[HN Gopher] Apple dials back car's self-driving features and del...
___________________________________________________________________
Apple dials back car's self-driving features and delays launch to
2028
Author : mfiguiere
Score : 151 points
Date : 2024-01-23 18:53 UTC (4 hours ago)
(HTM) web link (www.bloomberg.com)
(TXT) w3m dump (www.bloomberg.com)
| kogus wrote:
| I once again am reminded of this bet:
|
| https://blog.codinghorror.com/the-2030-self-driving-car-bet/
| Alupis wrote:
| It's really interesting to see Carmack take such risky
| positions, such as betting FSD Level 5 by 2030 along with his
| all-in bet on VR. The VR thing didn't go nearly as well as he
| had hoped... and I suspect, like VR, the FSD thing will also
| not come to fruition due to it's grossly underestimated
| difficulty.
| bombcar wrote:
| Carmack is not a poor man, so a $10k bet or two (for charity,
| mind you) is more of a friendly wager than a make/break
| gamble.
|
| And he's clearly been optimistic most his life, and it's paid
| off a number of times.
|
| And self-driving has progressed further and faster than _I_
| have thought it would, though I don 't think we'll get Level
| 5 by 2030.
| Alupis wrote:
| > Carmack is not a poor man, so a $10k bet or two (for
| charity, mind you) is more of a friendly wager than a
| make/break gamble.
|
| The point was he seems to consistently grossly
| underestimate the difficulty of problems outside of his
| domain expertise.
| ephemeral-life wrote:
| The two examples were self driving and VR.
|
| > The point was he seems to consistently grossly
| underestimate the difficulty of problems outside of his
| domain expertise.
|
| Carmack made 3d games and game engines. I don't think VR
| was outside his domain of expertise.
|
| And for the self driving one, that bet is still on
| bombcar wrote:
| He also tried (is trying?) rockets.
| paulproteus wrote:
| Personally I think VR is outside the domain of expertise
| of 3D games and game engines. To think that VR is within
| that domain is exactly the error -- VR as an overall
| product requires different consumer behavior than buying
| a game for a PC you already have. It requires buying a
| new kind of device or buying into a whole new form of
| interaction. It requires remembering to use that device
| and think about what games you have for it. It requires
| engineers to ship high FPS and low lag to prevent nausea
| to a degree unheard of for PC gaming.
|
| Facebook's VR plan seems to hinge on being "even more
| ubiquitous than mobile"
| <https://officechai.com/learn/mark-zuckerbergs-email-
| explaini...>, which is a level of constant use that 3D
| games don't really have.
|
| I am not a VR or 3D game expert, but even I can list
| other key differences. I bet you can too if you try. I
| think those are reasons to think VR is not really the
| same domain. I am curious what you think.
| emmo wrote:
| With the amount of time he's put into VR over the last
| decade I think it's fair to say he's as much an expert as
| anyone else at this point.
| Alupis wrote:
| He became expert in the domain enough to decide to walk
| away...
|
| He's now working on a startup in the AGI field, which
| will also probably go nowhere for him.
|
| He gets to work on things that excite him - what a place
| to be in life. We can all envy that - but he's not very
| good at gauging problems and consistently underestimates
| their difficulty/time-to-market.
| Philpax wrote:
| While I mostly agree that the hardware and UX challenges
| are mostly out of his domain,
|
| > It requires engineers to ship high FPS and low lag to
| prevent nausea to a degree unheard of for PC gaming.
|
| This is very much Carmack's speciality, and why his focus
| was on making mobile VR happen [0]. There are very few
| people who can outperform him at that, and most of them
| worked for Oculus :-)
|
| [0]: https://www.gamedeveloper.com/design/q-a-carmack-
| reveals-the... (this predates the Quest, but it should
| give you an idea of the problems he was tackling)
| paulproteus wrote:
| Fair enough. I think the UX challenges are tougher than
| FPS, and secondarily the hardware challenges are also
| tougher than FPS, so I probably should have omitted the
| FPS mention in my comment to keep things focused. :D
| manmal wrote:
| He actually wrote the Netflix VR app for Oculus, and
| wrote a really detailed post on it:
| https://netflixtechblog.com/john-carmack-on-developing-
| the-n...
|
| VR is not _at all_ outside his domain expertise.
| Alupis wrote:
| The issue with VR is that it almost entirely doesn't
| require his type of expertise for it to succeed. It's
| almost entirely a hardware problem, in terms of cost,
| wearability/usability, quality, along with the other
| issues like nausea etc. None of which Carmack's vast
| expertise lends itself towards. Writing an app for
| Netflix isn't exactly using his skills.
|
| We see this often with engineering types, many of us
| included. Vastly underestimating difficulty of
| challenging problems and naively believe they're simple
| to solve.
| enragedcacti wrote:
| I would argue its mostly a hardware problem because lots
| of engineers, including Carmack, have already explored
| and solved a ton of the hard software problems e.g. https
| ://web.archive.org/web/20140719085135/http://altdev.co/..
| .
| ZiiS wrote:
| No one who correctly estimates the difficulty of writhing
| a game engine would ever start. Some things require
| optimism.
| canes123456 wrote:
| I am a self driving skeptic but seems like a good bet for
| Carmack. I would expect Waymo to open up to consumers before
| 2030 in SF, even if more expensive and take way longer than a
| normal car. It could be little more than a tech demo and he
| would still win the bet.
| fragmede wrote:
| Waymo's already open in SF and Phoenix, with LA and San
| Antonio to come, and it's only 2024.
|
| There's a wait-list you have to join, but anyone can
| download the app and get in line.
| aantix wrote:
| Why is Waymo so slow to roll out?
|
| Pick an optimal path for each metro, only operate on good
| weather days, roll out nationally.
| dzdt wrote:
| The major companies that have tried to go faster than
| Waymo have been destroyed by safety incidents (Uber,
| Cruise). Waymo's caution may be well-warrented.
| nemothekid wrote:
| > _Why is Waymo so slow to roll out?_
|
| Ignoring the safety path, this other issue just scale.
| Manufacturing the cars would be a big problem. Getting a
| ton of them on the road is another. I wonder if all those
| sensors that the car uses could ramp up to a national
| level in a year.
|
| I've been in the Waymo beta for a couple months now. At
| peak times, it's more expensive and slower than an Uber
| simply because there aren't enough cars on the road.
| rob74 wrote:
| Because they're careful? Especially after the recent
| Cruise debacle - SF is relatively friendly to their
| efforts, and once they can point to a few years of
| problem-free operation in SF, other cities might allow
| them in, but trying to expand the service too early could
| prove a very costly mistake if a major issue is found and
| they get thrown out again...
| bryanlarsen wrote:
| I doubt that fees are quite covering expenses yet. I
| expect they'll roll out quite a bit quicker once
| expansion decreases their losses rather than increasing
| it.
| troupo wrote:
| you've just eliminated _a lot_ of useful use cases. Who
| needs a car /service that only drives a limited set of
| "optimal routes" in good weather?
|
| Also, "optimal routes" tend to quickly become suboptimal
| due to traffic, road closures etc.
| iknowstuff wrote:
| I was like wtf are they talking about I've been using
| self driving cars for half a year
| fragmede wrote:
| John carmack's won the bet, 6 years early.
| masto wrote:
| It's rather more than a tech demo already.
|
| https://youtu.be/P6sw4EKegp4?si=Yafm5a-ufCGizumy
| xnx wrote:
| What does "everywhere in all conditions" mean for level 5?
| Across a flooded road? Through 8" of snow? Up "The Chute" in
| Sand Hollow?
| xattt wrote:
| Standard roads are probably the intent. Being pedantic is
| just moving goalposts.
| wredue wrote:
| The problem is that freezing rain caused Portland to come
| to a standstill, but in Canada, that's just an annoying day
| with elevated rates of accidents.
|
| In Texas, a light breeze takes out the entire state,
| whereas in Canada, most of our workforce is expected to at
| try to continue working after a 20 inch snow dump the night
| before.
|
| I hope you can see how there's reason to being pedantic.
|
| If level 5 is all conditions human drivers do regularly for
| day to day activities, 2030 is an idiotic bet and anyone
| not living in a bubble could see that.
| nonameiguess wrote:
| Did you typo "light freeze?" Texas does terribly with ice
| but it is regularly windy as hell here, among the
| windiest of all US states. Even when a tornado tore up
| three miles of North Dallas a few years ago, it didn't
| take out even the local traffic, let alone the whole
| state.
| rob74 wrote:
| There's an additional aspect however: on days with e.g.
| freezing rain, human drivers might risk it, but companies
| like Waymo will probably decide to play it safe and not
| let their taxis run, because they know how much bad
| publicity an accident would be...
| crazygringo wrote:
| A lot of that doesn't have anything to do with cars _or_
| drivers, but is rather about _city infrastructure_.
