The author vaguely remembers that as early as when Jobs was still alive, there was news that Apple wanted to build a car. Now, ten years later, Apple cars are still unresolved, but the news is more and more, and the image of Apple cars is becoming more and more concrete, closer and closer to us.
Recently, some media reported that some key supply chains in Taiwan Province of China revealed the latest news from Apple Cars: it will be launched in September 2022. The news also shows that dozens of Apple prototypes have been secretly tested on the road in California.
It is understood that Heda, Trade Union-KY, Heqin, Tomita and other Taiwan auto parts factories have received relevant stocking notices and will be included in the supplier system by Apple. Recently, many auto parts manufacturers have begun to speed up the pace, vaguely revealing the atmosphere of Apple Car's big orders. Among them, Heda's new plant in Chiayi Dapumei Park is accelerating the deployment of AI intelligent production lines, and six new production lines will be put into operation in the second quarter of next year.
On December 13, 2021, Apple CEO Cook also revealed a rare future plan in an interview, "We are very concerned about augmented reality, we are very concerned about artificial intelligence, we are very concerned about autonomous driving." Cook describes these things as "core technologies" that will be applied in "a variety of different ways." Usually, Cook would sidestep the question or turn the conversation to products that are now available to buy, but this time he said it directly. Apple AR (headsets and glasses), AI and autonomous driving (cars), these are all already open secrets, but this time Cook very clearly hinted at their existence, I believe that these apple's new technologies, new products, will soon meet us.
In 2014, Apple officially launched a car-making program code-named Titan, led by Steve Zadesky, the leader of the original iPod team.
In August 2018, Doug Field, the former apple's vice president of Mac hardware engineering, was rehired back to Tesla after five years at tesla. That same year, Jamie Waydo, a former senior engineer at Google Waymo, also joined the Apple team. Subsequently, Apple poached 2 vice presidents of research and development and a senior director from Tesla.
According to statistics, Apple hired at least 46 employees from Tesla in 2018.
In March 2019, Dr. Michael Schwekutsch, vice president of Tesla's electric drive systems, joined Apple; in July, Steve MacManus, vice president of research and development for Tesla's interior and exterior, joined.
In June 2019, Apple stepped up its autonomous driving efforts with the acquisition of Drive.ai, a startup in the field, with dozens of employees incorporating into Apple.
At the beginning of 2021, there is constantly news about the cooperation between Hyundai Motor and Apple, but so far there is no news of the actual cooperation between the two sides, and Hyundai's stock price has risen a lot, some of which have disrupted the market and suspected of manipulating the stock price.
In addition to Hyundai, several companies, including Volkswagen, Nissan, Magna, Foxconn and other OEMs, parts giants and consumer electronics parts suppliers, have reported OEM "scandals" with Apple, but at present, the outside world is still unknown to the outside world who can build cars with Apple.
Why is there no traditional car company choosing to oem Apple cars? In the era of software-defined cars, technology giants such as Apple and Huawei have great potential in the field of intelligent cars; while traditional auto giants themselves are at a disadvantage in terms of intelligence, and with the assistance of them, it is equivalent to personally cultivating a strong competitor for themselves, which is tantamount to digging their own graves. To put it bluntly, no top car company would help a competitor with great potential to build a car. We can notice that even Apple's royal foundry Foxconn has announced that it has built its own car, whether it can be mass-produced first, anyway, it did not say that it has anything to do with Apple.
In recent years, Apple, indeed lack of new highlights, electronic equipment has been following the principle of small upgrades, little by little squeezing toothpaste, there are few revolutionary innovations and breakthroughs, on the contrary, the domestic independent brands have formed a "fairy fight" "you sing I debuted" situation, Apple even began to launch charging treasure and other products, according to which it can indeed be seen that the current field of electronic technology has reached a bottleneck period, the lack of new growth points, then new energy vehicles are indeed a new outlet, a new point of force, A whole new field that gives the public room for imagination.
After Apple enters the automotive industry, will the new energy automobile industry change? The author believes that no, Apple has missed the peak period of the "new four modernizations" development wave, the new forces of naked swimming and deception have long been eliminated, some hindsight of the traditional car transformation is quite difficult, the situation in today's automobile market is very clear, the traditional car companies with strong strength have found a way to deal with it, the new forces of car manufacturing of the rising stars have gained a firm foothold, and consumers have adapted to today's market environment. In this context, there is a lot of pressure on Apple cars in the market in the future. Especially in the market within 500,000 yuan, a relatively stable situation has been formed, and the products are quite rich. The high-end luxury electric vehicle market is still a "blue ocean", if Apple is mainly attacking the high-end market, it will lose quite a lot of users. However, according to the routine of Apple products, after seizing the high-end electric vehicle market, there will definitely be products similar to the iPhone SE or iPhone 5C.
The era of software-defined cars has arrived, Apple as the world's well-known technology giant, its ecosystem and account system can be perfectly integrated into the car's intelligent system, do not need to seek software and hardware companies to produce their own car intelligent systems like traditional car companies. Further enriching the apple family barrel, this is one of the advantages of apple after making a car. As a very great company in human history, we also expect that the release of Apple Cars can be like the release of the iPhone released by Jobs in the past, sensationalizing the world and letting the world see what the future car looks like. If Apple Cars can really meet us in September 2022, according to Apple's current routine of releasing electronic products, debut and go public, then the Xiaomi car that is currently planned to be mass-produced in 2024 is not going to speed up! Also, who will you choose when the time comes?
Finally, attach the latest Apple car rendering, I believe we will get closer and closer to the truth!