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Wilder than anyone! Apple makes cars, old horses make mobile phones

Wilder than anyone! Apple makes cars, old horses make mobile phones

▍ Salt Finance

Author | Leap forward

Edit | A knife

This year, the story of PPT car manufacturing has been heard a lot, and it is not accustomed to seeing companies with brand influence like Apple that are hiding and hesitating in car building.

Some time ago, Apple was exposed that car executives have left one after another, the car-making plan is cool, and recently there is news that Apple has not actually given up building cars. At the same time, Musk also launched a plan to build a mobile phone.

Wilder than anyone! Apple makes cars, old horses make mobile phones

Tesla mobile phone concept rendering

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Recently, according to Bloomberg, Desi Ujkashevic, an engineer who has worked for Ford for a long time, has left the company and chosen to join Apple to work on apple car projects.

Wilder than anyone! Apple makes cars, old horses make mobile phones

Although Ujkashevic

Desi Ujkashevic first joined Ford in 1991 as global director of Ford's Automotive Safety Engineering Office, specializing in safety systems, engineering design delivery, and interior engineering.

In addition, the well-known whistleblower Leaks ApplePro said that Apple's car development project is in full swing, and Apple is likely to entrust Taiwan's Hon Hai Group (Foxconn) to be responsible for the assembly and production of its car, while the release of Apple's car will still be in 2025 or even the end of 2024.

According to the report, the positioning of Apple's car is very high-end. Industry insiders said that Apple will not launch a mass-market electric vehicle, and its electric vehicle positioning will be a high-end market of $100,000 (about 660,000 yuan) and above, competing with Tesla's Model S for the market.

Considering Apple's influence on a global scale, it is bound to bring certain pressure to other new power car companies, and they need to have a certain ability to resist blows and impacts before Apple's shock wave arrives.

Web transmission of Apple Car renderings

Li Bin, founder, chairman and CEO of Weilai, once talked about the impact of consumer electronics companies such as Apple in a talk show.

In his view, if Apple successfully launches a car, it will definitely be positioned in the mainstream high-end market, and under the influence of Apple's user ecology and brand power, Apple's cars will have strong competitiveness.

Musk also made it clear that Tesla's biggest competitor in the future is not Google, but Apple.

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The market has expectations, and competitors feel like they are on the verge of a big enemy, but this "iCar" is missing.

Some time ago, the famous analyst Guo Mingji broke the news on his personal Twitter, saying that Apple's staff team responsible for the long-rumored Apple Car project had been disbanded for some time, and the market once reported that Apple had given up building cars.

Wilder than anyone! Apple makes cars, old horses make mobile phones

Guo Mingxi said that if Apple wants to achieve mass production targets in 2025, team restructuring within 3 to 6 months is a necessary condition

As early as 2014, Apple set up an automobile research and development center and launched a car-making plan, which is code-named "Titan Project" to focus on the development of driverless intelligent cars.

But eight years on, Apple hasn't built a single car. For Apple, building a car is not a difficult task, and funds are not a problem, and it can fully bear the risk of "burning money".

Morgan Stanley analyst Katy Huberty has analyzed that Apple invested nearly $19 billion in car research and development in 2019, which is a huge number in the automotive field.

In fact, although Apple's research and development has been going on, including autonomous driving, batteries, and software systems, there has been no clear direction for the automotive business - is it to build a complete self-driving car, or is it just focusing on software technology research and development?

Wilder than anyone! Apple makes cars, old horses make mobile phones

The driverless car running all over the streets in the American drama "Westworld"

In 2017, Cook spoke publicly and rarely about Apple's progress in self-driving software, "We're focused on self-driving systems. We see it as a very important core technology, and we even think of self-driving technology as the 'mother' of all AI projects. This system is probably one of the hardest AI projects we've ever developed. ”

In August 2018, there were rumors in the market that Apple might once again explore the idea of developing a fully branded vehicle.

According to Japan's "Nikkei Shimbun", Apple has negotiated with at least 6 car manufacturers for its car-making plan, but these car manufacturers have all refused to cooperate with Apple without exception.

One of the biggest reasons is that Apple demands absolute dominance in the negotiations, and car companies that cooperate with Apple in OEM cannot access core technologies.

It can be seen that no car company wants to become the next "Foxconn".

In the latest disclosed quarterly report, Apple's revenue in the second quarter will be affected by the new crown pneumonia epidemic year-on-year, and the severity may reach 4 billion to 8 billion US dollars.

Cook said he could not stand alone during the COVID-19 pandemic, supply chain disruption and the Russo-Ukrainian war.

Apple's mobile phone business has limited room for growth, and the new energy automobile industry is still in a stage of rapid growth, and it is not too late for Apple to decide to enter at this time. But Apple's ambitions to build cars need to be further stimulated.

In contrast, the pace of Xiaomi's car construction, which is also a mobile phone manufacturer, has accelerated a lot. It is understood that the first model of Xiaomi car is positioned as a high-end model, priced at between 100,000 and 300,000 yuan, and it is expected to achieve mass production of the first car in 2024.

Wilder than anyone! Apple makes cars, old horses make mobile phones

Lei Jun, known as "Rebbs", his idol is Apple founder Jobs. This time, the idol's company is still hesitating, and he has already done it vigorously.

Recently, it was reported that Musk also officially launched a mobile phone research and development plan, and he placed a tweet to recruit mobile phone experts to work in his company.

The scuffle of Apple Cars, Tesla phones, and tech giants is really getting more and more exciting.

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