|
| Does the city own a fleet of snowplows? Does it keep
| massive stores of road salt available? Do schools and
| offices even have heating systems at all?
|
| On the other hand, driving carefully on snow and ice is a
| skill in itself that has to be learned. And in snowy
| places I do know people who simply don't drive in some
| conditions because they're well aware they don't have
| those skills, even growing up there -- while others enjoy
| the challenge. So that part is a fair question of which
| humans we're talking about when we talk about human-level
| driving skill.
| troupo wrote:
| Regardless of city infrastructure, I've seen schools in
| North Carolina close after a light snow (like a few
| millimiters). In Stockholm this winter I regularly feel
| my car drifting when entering roundabouts, and a lot of
| roads have transformed from 2-lane streets into 1.5-lane
| streets.
|
| > So that part is a fair question of which humans we're
| talking about when we talk about human-level driving
| skill.
|
| These California-based companies assume everywhere is
| California, and still want to release those cars
| internationally.
| xattt wrote:
| In that case, SAE Level 5 driving may have a place for
| "sub-division" by weather, the same way that CAT-III ILS
| offers a range of operation options based on visibility.
| paxys wrote:
| > except in the case of natural disasters or emergencies
|
| Whatever a human driver with a non-commerical license does on
| a day to day basis is a good measuring stick.
| unregistereddev wrote:
| This is an oddly imprecise position to me. It's unclear
| whether an 8" snowfall is a natural disaster. In places
| where this is a regular event, it is not treated as a
| natural disaster. Some human drivers drive in it just fine,
| though most prefer not to.
|
| What about a 3" snowfall? That is a more common event, and
| a much larger number of human drivers stay on the roads
| despite the snow.
| rhuru wrote:
| > oddly imprecise position to me
|
| Yes. It is intended to be so. Because being pedantic is
| now how you define these levels.
|
| The ultimate goal is to run a large fleet of robo taxies
| wherever possible and Level 5 tech can do that everywhere
| on globe. One can get pedantic and ask if this would work
| in Antartica or on Dead Horse Bay or whether driving in
| sand dunes of Saudi Arabia is possible. But the folks who
| are trying to pedantic wont be happy with any definition
| either here.
| oatmeal1 wrote:
| The ability to safely and successfully get where you want
| to go would not be diminished by the fact it was an
| autonomous vehicle. 8" of snow in LA would be a disaster
| because they don't have the road maintenance
| infrastructure to handle that. It's not that people in LA
| are dramatic compared to people in Michigan.
| jsight wrote:
| It means that it needs to be able to get the vehicle into a
| safe situation regardless of conditions. That can mean
| needing human help once it is there in some cases.
|
| This doesn't mean that it needs to magically cross destroyed
| bridges, as the popular culture definition often implies.
| llsf wrote:
| Do we know where officially Waymo is on the SAE J3016 scale ?
|
| I used Waymo in San Francisco, and to my not-expert eye, it did
| perform very well already.
| ralph84 wrote:
| Waymo is level 4. SAE calls out "local driverless taxi" as an
| example of level 4.
|
| https://www.sae.org/blog/sae-j3016-update
| paxys wrote:
| "Against" is a pretty clear winner at this point. The chances
| of a level 5 self driving car being available for purchase in
| the next six years are ~0.
| tobinfricke wrote:
| It doesn't say "available for purchase." It says "will be
| commercially available for passenger use in major cities."
|
| Waymo is already there, in at least 2 cities but not all
| weather conditions. Expanding to 10 cities and all weather
| conditions in the next 6 years sounds more than plausible.
|
| I had sided with Atwood (skeptic) but now it seems like
| Carmack "has already won".
| paxys wrote:
| Waymo is level 3 at best. It is active in 1 flat city right
| now (and partially in another), and needs frequent
| interruption from remote drivers to get it out of hairy
| situations. You really think it will be fully rolled out in
| the 10 most populous cities in America in the next 6 years?
| You really think it'll work without any human interaction
| (local or remote)? This thing won't last 5 minutes in NYC
| or Philadelphia .
| adastra22 wrote:
| It says "any" of the 10 most populous cities, not "all."
| triceratops wrote:
| SF is a flat city?
| rrix2 wrote:
| The parts of Phoenix where Waymo operates is... SF is
| "(partially in another)"
| spankalee wrote:
| Waymo operates in all of SF
| thebradbain wrote:
| It's actually in LA now, which to me is a testament to
| its ability
| mustacheemperor wrote:
| Is "all weather conditions" a global benchmark, or is it
| "all weather conditions occurring in the cities of
| operation?"
|
| At least in SF, I haven't seen a day where Waymo refused
| availability for the weather. Rode it all over town in the
| rainstorms this weekend, and found it a little jarring to
| see the windshield covered in rainwater cause the computer
| doesn't GAF.
|
| If it doesn't need to handle snow to win this bet, it seems
| it could handle Seattle-tier rain already.
| letitbeirie wrote:
| They're allowed to have limits like "local driverless
| taxis don't operate outside SF city limits or below 35
| degrees with precip in the forecast" etc. at level 4, but
| to meet level 5 (per the bet) it has to be able to "drive
| everywhere and in all conditions," [0] which adds a lot
| of really difficult edge cases.
|
| Situations that come immediately to mind:
|
| - Driving in the hurricane lane on the shoulder during an
| evacuation
|
| - Reversible lanes and streets
|
| - Sizing up an icy hill and figuring out whether it's
| safe to keep going
|
| - Ferries
|
| - Knowing a baseball entering the road from behind a
| parked car will probably be followed by a child
|
| - Understanding traffic police, sign turners, "follow me"
| trucks, etc.
|
| [0] https://www.sae.org/binaries/content/assets/cm/conten
| t/blog/...
| mchusma wrote:
| I think each of these is already handled, or at least
| most. They say 99.4% of uptime in record inclement
| weather, which seems like it should satisfy "all".
| https://waymo.com/blog/2023/08/the-waymo-drivers-rapid-
| learn... I don't think they really mean "all" (like it
| shouldn't need to handle a lava flood). Just "all a human
| might do". This feels superhuman already.
|
| I actually see the main thing right now that would mean
| this bet is "not currently won by Carmack" is that they
| are not officially offering freeway access in its
| commercial product: https://waymo.com/blog/2024/01/from-
| surface-streets-to-freew... But this seems minor, and I
| can't imagine it taking more than 2 years to allow
| freeway driving in multiple metros.
|
| I can't fathom what would need to happen to derail this
| particular bet from being satisfied in Jan 2026 let alone
| Jan 2030.
|
| (Note: if it wasn't for Waymo, I think this timeline
| would be much less clear. Tesla/Cruise feel much less
| predictable.)
| vardump wrote:
| I'll agree once Waymo can operate in _any_ weather.
| Including snowy, meaning the road surface is completely
| covered by snow and ice plus heavy snowing.
| twoWhlsGud wrote:
| I live in Seattle, and I can tell you with some certainty
| that most Seattle drivers are incapable of driving in all
| Seattle weather conditions...
| dnissley wrote:
| "Passenger use" is the bet -- not purchase.
| huytersd wrote:
| The hell are you talking about. Waymo is already there.
| wredue wrote:
| John Carmack pandering to buzzword communities to try to stay
| relevant?
|
| Yeah. That sounds right.
| spankalee wrote:
| "For" is a pretty clear winner at this point.
|
| Waymo is already at level 4 at least on surface streets, and
| they claim 99.4% uptime in rain, high winds, and thunderstorms
| during last winter. [1] They're testing highway service in
| Phoenix now.
|
| There might be a debate about the word "all" for the
| distinction between levels 4 and 5, but Waymo has six years to
| erase that doubt.
|
| [1]: https://waymo.com/blog/2023/08/the-waymo-drivers-rapid-
| learn....
| onlyrealcuzzo wrote:
| Waymo is not going to be working everywhere in the US in all
| conditions by 2030 (and it doesn't need to, either).
|
| AFAIK, that's what L5 means.
| spankalee wrote:
| The bet is to be available is one of the top 10 US cities.
| huytersd wrote:
| It will be in major cities and that's what the bet is.
| oatmeal1 wrote:
| The bet requires the cars to be SAE level 5 autonomous.
| You wouldn't notice the difference as a passenger between
| level 4 used in appropriate conditions, and level 5 car.
| But the bet does require the car to be level 5
| nonetheless.
| snowwrestler wrote:
| Is _anyone_ at Level 5, though? At all? In even a prototype?
| huytersd wrote:
| What is level 5? Just widespread level 4? Because Waymo is
| definitely at level 4.
| otalp wrote:
| There's a big leap to go from geofenced Phoenix to NYC
| rhuru wrote:
| It does not have to go to NYC at all. If Waymo can show
| profitability is some city it is good enough. If it gets
| love in one city is is good enough for the rest of the
| world to put a red carpet before them.
