taken on gargantuan proportions.

I didn’t buy the idea five years ago. I’m not buying it now.

It’s such an attractive idea, though, “Oh can you imagine Apple versus Tesla?!!” that tech media and those who follow it literally try to will it into existence.

Reuter’s latest story may be the first to put a date on delivery of the Apple Car (or iCar, which is just too close to “iCarly”), and adds tantalizing details like a remarkable “monocell” battery and that Apple will probably let someone else build the vehicle. It also notes that the Apple Car might feature LiDAR scanners, which isn’t much of a stretch since virtually all semi-autonomous vehicles have sensors to detect the road, lanes, other vehicles, and people.

Reuters hedges its bets, saying that the pandemic could push production out past 2025, which also means that they can ride the rumor for years. That is unless Apple pulls the plug on Project Titan. The company scaled back its efforts in 2019, when it shed 200 employees. It also no longer employs Johann Jungwirth, a former Mercedes Benz R&D lead.

It’s not that Apple isn’t interested in cars. Apple’s CarPlay, which provides a stripped-down version of Apple’s core mobile OS for cars, system is already in millions of vehicles. This always seems like the just-right approach for Apple in the car market.

I’m also unconvinced about the appeal for Apple and consumers of an “Apple branded car.” The reason you buy one car brand over another is not, for instance, because it aligns with your favorite, say, fast food brand.

“A McDonald’s Car? Awesome. The grilled burger steering wheel is amazing. It smells just like cooked beef.”

You choose a car brand because of its reputation and the features they provide. Tesla built its brand and market position on the strength of all-electric features, luxury-like amenities, build quality, service, performance, and range. And it’s built a leading position in the electric car market through, for better or worse, the sheer determination of Elon Musk.

Apple did something similar with the original iPhone. It entered an existing and saturated market and remade it in its own image through quality, features performance, and the determination and grit of Steve Jobs.

An Apple-Branded car is not the Apple way. What Apple doesn’t build, it directs partners to build to its specifications. More recently, it’s begun building some of its own components like Apple Silicon.

I could be wrong. Apple possibly sees future cars as part of the natural evolution of mobile technology, writ large. An autonomous, electric car is as much a computer on wheels as it is a modern mode of transportation. Apple’s expertise in mobile hardware, battery management and performance, and AI intelligence would certainly help it here.

However, making a viable Apple Car business will take years. The decade-plus effort to win the hearts and minds of, primarily, Tesla fans will be arduous and frustrating. And by the time Apple finally ships its first “Apple Car,” it’ll be entering a much more crowded electric car market with far more affordable options from car companies with decades of traditional car sales experience.

Apple surely knows all this. Which is why, in my humble opinion, it’s not building or planning to sell an “Apple Car.”