Posted on 02/21/2015 9:50:45 PM PST by Swordmaker
Apple fanboys and Samsung’s “Next Big Thing”ers would hoot with derisive laughter if The Wall Street Journal or Financial Times reported that GM or Ford planned to rewrite the rules of smartphone innovation. But when media coverage suggests Apple may redesign the automobile, even the most cynical car-lovers quiver with righteous curiosity. They should.
Could Sir Jonny Ive be the next Battista Pininfarina, Harley Earl, or Akihiro Nagaya? Don’t bet against him. Steve Jobs’ successors are at least an order of magnitude more credible as disruptive innovators than the heirs of Ford and Sloan. The computer, software, telecoms, music, broadcast, publishing, photography, retail, and consumer electronics industries certainly believe so. Apple demonstrably understands design, UX, and global supply chain alignment in ways few organizations ever have. According to data from Yahoo finance, company’s market cap exceeds that of Toyota, BMW, Volkswagen, Ford, GM, Honda, Fiat Chrysler, Tesla, and Daimler combined. Apple’s cash hoard currently tops $175 billion.
If Apple truly wants to fundamentally transform the driving experience and global automobile business, it surely has the ingenuity and resources to do so. Super-investor Warren Buffett’s admonition that “When a management with a reputation for brilliance tackles a business with a reputation for bad economics, it is the reputation of the business that remains intact” doesn’t apply. Unlike commercial aviation, automobile economics brilliantly reward the brilliant. Apple is brilliant. Don’t bet against them.
Who knows what an iCar might look, feel, or drive like? I don’t. But the better and more challenging question is, how would the automotive industry’s incumbents respond to genuinely disruptive competition? How might the industry splinter, shatter, or consolidate when truly well-endowed innovators commit to upending expectations around the DX — the Driving Experience? The money, frankly, is secondary; the real issue is creativity and capability.
Consider what happened with the iPhone. Incumbents Nokia and RIM—the handset status quo—collapsed into irrelevance. They simply couldn’t compete. By contrast, entrepreneurial non-incumbents like Google counterattacked with Android. Samsung and Xiaomi—a company that didn’t even have a smartphone five years ago—quickly became dominant players.
No, an automobile is not just an iPhone with wheels. But is GM a Blackberry and Ford a Nokia when Apple competes with a DX, a business model, and an iCar “genius bar” support network that makes their offerings look last century?
The failure of Shai Agassi’s Better Place and the ongoing production challenges confronting Elon Musk’s Tesla underscore how hard being an entrepreneurial 21st Century automobile start-up can be. Musk, whose company is reluctant to hire people from the industry, has bitingly observed that his established automotive competitors are innovation laggards. “I had thought the big car companies would be coming out with electric cars sooner,” he observed in late 2014. Their failure to do so was “mind blowing.”
But Apple would deny any and every incumbent their “too small to matter” excuse for inertia. Indeed, precisely because Apple knows how to profitably scale its design, UX and supply chain expertise, automobile manufacturers would be compelled to react and respond. Traditional retailers smirked and cried “niche!” when Ron Johnson began rolling out Apple Stores in 2001. Yet those stores have successfully redefined retail norms and customer expectations well beyond Apple products and services. Apple dramatically influenced even its indirect competitors.
So put aside its brand equity. Apple’s command of UX and technical infrastructure create multiple opportunities to transform the economics and expectations of every value-added aspect of the automobile experience. Building a car is the least of it. Apple needn’t build a car any more than it must build an iPhone or an iPad (thanks, Foxconn). All Apple has to do to force fundamental industry restructuring is do what the incumbents have not—redesign the end-to-end purchase and DX, not just the cars themselves.
That’s a bold vision for an entrepreneur, but a revitalizing challenge for a post-Jobs Apple. A partnership with Uber, for example, could be as DX transformative as special arrangements with the traffic management authorities in Beijing, London, Los Angeles, and New Delhi. How might Apple leapfrog or reframe Google’s autonomous vehicle approach to DX? Even a modest Apple incursion into the automotive industry would likely prompt an entrepreneurial explosion of innovation—and innovative—partnerships. To what extent might an automotive counterpart of “apps” and the “app store” generate new automotive expectations and value?