| huytersd wrote:
| It has literally been in San Fran for over a year where
| some parts are arguably harder than NYC.
| spankalee wrote:
| The bet doesn't seem to require service in NYC. It says:
| By "major cities" we mean any of the top 10 most populous
| cities in the United States of America.
| oatmeal1 wrote:
| Disagree. Waymo is currently at level 3. From your link,
| emergency responders have the ability to put the car in a
| manual mode to get it out of the way if it is stuck. Waymo
| also has employees make decisions on behalf of the car
| remotely when it finds itself in a tricky situation.
|
| Level 5 fully autonomous would mean the car is able to drive
| in icy and snowy conditions (adjusting how it drives based on
| traction), it would be able to respond to verbal commands
| from construction workers, and it would be able to detect
| when a hazard in the road prevents it from continuing, plan a
| new route, and detour.
|
| There isn't much incentive for Waymo or its competitors to
| create level 5 autonomous cars when there is a plenty large
| market in places where there is good weather and good signal
| for an employee to tell the car what to do if necessary.
| spankalee wrote:
| Waymo cars don't have a driver, and they don't let a
| passenger take over driving. That's level 4: https://www.sa
| e.org/binaries/content/assets/cm/content/blog/...
| oatmeal1 wrote:
| Perhaps it straddles the line between 3 and 4. I don't
| see much of a distinction between the passenger taking
| over, and a first responder taking over. Would Waymo put
| cars on the road that don't have pedals and a steering
| wheel if it were cheaper to do so? I don't think they
| would. I think they want a backup in case the car has to
| be driven by a human.
| wrs wrote:
| https://archive.is/fm7jf
| dom96 wrote:
| https://archive.ph/fm7jf
| airstrike wrote:
| can't pass that captcha
| skyyler wrote:
| If you're using firefox, whitelist the archive URL in your
| DNS-over-HTTPS settings.
|
| https://support.mozilla.org/en-US/kb/firefox-dns-over-https
| jessriedel wrote:
| It's result of a technical fight between the archive website
| and some hosting services, discussed a few times in other HN
| threads. Here's the Wayback Machine version which may work.
|
| https://web.archive.org/web/20240123184535/https://www.bloom.
| ..
| eps wrote:
| "Failed to render the article" after a 5 second pause.
| iwontberude wrote:
| When I last posted a Wayback Machine archive URL I was
| downvoted considerably. Any idea why?
| losvedir wrote:
| It's interesting they're willing to push back the release so
| much, not falling to the sunk cost fallacy. A lemon would be a
| reputation hit.
|
| That's kind of why I'm pretty interested in the Vision Pro,
| another product in secret-ish development for a decade. They
| wouldn't have greenlit it if it didn't show potential right?
|
| It's interesting to think about what must be going on behind the
| scenes on products like this, deciding if they're ready to see
| the light of day.
| rconti wrote:
| Maybe continuing the project and pushing back the date rather
| than cancelling it _is_ falling to the sunk cost fallacy.
|
| Or, maybe they truly believe this is the right market for them
| to enter. (or, don't have any better ideas about how to spend
| the cash and find future growth).
| matsemann wrote:
| > _not falling to the sunk cost fallacy_
|
| Or it's the opposite? It's a dead end, but they will keep
| pouring money into it since they've "already invested so much".
| droopyEyelids wrote:
| It's interesting how, from my average man perspective, it's
| impossible to say whether a company operating at the scale of
| Apple is or is not victim to the sunk cost fallacy.
|
| On one hand, a push to deliver can be leadership setting a
| sink-or-swim deadline to avoid sunk costs. On the other hand,
| maybe they've already gone too far down a dead end.
|
| I think it has to be tricky because a tech company that does
| manufacturing at Apple's scale is kind of obligated to
| explore these possibilities. But how can you or I calculate
| what constraints should be in place so exploration can be
| effective while avoiding waste?
| airstrike wrote:
| I don't think the two products demand an equal level of
| commitment. Car manufacturing is notoriously hard and low
| margins, with very complex supply-chain and scale requirements
| that could make a bad bet tragically costly both financially
| and to their reputation, as you said.
|
| Consider also that there are no Level 3 cars out today (IIRC
| Mercedes-Benz recently got permission for the first such car),
| so launching a Level 5 seems virtually impossible. On the other
| hand, VR devices do exist and, even if they don't quite perform
| to people's expectations, releasing a marginally superior
| product isn't too far-fetched.
| kj99 wrote:
| I think these 'push back the release' reports are mostly just
| sensational reporting. Apple is constantly adjusting plans for
| things that aren't ready to be made public yet.
|
| Part of the reason they are so secretive is because anything
| that hasn't been announced yet is subject to change and they
| don't want to promise something until they are certain they can
| deliver it.
|
| So unless they actually announced a release date, they haven't
| 'pushed anything back'. This is just an internal review being
| leaked in a sensationalist way.
| gen220 wrote:
| As another commenter pointed out [1], I'm not sure if 100% of
| the expenses of this project are sunk cost, because it's
| yielded tangential but real value in other product lines.
|
| I totally agree, it'd be really interesting to learn more about
| how they do internal accounting for these kinds of moonshot
| projects.
|
| [1] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=39108792
| MichaelMug wrote:
| Is car manufacturing a high margin business? If not then I doubt
| Apple is working on bringing a car to market.
| layer8 wrote:
| For luxury cars it is. Apple would position themselves in that
| direction.
|
| That being said, I'm surprised they are still seriously on it,
| given how the prospect of general-purpose FSD has largely
| fizzled out.
| jldugger wrote:
| Is it? Wikipedia[1] puts Porshe's Operating margins at
| loosely 16%. Which isn't bad for auto probably but isn't
| great for tech.
| gen220 wrote:
| FWIW, Porsche has trended more into the premium market
| lately than the luxury market, in a bid to pursue more
| growth at the expense of profit margin.
|
| Gross and operating margins are pretty high in the luxury
| car industry, on par with iPhones. Personally, I don't
| think Apple would release a luxury car. I think it's more
| likely to partner with manufacturers of premium cars.
|
| It might be useful to make a small number of cars within
| Apple, to align on their north star vision for design, to
| lobby manufacturers in that direction, and to build up
| internal knowledge of the market they'd be selling into.
|
| But you're right, the margins on manufacturing and selling
| the whole vehicle would be a poor allocation of capital.
| uptown wrote:
| I'd assume Apple will treat it as a service. They own the cars.
| You pay for the rides.
| Thrymr wrote:
| Why not both? You buy the car, _and_ you pay a recurring
| subscription fee for the service.
| grecy wrote:
| Tesla famously had by far the highest margins pushing 30%,
| though they've dropped a lot recently with price cuts. They are
| still by far the highest in the industry
| rhuru wrote:
| It doe not matter for Apple. If the competition is offering an
| equivalent car for $20K apple will simply charge $40K or $200k
| and there will be enough takers.
| xnx wrote:
| I'm not sure what Apple would bring to cars. Waymo is almost
| uncatchably far ahead in self-driving. Tesla has already brought
| minimalism to cars, and will probably have an affordable car with
| mass appeal by 2028 if BYD doesn't get there first. Apple might
| be better off making a luxury fifth wheel.
| dataking wrote:
| Apple vision pro integration ;-)
| dmoy wrote:
| > if BYD doesn't get there first
|
| I mean, BYD is already there. It's mostly a question of tariffs
| vs subsidies at a geopolitical level now.
| cpursley wrote:
| 100% this. I don't think Americans in general are aware of
| what the current state of Chinese cars (EV and gas) is like
| right now since they're not in our market. It's worth
| checking out some YouTube videos, this guys channel is pretty
| good for Chinese EVs:
| https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UmQPwlHixWo
| bobthepanda wrote:
| BYD is also subject to C-NCAP safety standards, not NCAP,
| which is much less stringent. Does BYD make an NCAP compliant
| car?
| pi-e-sigma wrote:
| BYD sells in Europe. How would they be able to do it
| without meeting the Euro-NCAP standards which are actually
| higher than global NCAP?
| bluescrn wrote:
| > I'm not sure what Apple would bring to cars
|
| The world's first non-repairable car. Minor fault, major
| accident, or inevitably-degraded battery? No problem!, just
| throw it away and buy the latest model, like you would with a
| phone or tablet! You wanted an upgrade anyway, didn't you?
|
| (Meanwhile, Apple will keep boasting about their green
| credentials...)
|
| What about consumables?... You'll still be able to change the
| tyres, brake bads, and wiper blades. But Apple will take 30%
| from every sale/service of these items, and the vehicle won't
| start if you install non-genuine-Apple replacements. (And then
| there's the chargers... don't expect to be able to put
| electricity into that battery without Apple getting their god-
| given 30% cut)
|
| Starting at $99,999 for the base model (50 miles range). A
| maxxed-out model will do 750 miles, but they're really going to
| make you pay for those battery up-sells, and the well-glued-in
| battery pack is non-upgradeable after purchase.
