Apple, which has a market value of more than 15 trillion yuan, is too difficult to build a car.
A breaking news has pushed the Apple car project to the forefront. On March 15, Tianfeng International analyst Guo Mingxi broke the news: Apple's auto project team has been disbanded for some time. Subsequently, the discussion about Apple's car "to be yellow" sounded one after another.
In fact, the dissolution of Apple's car-making project has long been a sign. Because, before, Apple's car-making team has been in a state of turmoil, in the past 7 years, there have been frequent "personnel earthquakes", 4 of the leaders of Apple's car-making project have left, and hundreds of engineers have left the project.
After a series of difficult twists and turns, Apple's ambition to build a car is being exhausted little by little.
In the era of vigorous smart phones and mobile Internet, Apple is undoubtedly the biggest winner, but when the new wave of the times comes, Apple is most afraid of becoming the "Nokia" of the next era.
Apple car "to yellow"?
The "Apple electric car" that once sensationalized the automotive industry has once again brought bad news.
On March 15, local time in the United States, Tianfeng International analyst Guo Mingxi broke the news: Apple's auto project team has been disbanded for a period of time, and if it wants to achieve the goal of mass production before 2025, Apple must re-establish the automotive project team in the next 3-6 months.
This revelation has made the apple car-making project, which has been quiet for a long time, once again become the focus of hot discussion, and the voices about apple-made cars "wanting yellow" have also risen and fallen.
It should be noted that Guo Mingxi, an analyst at Tianfeng International who broke the news this time, has long been deeply involved in the field of science and technology, and Apple has always been the focus of its tracking research. Prior to this, Guo Mingxi's forward-looking forecast analysis of the Apple industry chain has almost been confirmed, so his exposure to Apple is highly recognized by the market.
Apple's car-making program began as early as 2014, when Apple launched Project Titan, where more than 1,000 automotive experts and engineers developed electric cars at a secret location near Apple's Cupertino headquarters.
In the next 8 years, Apple's car-making project was very bumpy, and even fell into a pause, trying to turn to the research and development of automatic driving software, and after internal debate, it re-included car-building as a target.
Now, with the dissolution of the car-making team, Apple's car-making plan seems to have once again become an embarrassing farce.
A car-building farce
In fact, Apple's car-making team has always been in a state of turmoil, and the senior management team has frequently exploded "personnel earthquakes".
At the end of 2021, The head of Apple's car-making project, Pipe Gerfield, abruptly resigned and will move to Ford motor vehicles as chief director of advanced technology and embedded systems.
The sudden resignation of the person in charge gave Apple a heavy blow to the car-making plan. At that time, Apple's automotive team urgently held a meeting of all employees, at which Apple executives said that they would reorganize Apple's auto division, but would not lay off employees.
According to public information, Pipe Ge Field has had 3 working experiences at Apple, during which he also jumped to Tesla as a senior vice president and head of engineering.
At the first time that key people resigned, there was speculation in the industry that Apple might stop the research and development of car projects.
In fact, the departure of Pipe Ge Field is only the tip of the iceberg of the "personnel earthquake" of apple car-making team. In the past 7 years, 4 of the leaders of Apple's car projects have voluntarily left, and in the second half of 2021, the team has lost 3 executives in a row, all of which are the top managers of Apple Cars, and in the years after 2016, hundreds of engineers have left apple car projects.
Some analysts said that the reason behind the turmoil of Apple's car-making team may be that Apple's car-making project is difficult to progress, and the strategic aspect is wavering, compared with other electric vehicle players, Apple's car-making has been in a backward stage.
Since Apple launched its car-making program, the strategic aspect has been oscillating between "autonomous driving soft technology" and "production of complete vehicles".
According to US media reports, by 2020, Apple's self-driving project has accumulated only 19,000 miles, while In the same period, Google's self-driving project Waymo has accumulated 630,000 miles.
In February this year, the test report disclosed by the California DMV showed that Apple's total mileage of self-driving test ranked 14, and the MPD (average mileage per departure) was 20.02 miles (about 32km), ranking 22nd, and the gap with head players such as Waymo, Cruise, and Xiaoma Zhixing was very large, and it was no longer at the same level.
At the same time, Apple's progress in vehicle manufacturing has frequently reached an impasse. It has discussed joint development and production agreements with bmw, Hyundai, Nissan and Toyota, but has not made substantial progress, and finally had no choice but to move to fully autonomous production, which undoubtedly increased the difficulty of the project, and no prototype has yet been released.
There is not much time left for Apple
At present, the global smartphone market is becoming increasingly saturated, the growth of market size is slowing down, and the dividends of the mobile Internet era are almost exhausted.
What makes Apple even more nervous is that policies in countries around the world are tightening. Among them, Apple's core income - "apple tax" is the focus of government sanctions. Courts in Europe, the United States and other countries ruled in 2021 that the rules for the "apple tax" must be changed.
According to the data, apple stores once had sales of more than $64 billion in 2020, and if the percentage of 30% is followed, the "Apple tax" revenue that year may reach $19.2 billion. Once severely restricted, it will have a big impact on Apple's operating performance.
Based on this sense of crisis, Apple is very eager to embrace the era of smart cars, so it gave birth to the "car dream". Apple CEO Tim Cook has said he hopes people can "enjoy an iPhone-like experience in the car" and make life outside and inside the car seamless.
Subsequently, Apple began to invest heavily in car-making projects, and also achieved a certain accumulation in technology patents. According to the statistics of the US media, between 2017 and 2021, Apple has obtained more than 100 car patents, covering autonomous driving, charging, on-board systems, body structure optimization and other aspects. Among them, the proportion of intelligent driving has risen from 22% in 2016 to 41% in 2020; the proportion of vehicle hardware innovation patents has increased from 11% in 2016 to 37% in 2020.
During this time, the focus of Apple's car manufacturing seems to be on the software side, but from 2021, the strategic direction of Apple's car manufacturing seems to have wavered.
By combing through the dynamics of Apple's car manufacturing since 2021, Apple seems to be interested in the direction of "manufacturing vehicles".
In January 2021, Apple contacted Hyundai Group to produce self-driving electric vehicles in Georgia, with a target annual production of 100,000 vehicles by 2024; in February 2021, Apple once again negotiated with Hyundai Group to try to produce cars in cooperation with Hyundai sub-brand Kia.
According to a number of executives who left the company, Apple's car project has not been a clear direction of progress, the strategic focus has changed frequently, and the project has been very difficult to advance.
In this way, the dissolution of Apple's car-making project seems to be an inevitable result, and whether Apple will re-establish a team to enter the car-making camp in the future is still inconclusive, but the time left for Apple is running out.