Indeed, it’s easy to see how a Google has as much or more incentive than Apple to “own” tomorrow’s DX as the future of personal mobility and sustainability evolves. After all, Google’s Waze is already evolving into an indispensable global DX standard. More difficult to anticipate is how a Toyota or Ford or Volkswagen will respond. These companies haven’t had to respond to a truly disruptive innovator in over forty years.
Toyota, without question, is the real incumbent to watch. If Apple drives into the automobile marketplace, Toyota has the most to lose. Between the Lexus and the Prius, Toyota’s the one dominant market leader that consistently respects design and business fundamentals even as it innovates.
Even if it never built a single car, Apple would likely prove the most serious and worthy competitor Toyota ever confronted. Toyota knows that Apple could design, build and deliver a DX that Toyota’s best customers would like. Maybe it wouldn’t be a “car”….but it would be something that redefined how people thought and felt about what it means to buy, own, and drive a car.
I bet BMW, Volkswagen, and Ford know that, too. The question is, what are they going to do about it? Will the incumbents wait and see? Or will they take the wheel?
If Apple hits the accelerator on its DX option, the next ten years of automobile innovation will be more interesting than any ten years of the automotive past.
You couldn’t bring the car back to the dealer. You’d have to mail it straight to Apple.
iMove
iDrive
iGo
iTransporter
Whatever, just don’t forget to put it in iPark.
Ah, the idea that Apple might be successful just kills some of the people on FR. Their spleen venting is actually pretty funny.
I have no idea if Apple can make a successful car. It’s not a computer and it isn’t a cellphone. I would guess if any company has a chance it might be Apple, but I don’t know.
One of the things that most car companies have had is someone with a vision and passion about a car or automotive concept that nobody else has thought about. Is anyone at Apple filling that role? I know they’ve hired a heavy hitter team of designers, engineers and product managers, but I haven’t heard anything about the vision that is driving them.
I’m not saying Apple can’t do it, but I haven’t heard a single thing about Apple being able to differentiate themselves from the pack. Their first car won’t be out until at least 2020, and there will be a lot more competition in the electric car market by then.
“And where has Apple given that bad of service?”
I live about a 3-1/2 hour drive from the nearest apple store (Tucson), so I called first. This was after finding out my iPhone 5 (which I have plugged in and am posting from) is one that indeed has a faulty battery. The store transferred me to somebody working at a place with a goofy name like Apple Martini Bar or some such nonsense. The guy I spoke with confirmed from the serial number that yes, the battery is defective and can be replaced for ‘free’. The catch is that they will not do it if the screen isnt 100%, and the screen on my phone has a small spot where it has seperated from the backing. Cost of replacing the screen is about $120. Might as well get the 6, but am contemplating the Samsung just because of this issue. I had reservations about the iPhone before I ever bought one because I feared not being able to change the battery, and sure enough, such is what I am facing. “It’s their policy”.
Apple makes all of their stuff in China.
Not exactly an American worker friendly outfit.
Apple will sue GM, Ford and Chrysler claiming they invented the wheel?
It will be ugly and no one will like it but it will run great.
This is a valid, huge concern.
Apple needs to produce more right here.
In my lifetime we will have gone from cars that were "unsafe at any speed" to cars that will bore you to death.
But seriously, what worries me when people start talking about your car having an "ecosystem" is the question of exactly who or what that ecosystem will include.
Of course, your iCar will be connected to every other iDevice you own, and Mother Apple, itself.
Will it also be connected to the local, state, and national police forces? The NSA? Homeland Security? The IRS?
Is Apple big enough to prevent that from happening, and do they even want to?
There's nothing that the liberal/fascist control freaks want more that to have absolute knowledge and control of people's movements. And with a fully connected driverless car, uhhh, transportation module, they will have that.
We're talking about the voluntary dissolution of one major aspect of what used to be our freedom of movement and association.
But most people won't care. The iCar will be safe and eco-friendly and oh-so-hip.
And every iCar will have its very own telescreen to lull us into submission.
And before the flamethrowers come out, as they surely will, the same comments apply to the Googlemobile too.
It will be ugly and no one will like it but it will run great.
And it will be free!
I drive the work route on the LA freeways. 90% of the cars have only one driver.
Because of that and the weather, the most reasonable mode of transportation here is the motorcycle. If everybody had one the jams wouldn’t be as bad, if we had any at all.