| BoostandEthanol wrote:
| They wouldn't be the first. The Audi A2 launched without a
| bonnet you could open. Oil changes were done using a hatch in
| the grille.
| bobthepanda wrote:
| Also it seems like a lot of the new EVs have sky high
| repair bills, like the infamous $42,000 Rivian fender
| bender repair. https://www.theautopian.com/heres-why-that-
| rivian-r1t-repair...
|
| So if you're going to have minor bumps result in a repair
| bill more expensive than many cars, it's not that much of a
| stretch to say that'd make it virtually unrepairable.
| solatic wrote:
| Nobody will ever need to drive further than 640,000 yards!
| surfingdino wrote:
| ... without subscription.
| bdcravens wrote:
| Rivian isn't far behind, with basic body work costing tens of
| thousands of dollars
|
| https://www.autoblog.com/2023/10/04/rivian-r1t-fender-
| bender...
| plagiarist wrote:
| Rivian base models are already far out of my price range
| for a vehicle, this is not helping their case any.
| Animats wrote:
| Rivian is considered to be in the "hyper-luxury truck"
| category.
| OJFord wrote:
| Aren't they cheaper than the Ford F150 'Lightning'
| (electric version, so comparable)? Or is that also
| 'hyper-luxury'? (Genuine question, I suppose I'm not
| really familiar enough to know what the top end would be,
| maybe that's it, I know Lamborgini makes a tractor, but
| I'm not aware of a 'supertruck'.)
| jsight wrote:
| A Rivian R1T with dual motor and the large battery pack
| (352 mile range) is $79,000. An F-150 Lightning with the
| extended range battery (>300 mile range) is between $69k
| and $77k.
|
| Both have cheaper trims available, but the cheapest
| Lightning is significantly less expensive than the
| cheapest R1T.
|
| Both are really nice trucks too, especially at the higher
| trim. I don't see a big difference in luxury between an
| F-150 Platinum and the R1T.
| pityJuke wrote:
| In-app purchase on your iPhone while inside the car? Surely
| they've got to take 60% for that, for also facilitating the
| space you're sititng in.
| juunpp wrote:
| Tim Sweeney is reading this comment from the dashboard in
| his Toyota.
| rollcat wrote:
| > The world's first non-repairable car.
|
| Apple's phones have about 7 years of first-party support /
| guaranteed useful life, compared with the rest of the
| industry's standard of maybe 2. Yeah I'd never buy a car that
| will only be good for 7 years, but let's see what they ship.
| fortran77 wrote:
| > compared with the rest of the industry's standard of
| maybe 2.
|
| You're just making up facts to protect your beloved
| brand/cult. C'mon. All my non-Mac computers I'm using here
| have been around way longer than two years.
| the_gastropod wrote:
| You're talking about different things. Apple officially
| supports / provides software updates for its iPhones for
| 7 years. Other phone manufacturers' durations of support
| vary, but they're usually _much_ less. Until fairly
| recently, Google provided 3 years of software updates for
| Pixels, for example. [1]
|
| [1] https://www.androidauthority.com/phone-update-
| policies-16586...
| trynumber9 wrote:
| Yes, Apple deserves some credit for being early to it but
| now Google and Samsung offer 7 year support for their newer
| phones too.
| pi-e-sigma wrote:
| That's really good news. Is this for all Samsung models
| currently sold or just the flagship? I can't find much on
| the internet
| bluescrn wrote:
| The batteries don't have 7 years of useful life, though.
| And replacing them is made intentionally difficult to
| encourage people to just upgrade instead.
|
| A lot of people don't live near an Apple store, and few
| people are prepared to be without their phone while mailing
| it off for a battery swap.
| Rebelgecko wrote:
| Fortunately in the US they'll be required to offer a
| minimum battery warranty of 8 years
| threeseed wrote:
| Tesla cars have poor build quality, average interiors and awful
| after-sales support.
|
| So there is definitely room for Apple to take the Tesla route
| but improve in those areas.
| pokstad wrote:
| How is Apple going to have better quality? Apple specializes
| in making devices with almost no moving parts. Mechanical
| products are very different.
| EA-3167 wrote:
| Apple can literally buy that expertise with petty cash.
| mensetmanusman wrote:
| $1,000 monitor stands beg to differ!
| Smoosh wrote:
| I think the more appropriate example would be the Mac Pro
| wheels.
|
| https://www.apple.com/shop/product/MX572ZM/A/apple-mac-
| pro-w...
| eps wrote:
| $700 for 4 wheels. Jeeeezus!
| mensetmanusman wrote:
| More expensive than the corolla wheels.
| dylan604 wrote:
| Ahhh, the true reasoning for the wheels experiment. Apple
| has always had a thing about round. Maybe Apple Wheels
| (TM) will have finally perfected round that all other
| manufactures have been unable to solve.
| autoexecbat wrote:
| Apple could pick a car vendor and just buy them, slap their
| brand on it, and then focus on quality rather than cost
| sharadov wrote:
| Build quality - that's not an issue anymore
|
| Interiors - yes they can improve
|
| Never had an issue with after-sales support.
|
| My 2nd Tesla in 5 years.
| stevage wrote:
| You are but one tiny datapoint. The internet is full of
| disaster stories from Tesla owners.
| modeless wrote:
| The Internet is full of disaster stories about
| everything. In the actual Consumer Reports ranking Tesla
| is far from the bottom. It's almost exactly in the
| middle, between Infiniti and Cadillac.
| FireBeyond wrote:
| For a car that is, as Tesla fans like to point out, "far
| simpler than an ICE, with a lot less that can possibly go
| wrong", being in the "middle of the pack" with ICEs is
| actually pretty damning.
| ajross wrote:
| And the _world_ is full of Teslas. You really think if
| even 20% of the hyperbole was true that they 'd be
| shipping the volume they are? All those Tesla buyers are
| just deluded marks who'd be happier in a VW or whatever?
|
| Maybe... the situation is complicated and like all
| manufacturers they have some good points and some bad
| points and the market is in the process of deciding on
| what particular traits it values?
| stevage wrote:
| Of the people I know personally who bought Tesla's I do
| know they weren't aware of the reputation for difficult
| servicing and parts availability.
| martythemaniak wrote:
| "Your anecdote is irrelevant, look at my vast dataset of
| unrepresentative samples"
| stevage wrote:
| At the very least I am claiming that one data point is
| less valuable than multiple datapoints.
| juunpp wrote:
| Your first Tesla lasted less than 5 years?
| chronic03850 wrote:
| > Never had an issue with after-sales support. My 2nd Tesla
| in 5 years.
|
| Sorry but you probably are not the target market for the
| Apple Car.
|
| Many premium-market customers (early Model S/X, current
| Plaid shoppers) have moved to other brands such as Rivian,
| Lucid, and Porsche due to Tesla's "cheapness" and abysmal
| customer service.
|
| But sure, if you're coming from a Toyota RAV4 or BMW 3
| series, Tesla is great. But don't expect to be the target
| demographic for a $100K+ Apple car.
| jsight wrote:
| > Never had an issue with after-sales support.
|
| I won't say that it has been perfect, but it definitely
| hasn't been worse than my car dealer experiences.
| worksonmine wrote:
| Improve? Every other iphone I see has a broken screen.
| Anecdata sure but I've never owned one as I value my money
| but it seems to break easily.
|
| The windshield will probably break from hitting bugs, but
| fret not, there's a windshield protector you can get from
| your authorized dealer.
| ethanbond wrote:
| Well with data quality like that, I think you can be
| absolutely certain in your assessment!
| worksonmine wrote:
| You're right, the screen could just be too expensive to
| replace rather than break easily. The only data I need
| for my assessment is the price and lack of freedom. I
| once did an experiment with my friend who's a die-hard
| fan. We both turned on bluetooth on all our devices, his
| iphone and macbook and my android and Windows. I saw both
| of his, he saw none of mine. Disgusting, why would anyone
| pay for that?
|
| The rest should be taken as a joke.
| wolverine876 wrote:
| > Tesla has already brought minimalism to cars,
|
| I certainly wouldn't call that minimalistic. Do you mean the
| exterior surface? The controls, UI, etc. are complex and
| difficult. People can even open the door the first time they
| ride in one. The big screen and all its software are not
| minimalistic.
| rodgerd wrote:
| > I certainly wouldn't call that minimalistic.
|
| Surely you jest. A fart app is automotive minimalism!
| xnx wrote:
| There's been a long term trend in Apple hardware of
| simplification (removal of buttons, ports, flourishes, etc.).
| The iPhone was a big jump in that direction from the
| Blackberry, but I can't imagine an Apple Car being that
| different from a Tesla/Rivian/BYD one.
