The news about Apple's car-making plan has been released as early as 2014, and other smart cars that started in the same period have already begun to show their skills, but the ill-fated Apple Car has experienced a change of coach and a change of core figures in just five or six years, and the progress of the project is very difficult.
Recently, according to industry revelations, Apple has quietly disbanded the current Apple Car car business team. But that doesn't mean Apple has abandoned the auto business altogether, with the analysis calling it a goal of mass production by 2025, and the Apple auto project team needs to restructure within 3 to 6 months.
At Porsche's annual press conference, which had just come to an end, Porsche CEO Oliver Blume said that "exciting common projects" had been discussed with Apple.
The possibility of cooperation here being related to Apple's car project is not ruled out, but it is still at the level of functional expansion of Apple CarPlay. As for whether Porsche will participate in apple car projects, there is no exact news.
But in view of the fact that Apple has poached many executives and engineers from Porsche in recent years, Porsche not only does not remember but also repeatedly strengthens cooperation with Apple, the two companies do have a lot of "cat grease".
How close is Porsche's relationship with Apple?
Some people say that Carplay is for those car companies that do not do a good job of car machine system, no matter how difficult the original car machine is, as long as it is connected to Car Play, it seems that all problems have been solved, but Porsche obviously does not belong to this type of car company.
As we all know, the premise of using Carplay is that you have to have an Apple phone, but on the Porsche Taycan you can skip this step directly, and you can use other functions such as music playback, navigation, sending emails and text messages without the need for a mobile phone.
Taycan integrates Carplay with the car's infotainment system, including a native Apple Music app with time-synced lyrics, while Porsche will offer car owners three years of free in-car web roaming. As Porsche's first mass-produced pure electric model, the Taycan once surpassed the classic Porsche 911 last year' sales performance, and the cooperation with technology giant Apple can be described as a talented match.
Will Carplay be replaced by a smart cockpit?
Before the emergence of Carplay, it was a very luxurious thing to enjoy the central control car networking service, when the car navigation was not only poor in accuracy, but also charged a high service fee.
Therefore, the use of faster picture aging and more accurate mobile phone screen navigation has become a habit of most people. Slowly, people's subconscious came to a conclusion: "Mobile phone navigation must be better than car navigation." Until recent years, smart cockpits have become a hot spot, and car-machine systems are being linked to vehicle parameters and cloud data. Car play's advantages were gradually weakened.
The mobile phone interconnection mapping function led by Carplay usually only does three things: phone, navigation, and listening to music. Compared with the current powerful Huawei smart cockpit, it is vulnerable.
Since the progress of smart cars and machines has advanced by leaps and bounds, and there are more functions and better uses, should Carplay be abandoned? not necessarily! First of all, smart cars or smart cockpits currently correspond to high research and development and manufacturing costs, and their popularity is far less than that of models equipped with Car play. Especially in the period of chip shortage, Carplay, which only needs an LCD screen, solves the just needs of most people, and Carplay will not be replaced by smart cockpits in the short term.
What breakthroughs will Carplay have in the future?
Intelligent interaction and connected car technology are at the heart of the future automotive industry, and outsourcing to technology companies is tantamount to being stuck in the neck. Therefore, kicking Carplay out as early as possible has become the consensus of almost every car manufacturer. On the one hand, it is because individual manufacturers believe that the single-function Carplay has no advantage in front of their own car machines. On the other hand, it is probably due to the feeling of the potential threat that Carplay brings to the self-interest of car companies.
But Porsche opened the door for Apple to cooperate deeply, and believed that the philosophy of both sides was "the hero sees the same thing". From the Taycan can directly log in to the Apple ID, it is foreseeable that in the future, Carplay is likely to develop in the direction of taking over the control of the vehicle, controlling air conditioning, window, seat massage and other functions through Siri.
Can Apple Cars be a latecomer? Who would you support more than Huawei cars? Feel free to leave your opinion in the comments section!