Who says Apple cars are going to be yellow?

Wen 丨 wisdom driving network Huang Huadan

If it weren't for the title of "Apple", the "Titan Project" might have become a joke long ago.

Similarly, if it were not for the idol baggage of "Apple", Apple cars might have gone on the market in the morning.

From Jobs's dream iCar, to the launch of the Titans Program in 2014, to the person in charge who came and went later, the team gathered and scattered, scattered and gathered. Apple's car has never been officially announced, but it seems to have been tugging at the hearts of viewers.

Recently, it has been reported that Apple Cars will still be released in 2025 or the end of 2024 as originally planned, and its assembly and production FOUNDRies will be responsible for Hon Hai Group, that is, the parent company of Apple OEM Foxconn. Whistleblowers also expect Apple cars to sell for around $100,000.

In March, Guo Mingxi, an analyst at Tianfeng International, broke the news on Twitter that Apple had disbanded the car-making team, and public opinion was in decline. But Guo also said that if it wants to achieve mass production in 2025, Apple needs to reorganize the team within 3-6 months.

The recent news seems to partially confirm Guo Mingxi's revelations at that time.

On May 3, Bloomberg reported that Apple would hire Desi Ujkashevic, a female executive who has been with Ford for 31 years. But Apple officials did not respond to this, just as its car-making plan, although it is an open secret, has never been officially certified. Ford, for its part, said Desi had previously retired from the company.

Desi's role at Ford is responsible for automotive safety and compliance, including safety and compliance for autonomous vehicles. Fortune magazine quoted an industry insider who knew Desi as saying: "You can't imagine how much work it takes to get a car to comply with different regulations around the world. ”

"So you need people from the auto industry to do these things for you, and I think they're asking her for that."

Although Desi's specific role at Apple has not yet been revealed, first of all, Apple's latest senior appointment at least shows that Apple's car-making project is still advancing.

Previously, Apple had a disagreement within whether to focus on self-driving software or build the whole car. Desi's resume also shows from the side that Apple will launch its own vehicle and is already ready to be introduced to the market.

We have always believed that as the world's highest market capitalization and the least bad money company, in this era when car manufacturing has almost become the most dynamic industry, Apple has no reason not to build cars. Moreover, the current mobile phone market has undergone many rounds of reshuffling, even if it is as powerful as Apple, it is also facing the dilemma of business stagnation, and the new car has just begun.

All that's left is, what kind of car to build, and how to achieve it?

What kind of car does Apple want to build?

Regarding the vehicle manufacturing route, there are also differences within Apple: whether to build a car with limited automatic driving capabilities, that is, a car in the same form as most cars at present, or to build a car that can achieve fully autonomous driving?

Here again, it is proved that Apple is indeed very entangled in choosing a car-making route.

After several pulls, at least for now, Apple's choice is to build a car that truly has fully autonomous driving capabilities and does not require human intervention.

If we use what we often call the classification definition, it is L4 to L5 autonomous vehicles, and mass production will be achieved in 2025.

Even for Apple, this is an ambitious goal.

After all, Tesla's FSD fully autonomous driving capability, which Tesla has been shouting for so long, is currently only L2 level assisted driving, and it is still in the testing stage.

Companies that are committed to developing L4-level autonomous driving technology, such as Waymo, Cruise, and domestic companies such as Baidu and Xiaoma, are still a long way from truly landing.

At the policy level, only One German Mercedes-Benz is really realizing the L3 level of the vehicle company.

But as a well-deserved technology giant, Apple has obviously lagged behind in the car-making business. Now, if it wants to bring a groundbreaking breakthrough to the industry like its mobile phone business, Apple's choice is only one step to achieve fully autonomous vehicles.

According to a Bloomberg report at the end of 2021, Apple's ideal car form is without steering wheels and control pedals, and the interior design is also based on the premise of driverless. The Interior of the Canoo-like Lifstyle Vehicle was allegedly discussed inside Apple.

Canoo's Lifstyle Vehicle

From a regulatory point of view, this form is currently achievable in the United States.

In March, the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration (NHTSA) issued a final rule that automakers no longer need to equip fully autonomous vehicles with manual driving control systems to meet crash standards. That is, autonomous vehicles can no longer be equipped with manual control systems such as steering wheels and pedals.

Of course, there are also many speculations about the shape of Apple's car on the Internet, all of which are full of future style.

In the design of the in-vehicle infotainment system, one possible setting is to set up the center of the cabin such as the touch screen of the enlarged version of the iPad, which can be operated and used by passengers throughout the vehicle during the drive. Moreover, Apple cars will also be highly integrated with their existing equipment.

In addition, to ensure safety, while Apple expects to achieve a car without a steering wheel, it may still set up a takeover mode in case of emergency.

The challenge for Apple

To achieve mass production of fully autonomous vehicles, apple needs to solve the problem on the one hand to complete the development of autonomous driving technology, on the other hand, the production of vehicles.

In 2017, Apple received permission from the California Traffic Authority (DMV) to test its self-driving cars on California's public roads. According to DMV 2021 data, Apple has a total of 37 test vehicles and a test mileage of 13,272 miles. Compared with Waymo's 693 vehicles, 2325842.90 miles, it can be said that it is far behind.

Moreover, Apple had 72 registered test vehicles in 2018, but since then it has decreased year by year. This also can't help but put a question mark on Apple's self-driving technology.

Apple's goal is to surpass Tesla and Waymo in terms of security, which means that a lot of system redundancy is required to ensure that there is a backup system to ensure safety in the event of partial failure. Of course, this also increases the difficulty of development.