| resolutebat wrote:
| Tesla's _hardware_ certainly is minimalistic though, and
| hence the Apple analogy. The software inside an iPhone is
| ferociously complicated, but the slab of glass, no buttons
| form factor is much simpler than the Nokias etc it replaced.
| throwboatyface wrote:
| The difference is that Tesla's hardware is simpler in a way
| that's harder to use. Moving from indirect control to touch
| screens was great and intuitive for phones. Moving to touch
| screens in cars is more about cost savings than making them
| easy to use.
|
| If a touchscreen was the ideal way to interact with a car,
| why aren't acceleration and braking done through the touch
| screen? Why isn't steering on the touch screen?
| matsemann wrote:
| > _People can even open the door the first time they ride in
| one_
|
| Found an iPhone in the snow on Sunday. Had to google how to
| unlock it / get contact information. "swipe up" it said on
| the screen. Nothing happened. It was a lie. You need to
| "swipe from the bottom of the screen". Not intuitive at all.
| jsight wrote:
| If minimalism means intuitive, I no longer find the
| android/ios ui minimalistic either. They've gone to a system
| of gestures that aren't particularly intuitive.
|
| The buttons were far more discoverable.
| spandrew wrote:
| Someone in 2006 asked what Apple would bring to the cellphone
| market, too.
|
| The issue with Apple and the automotive market is the units
| don't have enough turnover for Apple's business model to
| thrive.
| bdcravens wrote:
| The iPhone wasn't that big of a leap. At that point, they had
| 30 years of experience shipping computers, and 5+ years
| shipping handheld devices.
| snowwrestler wrote:
| It's easy to say that now but at the time there were
| obvious huge obstacles to Apple doing a great cell phone.
|
| And not just technical; the business relationships between
| cellular network owners, handset manufacturers, and
| software companies was totally different. Apple essentially
| had to restructure the industry to make the iPhone what it
| is today.
|
| I suspect a car would need to have a similar impact in
| order for Apple to succeed. They would need to launch a new
| kind of product that just happens to have the shape of a
| car.
| bigstrat2003 wrote:
| > Someone in 2006 asked what Apple would bring to the
| cellphone market, too.
|
| And that would be a fair question. The iPhone never did
| anything others weren't already doing, nor has Apple ever
| done that in recent history. They sell products not because
| they're better, but because they've convinced people Apple is
| cool.
| twoWhlsGud wrote:
| I think you underestimate how bad the competition has
| usually been. Apple is bad but the competition is usually
| terrible. Tech stuff has always had a pretty low bar,
| especially for actually working without a huge amount of
| sysadmin.
| droopyEyelids wrote:
| I wonder the same thing.
|
| Apple's MO is to make a premium version of a product and sell a
| huge quantity of them, and ideally it's a new product category.
|
| Right now there IS a category of vehicle that we don't have in
| the USA, the cheap small electric cars that have taken over in
| China.
|
| I could see semi-plausible arguments for mass adoption of those
| in the USA, as secondary cars for short errands and beginner
| drivers, and _if they were cheap_.
|
| But Apple's move is to sell the nicest, most expensive version
| of a product. It's sort of what their position in the market
| demands. I don't see any way to put those requirements together
| in a vehicle, especially considering how we can't import cars
| from China.
| jsight wrote:
| A phenomenal commuter EV for between $25k-30k would do
| incredibly well in the US.
|
| It doesn't look like a huge market, mostly because there are
| enough alternatives that are all relatively similar.
|
| But an EV at a competitive price would take a very large
| slice of that pie.
| nlh wrote:
| I thought and wondered this before I drove a Tesla, and then it
| all made sense. Teslas feel like what we would would have
| gotten with an "Apple car" had Tesla never launched -- next-gen
| hardware, software at its core, great UX, etc.
|
| What apple brings is, I think, the same thing they brought to
| cell phones when we all thought a Palm Treo was the pinnacle of
| mobile tech. The same basic ideas as Tesla, but better design,
| better hardware, better software, etc.
|
| I have no idea if they can actually pull it off, but if they
| can, they have a good shot at relegating Teslas to Palm Treo
| status.
| amirhirsch wrote:
| My primary purchasing criteria for my next car is how easy it
| is to recover my iPhone when I drop it between the seat and
| the center console. Surely Apple will solve this problem in
| an elegant way.
| rhuru wrote:
| Apple will come up with a car to signal wealth. Like a $20K
| camry disguised in $200K white colored unrepairable car which
| will demand money if you want to drive it outside your city.
| charlimangy wrote:
| Tesla has been setting fire to their brand, mostly by their CEO
| acting out. Apple has the affordable-luxury design chops to
| leap to the head of the class, as they did with the watch.
| Phone and Siri integration, plus I'm sure their product teams
| would come up with a bunch of great stuff. Maybe it's Apple Car
| built by BYD.
| resolutebat wrote:
| Elon's antics are wrecking Twitter, but Tesla is chugging
| along nicely all the same. Most of the world doesn't follow
| or care about Silicon Valley CEO drama in the same way that
| we here on HN do.
| eps wrote:
| FWIW I cancelled Tesla order because of Musk. Wouldn't be
| caught dead driving one after the unhinge that keeps
| unfolding (and that is also very easy to pick up in the
| mainstream news).
| dtjb wrote:
| He offloaded a ton of TSLA to finance the twitter deal,
| reducing his ownership from 22% to 13%. Now he wants to
| dilute shares to claw back control.
|
| Twitter has undoubtedly been a distraction.
|
| https://www.reuters.com/breakingviews/elon-musks-losing-
| stre...
| charlimangy wrote:
| Right now people are following along because Tesla is the
| market leader and they see the cars on the street, but they
| rely heavily on media and word of mouth for marketing. I
| think they're very vulnerable to an Apple marketing blitz,
| but it sounds like it's not happening, so it's all
| hypothetical.
|
| A few years ago I saw frequent signs from my social set
| that Tesla was considered a great innovator and a really
| cool company. The news has not been good the last year, and
| I haven't heard any sentiments like that in a while.
| renewiltord wrote:
| People say this about everything they make but they end up
| being better.
| huytersd wrote:
| Having taken 2 dozen Waymo rides, it's all it's cracked up to
| be. Confident driving, feels safe, clean. I just hope Google
| doesn't decide to just turn around and kill it one day.
| gambiting wrote:
| Of course they will. It's been billions spent on development
| to just offer you a slightly cheaper taxi ride, with no clear
| path to any kind of viable commercial service beyond "ok-ish"
| taxi provider in few American cities. Someone _will_ get
| bored of it eventually and it will get shut down.
| CharlesW wrote:
| One fun aspect of Apple's moon shots is tracing back tech
| dependencies, which they often ship earlier permutations of for
| years in mainstream products (see: M1). In the case of Apple Car
| that will include computational image capture1, sensor fusion2,
| lidar3, and now the R1 SPU (Sensor Processing Unit) used in Apple
| Vision. What else?
|
| 1 https://www.apple.com/newsroom/2021/01/shot-on-iphone-12-por...
| 2 https://developer.apple.com/documentation/coremotion/cmmotio...
| 3 https://www.apple.com/pl/newsroom/2020/03/apple-unveils-new-...
| RicoElectrico wrote:
| I think you meant iterations, not permutations.
| xattt wrote:
| Why not both? It's iterative improvement, but also combining
| bits and pieces.
| reikonomusha wrote:
| Pedantically, a permutation is a rearrangement of a given
| set of pieces. (Mathematically, any bijection between a set
| and itself.)
| ducttapecrown wrote:
| Normal language and mathematical definitions are often
| orthogonal!
| mlyle wrote:
| Yah, so Apple is working on dependencies for a
| moonshot... and choosing sets of those dependencies to
| put into other products. (Perhaps combinations, perhaps
| permutations, perhaps something in-between how much of an
| ordering there is on those pieces).
| snowwrestler wrote:
| The Vision Pro in its entirety seems like a cog in a much
| larger strategy.
|
| It seems like a platform to test ideas, concepts, and reactions
| related to "spacial computing" that will show up in much
| higher-volume products later on... as opposed to being a high-
| volume product itself.
|
| Essentially like a lot of other people I'm wondering "how many
| of these clunky ugly things could they sell?" But thinking that
| maybe they know that too, and they're working toward something
| more compelling.
| amelius wrote:
| Like what?
|
| My guess is they just wait for the market to figure it out,
| then pull a Sherlock and corner that market.
| crooked-v wrote:
| For me, it's very obviously step 1 of their long-term plan
| to have everyone wearing Apple Glasses in 10-15 years.
| amelius wrote:
| Well it is somewhat obvious by now that big companies are
| all after our eyeballs, so you could be right.
