There are still any surprises in the unfinished Apple car?

Apple's car-making plan can be said to be the automotive industry's 500-episode series "Unforgettable".

Two months ago, the well-known analyst Guo Mingxi broke the news that Apple's car was suspended and the team was disbanded; two months later, Apple's car had new news.

According to foreign media reports on May 3, Desi Ujkashevic, a senior executive in charge of safety and vehicle engineering at Ford, officially joined Apple Cars, and Apple's car that had cooled down for a while was "alive" again.

Since the announcement of the Titan Plan in 2014, Apple's car-making plan has experienced 8 years. In 8 years, the owner changed hands 5 degrees, and there were several ups and downs. From the embryonic period of electric vehicles in 2014 to the beginning of the outbreak of electric vehicles today, Apple's cars are still in the bud. Some say it's because of internal conflicts and leadership struggles, some say it's because of the uncertainty of product positioning, some say it's Apple's deliberate control of the rhythm...

The real reason for the slow progress of Apple's car manufacturing is unknown, but the addition of new executives has broken the previous rumors of Apple's car shutdown to some extent. And what this experienced senior engineer has may be exactly what is urgently needed for the landing of Apple's car-making plan.

In 2021, Doug Field, the titan's former project executive director, left the company, and Kevin Lynch, apple's head of watch and health software, led the car project, and the "lack of car background" has become one of the reasons why some people have sung about the landing of Apple's car-making program.

As Ford's former director of global automotive safety engineering, Ukaszevic has worked at Ford since 1991, where he has been responsible for the interior, exterior, chassis and electronic components of various models, participated in the development of Ford's new electric vehicles, and has extensive experience in dealing with regulatory issues, which can help Apple overcome the regulatory hurdles faced by testing self-driving prototypes on public roads.

With the infusion of fresh power, there are more speculations about Apple cars.

Apple Cars: "Blind Man Touching the Car"

Although the Titan program has gone through 8 years, and everyone even knows the people of the team executives, Apple has never officially reported the progress of car building, everything is in everyone's imagination: spherical wheels? A body as round as a mouse? Angular shape like Cybertruck? No windows? A fully autonomous car without a steering wheel and foot pedals?

These fragments speculated through patents or whistleblowers only a few words, let everyone like a blind elephant, a little bit trying to piece together the appearance of AppleCar. Recently, new "fragments" have come again.

01

"$100,000 high-end electric model,

Benchmarking Model S"

According to industry sources, Apple does not plan to launch affordable electric vehicles, and plans to position AppleCar in the high-end electric vehicle market that costs more than $100,000 to compete with Tesla's Model S.

Judging from Apple's products in the past, whether it is a computer, a mobile phone, or a headset or a watch, the "affordable route" is not Apple's first choice. Even if the affordable version of the iPhone SE series has been launched in the past two years, it is also an attempt to further broaden the market after the growth of the original mobile phone market has stabilized. Therefore, for Apple's first car, it is reasonable to focus on the high-end electric vehicle route.

We often question whether Apple's car is too procrastinating, and whether it is too late for a car to be launched until 2025. It seems that it is not too late for Apple cars to be launched in 2025.

Different from the highly competitive low-end electric vehicle market at this stage, the price point of more than $100,000 that Apple aims at is not a fiercely competitive range in both the current US market and the domestic market. Tesla Model S, along with the United States Lucid, BBA and several other traditional luxury brands of electric vehicle models, are Apple's future opponents. In addition to the Model S, which has been on the market for nearly a decade, several others have not "rushed to run" for too long, and 2025 is also the time node for many traditional car companies to launch the next generation of flagship electric models.

At the same time, compared with the mid-range intelligent electric vehicle market of intelligent software and hardware "close combat" at this stage, for models of more than 100,000 US dollars, the polishing of experience details and the portrayal of brand genes may be more important.

02

"The body or a lot of high-end titanium"?

According to the news, Apple Cars may use a large number of high-end titanium metals in the body in the future.

The large-scale use of titanium alloys on the body of the car has not been seen in the previous mass production cars. Titanium alloy, a light weight, high specific strength, strong heat resistance of the metal, although conducive to the lightweight of the body, but the price is not cheap, is not conducive to the processing of complex processes.

