Text/Feng You
When everyone thought that Apple's "car-making dream" had been shattered, a number of dynamics gave "Apple Car" another life.
On May 17, Bloomberg reported that in order to continue to promote the car-making project, Apple is considering acquiring the American electric vehicle startup Canoo, which has a research and development program similar to the latter's product.
But Apple doesn't value Canoo's underlying technology but talent assets. The startup's employees have expertise in automotive interiors and exteriors, software, automotive manufacturing, drivetrains, battery technology and other automotive components.
At the same time, Canoo's unique scalable electric vehicle platform has also aroused Apple's interest. The company's "skateboard platform" is enough to compress the development time of new models to 18 to 24 months, and the cycle of traditional car companies to develop a car is 3 to 5 years.
This is crucial for Apple to launch a mass-produced electric car as soon as possible.
In fact, since entering May, Apple's car-making plan has ushered in a number of developments. First, Bloomberg broke the news that Apple had recruited Desi Ujkashevic, an executive who had worked for Ford for 31 years; then it was rumored that Foxconn's parent company, Hon Hai Group, would be responsible for Apple's foundry business.
All kinds of signs make Apple's car-making plan seem to be "everything is ready, only owed to mass production." However, just 2 months ago, Guo Mingji, an analyst at Tianfeng Securities, revealed on social media that the Apple auto team had been disbanded for some time.
In addition, the news of the departure of the senior executives of its car-making team has also been heard endlessly. And a number of recent progress has undoubtedly added doubts to the already twisted and turning Apple car project.
The senior management team changes frequently
In fact, since Apple's car-making project "Titan" was exposed in 2014, Apple's road to car-making has not been smooth. In the past 8 years, its car-making project team has undergone several blood changes.
According to Bloomberg's MarkGurman report, in January this year, Joe Bass, the head of software engineering projects for Apple's automotive team, left and joined Meta. Previously, he had been working on the Apple car project for 7 years, and he was a veteran.
Although this is jokingly called the latest example of "car building has no meta-universe appeal". But for Apple, it may be another example of the poor progress of its car-making plans.
Since last year, three core members, Dave Scott, Jaime Waydo, Dave Rosenthal and Benjamin Lyon, have left, and Doug Field, who is in charge of the automotive team, has also left last year to join Ford Motor. After that, Michael Schwekutsch, who was in charge of apple project hardware, also left Apple.
It can be said that 6 of Apple's 13-person core team have left Apple last year. Meanwhile, two of Apple's top executives for the auto project also changed rounds in 2020-2021.
At the end of 2020, John Giannandrea, Apple's senior vice president of machine learning and AI strategy, was appointed head of automotive projects, and former director Bob Mansfield officially retired. John Giannandrea reported directly to Apple CEO Tim Cook, which shows that Apple still attaches great importance to the car-making plan.
In 2021, DougField, Apple's Titan project executive director, left, and Kevin Lynch, Apple's vice president of technology, took over his position as the "number one" in the execution of the car project.
Judging from KevinLynch's past experience, he initially served as the CTO of Adobe, and then the company he started was acquired by Adobe at a high price, and then entered the Apple Watch developed by Apple, whose experience has nothing to do with car building.
John Giannandrea and Kevin Lynch entered the Apple car team, which means that the highest-level supervisors of the car project have all been replaced.
For any company, frequent turnover of senior management teams has a great impact on R&D progress and efficiency.
Perhaps, this is one of the reasons why Apple has rarely achieved substantial results in making cars.
The technical route is wobbly
Behind the frequent personnel changes in the Apple car project team is the hesitation in the choice of Apple's car-making technology route, and Apple CEO Cook can not escape the blame.
Compared to former CEO Steve Jobs, Cook is more conservative and unwilling to take too many risks.
In 2014, Apple launched a car-making program code-named "Titan". Cook doesn't want the company to take the risk of opening up the auto market, and Apple's car-making projects are slow to progress. It was not until 2019 that Cook officially launched the car project.
And in the matter of car building, Cook seems to be in flux - he told Bloomberg in 2017 that autonomous driving is "the mother of all artificial intelligence projects" and "a core technology that we think is very important".
But by 2021, in an interview with sway, the U.S. tech podcast Sway, Cook, while still emphasizing the importance of autonomous driving, also said that Apple "likes to integrate hardware, software and services and find their intersections." Apple likes to have core technologies related to this... They've worked on a lot of products in-house, and while many of them haven't seen the light yet, that doesn't mean they won't be released. ”
At that time, new car-making forces and traditional car companies had launched a number of products, and the market share of pure electric vehicles was basically saturated.
Under normal circumstances, technology companies enter the automotive industry, there are two technical paths, one is to provide intelligent driving solutions to car companies; the other is to directly go down to build cars.
Cook is undecided in the choice of route and lacks some patience. Before 2018, the titan plan was mainly responsible for Mansfield, Apple route selection and Google similar, research and development of high-level assisted driving, to provide intelligent solutions for car companies, and applied for nearly a thousand related patents.
But compared to Google's subsidiary Waymo, Apple's road test data is far behind. In 2018, Apple's annual road test was 79,000 miles, and waymo reached 10 million miles.
In 2018, Apple poached Field from Tesla, who served as vice president of hardware research and development at Apple from 2003 to 2008. As self-driving research and development fell short of expectations, Apple laid off 300 automotive team engineers in 2019 and turned to vehicle design and manufacturing.
According to Cook's idea, the automotive business line is similar to the mobile smart terminal, designed by Apple, looking for traditional manufacturers for OEM. Some media reported that Hyundai Motor and Apple had previously contacted and cooperated to build cars, but Hyundai Motor gave a rumor. Some Hyundai executives believe that the cooperation between Hyundai and Apple should retain more autonomy and be able to achieve some technology sharing, such as Apple's intelligent assisted driving should also export technology to Hyundai's own products. If it is simply OEM for Apple, it will be reduced to a second "Foxconn".
Industry insiders believe that Hyundai Kia, as the world's leading car company, engine, gearbox and chassis and other fields, Hyundai has mastered the core technology, but also reflects the strong ability of independent research and development, simply reduced to a foundry, Hyundai is certainly unwilling.
It is worth noting that Tesla CEO Musk once shared on his personal social account that in the darkest days of the Model 3 development process, he tried to contact Apple CEO Cook to discuss the possibility of making Apple buy for $60 billion, but Cook did not accept to meet with him.
At present, Apple under the guidance of Cook has not gone well in the car-making route, and it has also provided some reference value for other technology companies that have made cars. Software-defined cars make it possible for tech companies to enter the car. On the one hand, technology companies need to cooperate with traditional car companies to learn from existing technologies; on the other hand, traditional car companies generally believe that the biggest opponents in the future come from the technology industry, which means that both sides will eventually become rivals.
Note: Some of the materials come from the Observer Network, Che Dongxi, The Daily Economic News, and the Securities Times
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