| asimpletune wrote:
| I think this is exactly right. Notice how they actively avoid
| AR/VR words, preferring spatial computing. I think this is
| because, to them, AR/VR are going to be much more compelling
| than spatial computing, and they don't want to sully those
| efforts by mixing it with this stepping stone we have now.
| MBCook wrote:
| > AR/VR are going to be much more compelling than spatial
| computing, and they don't want to sully those efforts by
| mixing it with this stepping stone we have now.
|
| I disagree. I think they _don't_ want to be compared to a
| $500 VR headset. VR hasn't taken off enough to move the
| needle on Apple financials. It's not "good enough". As nice
| as the Vision Pro is can it justify its extra $3000 cost in
| comparison if it's also _just_ VR /AR? Sure it's more
| powerful, but it doesn't even have controllers.
|
| On the other hand AR has largely failed so far too. The
| HoloLens didn't revolutionize the world. And the level of
| AR a Quest 3 offers is much lower resolution than Apple
| had. And, again, $3000 difference there (HoloLens was way
| more).
|
| I think they want to be seen as a new category and not just
| another AR/VR thing. Sure the Mac was technically a
| personal computer, it was so different from a PC AT as to
| be almost a totally different thing. iPod vs Creative
| Nomad. iPhone vs early Windows CE phones.
|
| That's what they want. They want to be judged on their own.
| Not "I bought a Quest 4 and it was OK, why should I pay $X
| more? It wasn't useful to me."
|
| Will it work? Time will tell. If it does the Vision line
| will be looked at as a totally different product category
| from the Quests/etc of today. If it doesn't they're in
| trouble.
| mschuster91 wrote:
| > iPhone vs early Windows CE phones.
|
| These, at least, had legit keyboards.
| halostatue wrote:
| Yet were nigh unusable.
| roland35 wrote:
| Meta likes to call quest 3 "mixed reality" since AR is
| generally defined as adding images to the existing light
| going into your eyes.
|
| I just feel like the technical challenges of AR are much
| larger than people give it credit for - even just dealing
| with "how to project an image" before even trying to
| miniaturize it is really hard!
| realusername wrote:
| I can see the reasoning yeah, for now it seem to be
| treated similarly though. Maybe a v2 could help like it
| did with the iPhone, after all the first model also had a
| lot of trouble to find its place.
| surfingdino wrote:
| AR and VR is a wasteland where money gets burned on ideas
| that have not advanced much since 1990s and the first
| Virtuality devices
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Virtuality_(product) in
| terms of being more useful than an Apple Watch, an
| iPhone, or a laptop for pretty much anything. A computer
| does not get better when you wear it.
|
| Realistically, for a VR headset to be successful it would
| need to be as light as a baseball cap and have a ~12h
| power source that would not cause overheating of the
| wearer's head.
|
| AppleVision is going nowhere. Apple is a mass market
| manufacturer of status products with a limited lifespan
| and support. When they work and are supported they
| generally offer great experience for the money. Apple Car
| and AppleVision are not such products, but evolutionary
| dead ends in Apple's history, just like Newton or Apple
| Network Server. Apple is investing money into an old
| personal transportation platform when the future of
| transportation will be based on something else and that
| "something else" will emerge out of new ideas for urban
| planning. Some of the tech developed for those products
| may make its way into those new modes of transport, but
| it will take a while and may lesser impact than we think.
| Cacti wrote:
| well, ar is going to be the real money maker by probably
| several factors.
| dwaite wrote:
| If they had 100% capture of the current consumer VR/AR
| market it would still have a tiny impact on their overall
| numbers.
|
| They use a new term because they feel the only way to
| succeed is to create a new product category.
|
| And that is part of why it is confusing - it doesn't feel
| like they could create a large enough market to matter for
| any device in the current VR/AR form factor, or even the
| idealized version of the current form.
| Someone wrote:
| > Essentially like a lot of other people I'm wondering "how
| many of these clunky ugly things could they sell?" But
| thinking that maybe they know that too, and they're working
| toward something more compelling.
|
| For the 'clunky' I think they're just betting on Moore's law
| (in some interpretation) keeping up and batteries getting
| more powerful in the next few years, so that they can shrink
| the device and its production costs.
|
| IMO, that is a safe bet for batteries, a bit less so for the
| electronics and even less so for the mechanical parts.
|
| And what's considered ugly can change fairly fast, if the
| device turns out to be useful/entertaining (which it IMO will
| be) enough to warrant its sales price (that, I'm not certain
| of.
| tomaskafka wrote:
| But mainly, if you know the use case, you can ship iphone-
| equivalent device with the sensors needed, not an expensive
| miniaturized laptop. Vision Pro is an user research
| platform.
| Cacti wrote:
| yeah. people really have a hang up on VR and AR, but it's
| almost entirely simply because the electronics and power
| aren't there yet. once it is, it will almost already be
| game over, because... i mean literally everyone eventually
| will have one. it will be the most significant compute
| platform in history.
|
| you can see this immediately btw if you book some time on
| the expensive industry AR and VR devices. but even those
| aren't any smaller than the Apple device, for reasons of
| physics.
| mschuster91 wrote:
| > Essentially like a lot of other people I'm wondering "how
| many of these clunky ugly things could they sell?" But
| thinking that maybe they know that too, and they're working
| toward something more compelling.
|
| Apple is a master at having the users pay for R&D. They
| didn't go and raise millions to billions of dollars in
| venture capital... they started with phones using cheap
| Samsung SoCs and from there on, they evolved _rapidly_ , with
| their M-series SoCs now being on par with Intel performance-
| wise.
|
| The hipsters pay outrageous amounts of money for Apple
| hardware - me being amongst them - and Apple doesn't go and
| waste all their income on stock buybacks or luxurious
| dividends, but invests it into developing technology to
| legitimately drive the state of the art forward.
| Retric wrote:
| The Vision Pro's existing sales have already justified the
| project. They have sold 560+ million dollars worth of them at
| presumably insane profit margins.
|
| I think Apple's strategy is to just execute whatever the next
| tech thing is better than existing participants. MP3 players
| weren't a forever thing, but they were a very profitable
| thing for Apple. Watch, tablet, 3D glasses etc timed after
| someone else proved the market and just in time for Apple to
| slurp up the most profitable slice of the pie.
|
| They don't want to be the first self driving car company,
| they want to be the most profitable self driving car company.
| zitterbewegung wrote:
| The greatest pivot was Project Purple which eventually was
| revisited as a tablet (iPad) but pivoted to the iPhone[1]
|
| [1] https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/IPhone
| genman wrote:
| I think that from the moment they had touch screen iPod, the
| iPhone was inevitable. At least this was my first idea when I
| saw it - when will they make a phone like this.
| runjake wrote:
| _> they often ship earlier permutations of for years in
| mainstream products (see: M1)._
|
| I still get a kick out of the ARM transition happening laregely
| in public with the T2-chip Intel Macs. Vast majorities of a T2
| system ran off the ARM-based T2 for its ISA.
| whynotminot wrote:
| Do you have any further reading to provide about what all the
| T2 was doing in those Macs? I too have long suspected that
| the T2 was Apple playing with transition right in front of
| us, but would love a more comprehensive look at what all that
| chip was doing.
|
| I know it was providing the Secure Enclave, some hardware
| encode/decode media blocks, and I think FileVault for the
| SSD. But would be curious to know if it was even more than
| that.
| HumblyTossed wrote:
| I seriously doubt Apple is working on an actual car. More likely,
| they're working on car tech and that's all - trying to make OTS
| tech so companies that actually manufacture cars don't have to.
| Imagine 30% of every car sold - 15% if they can sell subs to the
| consumer.
| _s wrote:
| This is my take as well.
|
| CarPlay takes in a bunch of input from various sensors /
| cameras in a car and gives back "drive" or cruise control
| commands that are at level 3+.
|
| Replaces the existing software for both the infotainment system
| and "cruise" control.
| troupo wrote:
| You _don 't_ want your phone driving your car at _any_
| circumstances.
| luckydata wrote:
| It is totally what they are doing. The guts are probably going
| to be an automotive hardened version of an iphone / ipad and
| will have a bunch of connections to get sensors wired to it.
| Their competition for this product is Bosch.
| radicaldreamer wrote:
| Apple cares about the end-to-end user experience too much to
| do this. Likely the car will have Apple's software sauce and
| design, be branded an Apple vehicle but be manufactured by
| BMW, VW group, or a Chinese manufacturer (Volvo/Polestar
| etc.)
| HumblyTossed wrote:
| Apple is probably dictating how the end user experience is
| supposed to be. That's probably why GM said f* off Apple.
| patwolf wrote:
| The problem with offering car tech is that manufacturers won't
| want it. They hate the thought of automotive technology being
| commoditized. If they all use the same underlying technology,
| then there's less opportunity to differentiate themselves.
|
| GM said recently that it'll be ditching CarPlay and Android
| Auto in new vehicles.