Therefore, it was only seen on small parts such as engines, exhaust valves, and brake calipers. Or, use titanium on the body of the $60 million limited-edition volcano Titanium.

Therefore, if Apple wants to use titanium alloy on its own body on a large scale, has it solved the cost problem of titanium alloy raw materials? Or is there any reason why it has to be used?

03

The iPhone incarnates as a car key

Another rumor about AppleCar fragmentation is the transformation of the iPhone into a car key, enabling keyless entry. This is not a function from scratch, as early as last year, the BMW 5 Series has been equipped with Apple's CarKey function, supporting keyless entry, and some models of Genissys and Kia also support The CarKey function. For Apple's own car, what reason is there not to use this feature?

04

autonomous driving,

The highlight of the first AppleCar?

Autonomous driving can be said to be the focus of the industry at present, but also the focus of apple titan plan since the announcement, around the automatic driving system, Apple is creating a series of software and hardware ecology, including vehicle-level automatic driving chips, it is said that it is composed of neural processors capable of handling the requirements of artificial intelligence for autonomous driving, chips may require complex internal cooling systems when power consumption is high.

Because of this, "self-driving cars without steering wheels and no brake pedals" have also become everyone's imagination for Apple cars.

However, the progress of research and development on autonomous driving is far slower than imagined. Cook once said: Apple regards autonomous driving as the mother of all artificial intelligence projects, and it is also one of the most difficult projects in practical work. This can also be seen in the road test.

Since 2017, Apple has been testing self-driving cars on california's public roads. According to the 2021 autonomous driving mileage and takeover data released by the California Transportation Authority DMV, Apple participated in the test fleet of 35 vehicles in 2021, with an average takeover mileage of only 20 miles. Compared to the self-driving players we are familiar with, Such as Waymo and Cruise, this number is not ideal.

Therefore, for Apple Cars, which will meet in 2025, it is not realistic to play fully autonomous driving as a trump card for flipping the table on the first model.

Can Apple's foundry model continue in the car?

Along with the progress of Apple's car manufacturing, it is the conjecture of Apple's car OEM.

In mobile phones and other consumer electronics, Apple has always adopted the asset-light model of OEM. At the same time, the two important companies on the fruit chain, Foxconn and Luxun Precision, have also intensified this speculation.

On May 4, it was revealed that Apple is likely to entrust Hon Hai (Foxconn's parent company) to be responsible for the assembly and production of its cars, in 2025 or even at the end of 2024. The rumors of Hon Hai Group's OEM have been pushed to the cusp of the storm.

Compared with whether Apple will choose Hon Hai Group OEM, I am more concerned about whether the FOUNDC model that Apple is skilled in the field of consumer electronics is still feasible in the automotive field.

In the field of electric vehicles, OEM is not a new product. The early Xiaopeng and Haima, Weilai and Jacques, all lowered the threshold for new electric vehicle players to enter to a certain extent. However, now this oem cooperation model seems to have changed, Xiaopeng ended the OEM cooperation with Haima and chose to build its own factory; Weilai and Jianghuai set up a joint venture company, deepening the binding between the two sides.

At this stage, electric vehicles are in the stage of large-scale research and development, the product standards are not completely unified, and the core data between various car companies is still confidential, which makes the foundry of intelligent electric vehicles need to be bound with deeper cooperation, not just one hand to hand technology, one hand to hand products.

Therefore, no matter who the OEM of Apple Cars spends in the future, this cooperative relationship may be closer than the OEM cooperation of iPhone and iPad.

At last

Perhaps today's smart cars can not meet everyone's imagination, or perhaps Apple's previous subversive industry attributes are too distinct, since the "Titan Project" was exposed so far, Apple has been regarded by many peers in the industry as a player who "redefines smart cars".

Whether it is for the outside world or Apple itself, this high expectation limits the progress of Apple cars to a certain extent. It's not even clear what kind of car Apple wants to build.

I don't know how many "to be continue..." will be waited to see what Apple's car looks like.