In this regard, it makes sense for Apple to hire Desi, who is experienced in vehicle safety. Jaime Waydo from Waymo was previously in charge of this, but the latter left last year.

In terms of vehicle production, it is generally believed that Apple will still adopt the OEM model. Previously, a number of traditional car companies said that they had contacted Apple. Including BMW, Toyota, Hyundai, Nissan, Volkswagen, etc., even Porsche has had close contacts with Apple.

But because Apple is looking for traditional car companies with a century-old heritage, the two sides are equally strong, which often means a strategic dispute that is difficult to reconcile. Moreover, car companies are tired of making promises to technology companies, not to mention, it is said that Apple has high requirements for profit sharing.

Recent revelations say that Apple Cars may be manufactured by Foxconn's parent company Hon Hai Group. This is also a good choice for both parties who have been working together for many years.

But if Guo Mingxi's revelations in March are true, and Apple's car-making team has undergone a dissolution, it is likely that there has been another internal route battle.

Combined with the follow-up news, if Apple still plans to achieve mass production in 2025, then there are two possibilities:

First, Apple has achieved the research and development of fully autonomous vehicles and mass-produced and listed them on schedule, which of course everyone is happy;

The second is that Apple temporarily abandons the fully autonomous driving route, first builds a car with limited automatic driving capabilities, at least has an explanation for the pit that has been dug for many years.

▲ Kevin Lynch

Since the project was launched in 2014, the head of the Titan program has changed five times. The new Kevin Lynch, the former head of software for the Apple Watch, left Apple for Ford last year.

And in 2018, when Doug Field came to Apple from Tesla, it brought hope. Today, the future of the project is still uncertain, but the team has changed hands.

Apple's road to car building is indeed not without bumps. It can only be said that Apple's ambitions are admirable.

Of course, we are very much looking forward to Apple coming up with a real fully autonomous vehicle as scheduled. This is definitely another big breakthrough in human history.

And if Apple can really achieve mass production of fully autonomous vehicles in 2025, then the estimated price of $100,000 is not expensive.

In 2007, the first generation of iPhones sold for $499-599 when they were listed, and the most accepted mobile phone price in China was around a thousand. At the exchange rate at the time, the spread of almost 3-4 times to buy a mobile phone that subverted cognition.

Today, the price of the basic model with high popularity is around 150,000, and according to the estimated price difference, Apple Cars will also have almost four times the difference. But know, it's going to be a self-driving car that doesn't need any human control at all.

Compared with the horizontal comparison, the current price of Tesla Model 3 is 260,988-367,900, plus the FSD optional price of 64,000, which has also reached the 400,000 level. At present, FSD is still a beta version, and if the fully autonomous driving capability is truly realized as Musk said, its price is bound to rise again.

But as mentioned earlier, there is no official confirmation, everything is just speculation.

Apple car patent

The only thing that left written evidence was Apple's patent.

Apple is known to love to apply for patents. Patently Apple shows that 123 patents have been linked to the Titan program.

A recent patent is related to the navigation system of self-driving cars, which fine-tune the final destination. Apple believes that vehicles that can sense the environment and navigate to their destination without continuous occupant input or with fewer inputs can be called autonomous or driverless vehicles.

Apple's vehicle-related patents cover multiple aspects. Here we will list a few items.

In a 2018 patent, Apple proposed that the self-driving system could adjust its behavior according to the stress levels of the passengers in the car. If pressure is detected, the system may switch to a slower speed or turn at a slower speed.

The Confidence system can help reduce the resources required to process massive amounts of data from in-vehicle sensors, and if it doesn't think it needs to process data beyond the lowest level, it can reduce what it processes. In addition to saving resources, this will also help speed up the decision-making process.

The use of VR and AR is also an important element. This includes the use of a projection system on the windshield to display an AR view of the road, including elements outside the user's field of view, such as the intended path that the autopilot system intends to choose.

These patents prove to some extent Apple's strength and determination in building cars. Of course, many details were considered last week, which also made people look forward to the future of technology.

Cell phone companies that don't want to build cars are not good tech companies

Cross-border car building by mobile phone companies seems to be nothing new.

In addition to Apple, Sony, Huawei, Xiaomi, Meizu and other companies have also entered the pit. The reason, as mentioned above, is that on the one hand, the mobile phone industry has undergone many rounds of reshuffling, and it is almost difficult to achieve a major breakthrough. The fight for automobiles, especially new energy vehicles, has just begun, the pattern is undecided, and there is still a lot of room for development. At the same time, the huge automobile market also has considerable room for interest.

On the other hand, the refinement of the industrial division of labor, coupled with the emergence of products such as skateboard chassis and the popularity of "software-defined cars", the decoupling of soft and hard has also reduced the threshold of car manufacturing to a certain extent. Most mobile phone companies are more of a technology company and have their own technical reserves.

Of course, for Apple Cars, which wants to build a fully autonomous car at once, the threshold for building a car is only high.

In turn, there are also some car manufacturers who claim to enter the mobile phone market. For example, Geely, such as Tesla. For car companies, at the same time, taking down the mobile phone terminal is more to create an ecological closed loop for their users, from the car machine to the mobile phone, to complete the integration of the entire system.

In summary, we never think that Apple's car is yellow.

But the difficulties it faces are indeed not to be underestimated. From the beginning of the route swing, to now, if the speculation is correct, it is to achieve the ambitious goal of mass production of fully autonomous vehicles by 2025. Once successful, the future of self-driving cars, as in the American drama Upload, is not far off.

Incidentally, Upload is set in the 2030s, and it's really not that far from where it is today. The self-driving car in the play comes from Google. That is, Waymo.

In the end, who will take the lead in achieving mass production of fully autonomous vehicles is worth looking forward to.