| https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=35573345
| KerrAvon wrote:
| GM's move isn't about differentiation, it's about more money
| (no, differentiation alone doesn't == more money). They think
| they can charge for subscriptions. (They are delusional.)
| matthewfcarlson wrote:
| So far everyone I've talked to agrees that this is a stupid
| move. Anecdotal evidence, I know. But I feel like it's
| obvious that not offering features isn't a winning strategy
| puffer99 wrote:
| We'll see how this plays out, but historically car companies'
| tech has been the absolute worst.
|
| I would MUCH rather see software in a car from one of the
| major tech companies if they insist. Personally, I would be
| happy with a tablet mount, Bluetooth audio, and physical
| buttons for the rest.
|
| I would trust a tech company with self driving far more if
| the software on those media abominations is any indicator.
| solarkraft wrote:
| They may hate it, but consumers really want it (CarPlay at
| least). The car market is fairly competitive and Apple
| customers pay fairly well ...
| blueprint wrote:
| OK, but none of those companies are going to be
| differentiating themselves by making their own silicon. and
| probably not their own self driving software from the looks
| of things.
| HumblyTossed wrote:
| Maybe this is _why_ GM ditched it. Maybe they talked to Apple
| and Apple wanted their subscription money and GM thought,
| Hmmm, we could do that, f* Apple.
| punkybr3wster wrote:
| They're exactly why I switched away from GM this year. I get
| wanting your own UI but not at least allowing CarPlay and
| android auto is very telling in the current market and I like
| getting updates and seamless handoff and/or continuity
| between the phone and the car.
|
| The last thing I want is my car, with how I use it, stuck on
| multi year old tech that the car company won't update and
| because it's proprietary you can't update it either. "Oh
| sorry the Spotify app we pre installed can't use any of the
| new features they released last year. No we don't plan to
| update it."
|
| Car companies are notoriously terrible with software.
| babypuncher wrote:
| GM sure is succeeding in differentiating their product. By
| removing the one infotainment system feature I actually want,
| they have guaranteed I will never buy one of their cars.
| sf_rob wrote:
| Isn't GM ditching phone connectivity in favor of Google Built
| In (TM)? e.g. they're fine with Google building it if they
| can upcharge for it.
| kccqzy wrote:
| Yes but that is called Android Automotive, not to be
| confused with Android Auto. And it does allow customization
| by car manufacturers.
| kjkjadksj wrote:
| Thats how the rest of the car is built though. You don't get
| a honda, you get a laundry list of component vendors you've
| probably never heard of on a contract to make parts along
| with a honda badge, vendors who go on to make all the
| competitors cars out of these same supply lines too.
| bnj wrote:
| It's hard to imagine Apple pursuing a strategy that would
| surrender control of so much of the end user experience
| HumblyTossed wrote:
| That's the point. _They_ would control the end user
| experience, dictating it to the manufacturers.
| tobinfricke wrote:
| "downgraded to Level 2+ autonomy"
|
| "The car will use what is known as a Level 2+ system, the people
| said. That's a downgrade from previously planned Level 4
| technology -- and, before that, even more ambitious aims for a
| Level 5 system."
|
| Wow, what?
|
| Level 2 is "lane centering and adaptive cruise control." Those
| are standard features these days.
|
| "After the initial car debuts, Apple hopes to release an upgraded
| system later that supports Level 4 autonomy and additional
| regions."
|
| Oh like Tesla and "Full Self Driving"?
| unregistereddev wrote:
| I do not know why you are being downvoted. I agree that level 2
| autonomy is not cutting edge - it is an option level for nearly
| every car manufacturer.
| forbiddenvoid wrote:
| Seems odd to me that Apple would invest in developing a car
| instead of just focusing on the in-vehicle interface device. Then
| again, Apple has a long history of wanting absolute control over
| form factor, so they might believe their better served building
| the whole car than just one device that's used in it.
| nomel wrote:
| I assume many of these seemingly odd efforts by big companies
| are to help fill their patent portfolio.
| supportengineer wrote:
| It would be the one car with privacy protections
| skybrian wrote:
| Or maybe "without privacy problems," the way the industry is
| going?
| kjkjadksj wrote:
| Yep because them and their ilk created the issue now you need
| to buy their solution. Meanwhile your bog standard no frills
| 2010s era car would be like a hardened CIA ghost vehicle in
| comparison to anything offered from an american tech company,
| even a model pitched specifically for privacy.
| dpflan wrote:
| What if Apple helped to make trains/consumer rail?
| purpleblue wrote:
| I recently met someone who worked at a pretty senior level on
| self-driving cars at one of the main companies pursuing it. After
| working there a couple of years he decided it's never going to
| happen to he switched to another company doing entirely different
| things.
| samwillis wrote:
| Apple don't release new products until their angle on it is ready
| to corner the market. They are rarely first, often late, but
| almost always unique in quality and finish.
|
| When they do launch the car, it's not just going to be a swanky
| thing to compete with BMW with a bunch of flashy touch UIs and
| half baked self driving.
|
| It's going to be something that is a step change, something so
| far ahead of the competition they will be _years_ ahead.
|
| If they have deciding to delay till '28 that suggests it's both
| not ready, but maybe the market isn't either. If self driving is
| the head line feature, they will want it to actually be so far
| ahead of the competition it will appear like magic.
|
| If there is truth to the article (I suspect the delay is real,
| un-convinced on the reasons suggested) then I don't think the
| will release one at all.
| jgalt212 wrote:
| > Apple don't release new products until their angle on it is
| ready to corner the market.
|
| Like the Vision Pro?
| audunw wrote:
| I would say they generally set up to corner the market in 2-3
| generations.
|
| First iPhone, first iPod.. didn't quite take over the market,
| but it was a quick path from there to being dominating 3
| iterations down the line.
|
| I don't think this is realistic for cars though. It doesn't
| feel like a good idea to me, but who knows..
| bmitc wrote:
| > It's going to be something that is a step change, something
| so far ahead of the competition it will push them to be years
| ahead.
|
| This is comedic writing.
| samwillis wrote:
| Oops... I rewrote the start of that sentence, but not the
| end...
| HumblyTossed wrote:
| > Apple don't release new products until their angle on it is
| ready to corner the market. They are rarely first, often late,
| but almost always unique in quality and finish.
|
| This is the myth at least.
| kilroy123 wrote:
| If Jobs were still around, I would agree. I'm skeptical this
| will be true for a car under Cook.
| bmitc wrote:
| Self-driving cars is one of the biggest boondoggles of all time.
| How much money, time, effort, amd resources have been spent on
| this? And yet, there's barely anything to show and the end goal
| is still not even clear.
| kjkjadksj wrote:
| The goal was never a tangible product but a marketable
| investment opportunity. You can tell this is how it is because
| the latter went exceedingly well and there is still no product
| because there was never supposed to be a product. If it was
| about the product it would be done by now.
| bmitc wrote:
| I agree, and this also applies to basically every venture
| capitalist backed venture these days. They are effectively
| pump and dump schemes.
| ibero wrote:
| my personal belief is that driverless car hype was the by-
| product of the "gig economy"/uber success story. and in that
| march for IPO, uber had to address its largest problem re:
| scalability-- human drivers. this issue of scaling drivers was
| seen as the achilles heel of its technology play.
|
| as a result they went deep into investing into the idea of
| driverless car technology, more for show than in reality. yes,
| hundreds of millions (billions overall) where dumped into this
| sector but it was really motivated by the incentive to keep a
| valuation high.
|
| this "driverless" story picked up steam because it resonated
| with a lot of tech companies, similarly looking to move the
| needle in their valuations. for big giant tech companies this
| was alluring as there aren't that many single plays or markets
| you can do to move the company share price. so here came in
| google, head first, and apple still tentatively.
|
| and then crucially, for established dinosaurs like Ford or GM,
| the opportunity to create tech valuations for themselves
| similarly appeared. so they jumped in.
|
| all in all, we are still feeling the after effects of this uber
| story play out, with dwindling returns and ever reducing pile
| of money behind it.
| khazhoux wrote:
| How is the end goal not clear to you? The goals have been
| stated clearly many times by many company -- but they happen to
| be extremely difficult.
| varenc wrote:
| IMHO, Waymo's autonomous taxi service is amazing. I think it's
| superior product to Uber/Lyft. I don't think consumers will be
| getting FSD on their personal cars anytime soon, but self-
| driving seems well poised to compete with ride-hailing
| services.
| w0mbat wrote:
| Apple should buy one of the local EV companies like Lucid or
| Rivian, it would save them years of R&D on the hardware, give
| them valuable automotive guidance on the software and how things
| work in the car world. Lucid's software R&D is run by many ex-
| Apple people.
|
| Also, I don't think self-driving is a must-have feature and I
| speak as the driver of a Tesla with full-self-driving. It's just
| not that useful. Traffic-aware safety features are more valuable
| and easier to achieve.