I welcome any new entrant in the car market, but believe it won’t matter.
Same here. Months between restarts and those are almost always for software updates. Just did the Yosemite update tonight and it was totally painless, smooth and fast.
While Windows 7 at work — multiple daily “App So-and-So quit working. Please wait while Windows attempts to fix the problem.” messages. Several years of using that clunker and never ONCE has Windows actually fixed anything. I just hit Cancel and restart the machine. Same experience with many different PC laptops by multiple manufacturers over the years.
from the article:
The money, frankly, is secondary; the real issue is creativity and capability.
That is dangerous thinking for a capital intensive industry that has been a black hole for those who flew too close to the sun. The auto industry changes glacially for a reason. Apple's cash hoard just gives it a longer rope.
The future of cars is in battery technology: chemistry and physics. This is to cars what Intel is to Apple. An autonomous car powered by an internal combustion engine won't cut it. If Apple is to diversify, there are businesses that are better candidates, like chip fabs.
What would Jobs have done? He was ferocious in delivering a product that the user wanted, not 'brilliant', the word the author likes using.
Not sure I would call the KATech opoc motor a advancement. It looks complex, and has many high mass parts in motion. This will drain efficiency, unfortunately. One of the major losses of energy in a internal combustion engine is the reciprocating mass and the loadings it produces on the bearings, and losses in the cylinder bore from friction of the piston traveling in the bore. This engine manages to increase all of those losses, by doubling the piston count, and tripling the losses for connectivity to the crankshaft (normal piston attachment via rod to crank, 2 rods for opposing piston and two crank attachment points -— all this just for one cylinder).
Additionally, their ECT (electrically controlled turbocharger) seems bogus as well. Currently, this technology is desired by both OEMs and the aftermarket, however, the problem is with the power density in the brushless motors available to drive the turbocharger, vs. weight & size required to actually perform the job. For example, to generate boost pressure you need around 20 to 30hp electric motor drive for the compressor wheel to generate useable boost. Currently, that takes a fairly large electric motor to develop that kind of power (too much for a small package item like a turbocharger, even using rare earth magnets and high quality copper). Bigger turbos, like for diesel trucks, in OEM form, can supply 100hp from the power turbine to the compressor side of the turbo!
Also, the site seems very shady. They claim improvements in efficiency and big claims for their ECT technology, but they post no numbers... which leads me to believe they have a questionable motive in their “innovations”. I suspect they are fleecing non-technical investors, kind of like EEStor did with their super capacitors.
Finally, their generator as described is far too complex. Something about locking stators and rotors, and wear balancing between two opoc motors. This would completely defeat the simplicity of a normal three phase alternator.
Of course this is probably all a moot point anyway... I suspect Apple will do electric only.
But the piston engine itself has a lot of life left in it, but it won’t look much different from what we have now -— just more precise control over valve operation, fuel injection events (and ignition timing for non-compression ignition engines), and turbocharger sequencing.
“I'm sorry sir, You have the I-Pacer 3.2 which is now obsolete. You need to upgrade to the I-pacer 3.3 with Scooty Puff I-tunes interface.”
“But I just bought this car last week and I just want an oil change”
With the release of the I-pacer 3.3 we no longer service the I-pacer 3.2. You will need to upgrade by buying the new model it will do everything you could ever want a car to do — at least until the I-Pacer 3.4 comes out in about an hour.
Why would you say such a ridiculous thing? Apple does not use Linux, contrary to some LINUX user's fantasies. Apple does, however make some serious contributions to the open source community by developing and maintaining the printing system Linux uses, the system linux uses for most of its browsers, and quite a few other open source projects.
Probably one of these ...
He was ferocious at delivering a product that the users didn't know they wanted until, suddenly, it was available.
First of all, that's not true. Apple makes the MacPro in Austin, Texas, and the IMacs in Elk Grove, California, both of which, the last time I looked, were still within the borders of the USA. The iPhone and iPad are also assembled in Brazil. Apple is also directly and indirectly responsible for the creation of more than ONE MILLION jobs in the USA! Compare those jobs to the approximately 200,000 assembly line workers employed by companies who assemble Apple products in Chinese plants owned by other companies. . . and who also work for every other consumer electronic company you can name. Which brings me to my final point: name one whose products are NOT manufactured in China.
I just told you one.
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