| ibbih wrote:
| lol that's not real self driving. waymo is very useful.
| summerlight wrote:
| I still don't understand what's the game that Apple is trying to
| play here. Manufacturing a car is completely a different business
| to small digital devices and the existing players are not willing
| to play nicely with Apple so they need to bootstrap everything
| from scratch, similar to Tesla. In this context, 2028 is still an
| extremely aggressive goal even for Apple and I won't be surprised
| if it's delayed to 2035 or something. Tesla had the advantage of
| being the first mover in the EV market and Waymo has the most
| advanced autonomous driving technologies. I don't see any
| competitive edges Apple has against them.
| lawxls wrote:
| Apple has a fruit logo
| supafastcoder wrote:
| Back in 2018, when Tesla was still worth $55B and Apple had
| more than $100B in the bank, they could've acquired Tesla in an
| all cash deal, but for some reason didn't. I think they
| would've made a great match.
| selectodude wrote:
| Because Tesla was, is, and will continue to be overvalued as
| a car company. Why pay the "tech premium" for a manufacturing
| firm when you already have all of those core competencies in
| house?
| smoldesu wrote:
| I agree with you, but Tesla _did_ get things in gear fast
| enough to ship cars, early. If Apple 's car ships in 2028
| (and that's optimistic), then they'll be 20 years late to
| Tesla's party. The early mover advantage is worth
| something, not what investors value it at but still a hefty
| sum.
| selectodude wrote:
| Apple could spin up a joint venture with, say, Rivian or
| even Ford for 1/10th of that tomorrow.
|
| I'll be honest, I think the whole Apple car thing is a
| pipe dream. Apple doesn't have some sort of magic that is
| two decades beyond anybody else driving in circles
| underneath their weird spaceship campus. If they have
| their own full self driving, it doesn't matter who
| assembles the car. They can sell the tech to everybody.
| threeseed wrote:
| > then they'll be 20 years late to Tesla's party
|
| There is no being late.
|
| People buy multiple cars in their lifetime and new car
| companies will come and go.
| mandeepj wrote:
| > they could've acquired Tesla in an all cash deal, but for
| some reason didn't.
|
| Muskeeter wanted Apple CEO position in return
|
| > I think they would've made a great match.
|
| Ask that to Mr. Cook :-)
| actionfromafar wrote:
| That VR thing? Could have combat fighter visibility
| around/through the car, and with sensor fusion.
| CharlesW wrote:
| > _I still don 't understand what's the game that Apple is
| trying to play here._
|
| It's a fair question, which was also raised when the iPod was
| introduced. It helps to see Apple as an "affordable luxury
| smart things" company. Dumb, ICE-based cars were a poor fit,
| but smart, mostly solid-state vehicles may not be.
|
| Automotive is just another product category large enough to
| matter to Apple. A possibility not mentioned in the article is
| that Apple may initially partner, as they did with Motorola for
| the ROKR (but hopefully more successfully). Sony, the company
| Apple wanted to be when it grew up, is doing this with Honda
| for their first car, the Afeela.
|
| > _Tesla had the advantage of being the first mover in the EV
| market..._
|
| Apple has gone up against several first-movers that are now
| gone or are shadows of their former selves. It's neat that
| Tesla will be remembered as people's first EV, but it's not
| enough to ensure their market position 20 years from now. Tesla
| has no special sauce that I'm aware of.
| oh-4-fucks-sake wrote:
| 2-3 years ago, I was thinking something similar along the
| lines of "yeah, why doesn't Apple just stick with
| computers/phones/peripherals/software." But if anything's
| become clear in the last few years in the EV market are
| issues with: reliability, software/firmware, usability,
| aesthetics, build-quality, and high startup capital
| requirements. Apple is a perennial expert
| UX/design/durability/usability. Sure there's been a few
| boondoggles over slight decreases in QA and quality
| (butterfly keyboards)--but at the end of the day, most of us
| still love at least some of their products because they
| still, usually "just work". Apple is also quite good (whether
| or not you like it) at building walled gardens. Imagine if
| Apple released a rock-solid car _and_ an absolutely kick-ass
| charging network that rivals Tesla 's? There's be demand. The
| biggest, most-obvious reason why Apple could succeed at
| building a car is that they have _massive_ amounts of cash.
| The #1 reason these fly-by-night EV startups fail is because
| they can 't handle 5-10 years of negative margins coupled
| with massive capital costs. Apple could burn billions before
| their EV division becomes profitable and not even blink.
| mmcconnell1618 wrote:
| I wonder if Apple has been secretly acquiring land or
| negotiating leases for a charging network. That would be a
| significant chunk of infrastructure to add to their
| services segment. Apple One -> Now includes charging your
| vehicle at no additional cost.
| DSingularity wrote:
| And what brought about this idea?
|
| Seems absurd frankly.
| RajT88 wrote:
| > Tesla has no special sauce that I'm aware of.
|
| At first, Musk's stated goal was to make EV's viable. I feel
| like that Tesla is well on the way to that, in ways nobody
| thought possible.
|
| Assuming he hasn't changed his mind, there may come a day he
| just calls it quits.
|
| But to your point, I would agree - Tesla has no particular
| special sauce. I am waiting until Waymo FSD finds its way
| into consumer cars you can drive all over the country before
| I buy one of them.
| yreg wrote:
| Depends on what is meant by special sauce.
|
| Tesla is still doing thing in a novel way, things that
| others follow on. Take e.g. the battery design or
| gigapresses.
|
| I'm not claiming they will keep that edge.
| threeseed wrote:
| > the battery design
|
| The battery cells and system in the new Cybertruck has
| been widely panned.
|
| The industry is now on par and often exceeding Tesla.
|
| And when Toyota releases solid-state batteries it won't
| even be close.
| surfingdino wrote:
| It's the new Apple Pippin. If Apple wants to win at personal
| transportation game it needs to skip a generation ahead and
| offer something vastly different than the old car platform
| loaded with the latest tech packaged in the sleek Apple look.
| sureglymop wrote:
| Apple already have a global scale mesh network that's used for
| e.g. AirTags. iPhones are just absolutely everywhere, they have
| the true internet of things.
|
| I imagine that could be very interesting for self driving
| technology.
| crazygringo wrote:
| I mean, given Tesla's market cap I think similar expected long-
| term profitability is Apple's game here. And yes, bootstrapping
| everything from scratch is exactly what Apple has to do.
|
| The competitive advantage Apple would have is simply in the
| car's design -- reimagining cars from scratch based on not just
| batteries but especially interface technology. And nobody has a
| proven track record of profitable consumer design at the level
| of Apple's.
|
| Just brainstorming, everything from heads-up displays for
| driving directions and safety alerts, to eye tracking to
| determine whether the driver has seen an upcoming sudden
| obstacle detected by LIDAR, to who knows what manufacturing and
| materials innovations they can come up with. A lot of
| individual elements that other manufacturers can provide as
| well, but Apple manages to make them seamless and natural and
| "just work" for the average person.
| jandrewrogers wrote:
| Modern cars are largely undifferentiated mechanically, whether
| ICE or EV. Every auto manufacture assembles a car from
| primarily third-party parts plus a dwindling number of semi-
| custom assemblies. These are skinned with a look and feel
| appropriate for the brand. It has never been easier to build an
| automobile manufacturing company from scratch. You don't have
| to build much yourself. It is primarily a problem of managing
| the complex global supply chains. And of course the branding
| and marketing to penetrate an already saturated market.
|
| With the physical parts of the car commoditized to oblivion,
| the primary opportunity for product differentiation is in the
| sensors, software, and UX. All the automotive OEMs know this.
| For better or worse, the traditional automotive companies are
| _terrible_ at this part of the business and they do it
| reluctantly. It isn 't in their DNA, and their traditional
| production processes are unsuited to it.
|
| When the two big execution problems of building a modern
| automotive company are "software, sensor, and UX design" and
| "efficiently managing complex global supply chains", it is easy
| to see why Apple might be uniquely positioned to be successful
| at it.
| Animats wrote:
| Apple may be the way Chinese manufacturers get into the US
| market. Apple will make a lot of noise about their car being a US
| product, but it will really be made by BYD and Foxconn in
| Guangdong.
| ingenieroariel wrote:
| Apple having so much cash perhaps the business model is to lease
| them?
| jcutrell wrote:
| Reduce scope AND push out a deadline. Congrats to the product
| managers on that one I guess - you did the impossible.
| spike021 wrote:
| I'm frequently nearby the Apple Infinity Loop. A couple years ago
| I constantly saw the Apple Lexus cars with the radar (?) and
| other equipment driving around the neighborhood every day. These
| days I very rarely see them. Maybe once or twice in the past few
| months. Definitely feels like they've dialed back quite a bit.
| jeffreygoesto wrote:
| Kifer Four
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