Remember those minivans driving around San Francisco with cameras on top that were reportedly leased to Apple? Well, a new rumor coming from Business Insider claims that the site was contacted by an Apple employee who says the company is planning a project that will “give Tesla a run for its money.”
Tesla, of course, is the electronic auto maker who is currently waging an employee-poaching war with Apple (and winning, for now). What exactly this means is unclear at the moment, but it would appear that this employee is insinuating that Apple is working on some sort of vehicle that is either electric, self-driving, or both.
Apple doesn’t currently have the proper permits to test self-driving cars on the road.
Business Insider posits that perhaps Apple is working on an iPhone integration for vehicles that is more advanced than what Tesla offers, and that the projecting designed to take on Tesla could be unrelated to the minivans in question entirely. While that seems like a possibility, given the upcoming release of wireless CarPlay support, such a project would hardly “give Tesla a run for its money.”
A more likely explanation still seems to be that Apple is working on creating Street View-style maps for the iPhone and Mac, and these cars are gather data in major cities for that endeavor.
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Instead of spending $ on R&D, Why not just buy Tesla?
Because it’s lazy. Same reason why Apple should have made their own headphones instead of buying overpriced Beats. A Apple made headphone would have sold easily.
I don’t think Apple bought Beats for the mediocre headphones. I think they bought them for Jimmy Iovine and his mega connections with content creators and owners and their streaming service tech.
Gadgets are one thing, but the talent, culture, and skillsets to produce cars is an entirely different thing.
Think thats what they said about Apple and mobile phones as well…
Apple purchased beats for Beats Music. Have you not seen the Watch GUI? Beats headphones do suck by the way lol
What about lithium ion batteries? Did you know that Tesla is planning to build the giga-factory outside of Las Vegas. Apple could be working with Samsung to build a battery factory of their own. Not saying its true, but it makes A LOT more sense than building cars. Did you guys ever think of that?
Perhaps the most amazing thing about Tesla is how they manage to be in the Blog sphere 24/7even with no news events.
Bloggemercial !
just like Apple!!
i wonder if we will ever see an Apple Car… at least it sounds sick
Seems ridiculous on the face of it. No way is Apple making an automobile, and Tesla is not exactly changing the world to begin with.
No one competes in Teslas market, because it’s a small, niche market that they created for themselves. Their products don’t have the wide appeal that Apple’s do and likely never will.
Are you gonna stick by that in 3 years when they come out with something for $30,000?
Never happen.
Besides which, you can already buy an affordable electric car, it’s just that no one wants them. A friend of mine bought an electric car 10 years ago for $14,000. It runs on almost less than a dollars worth of electricity a day, and still works perfectly fine all this time later although the company that made it folded because no one wants an electric car, unless they can get one without ANY compromise at all. It has to do zero to sixty like a Camero, look like million bucks and carry an entire family of four and hundreds of pounds of luggage to be considered “viable.”
Which is the basis of my assertion that Teslas cars are niche vehicles for wealthy people. Teslas success is down to them realizing that an expensive electric *sports* car or an expensive *performance* car will sell, even though “regular” electric cars do not. The only hitch is that as we have seen, an electric car that can outperform a gasoline powered car, costs a fortune to manufacture and maintain. Ergo, you have to be rich.
Tesla sells really well to rich, guilty white folks from California who want a fancy car and some environmental “cred” to make themselves feel better. As a revolutionary “car of the future” kind of thing however, it’s a flop and a phoney IMO.
&Gazoo bee never gonna happen? Tesla already announced they are making a 30k electric car…fail
People said no one would buy a $500 phone in 2007.
Battery technology.
Could Apple have taken the common car battery to the next level?
Apple can barely get the iPhone battery to the next level. I doubt they’ve suddenly outsmarted Tesla on car batteries.
They announced a while back they were working on battery tech together given the whole mutual gains thing.
Another rumor has Apple competing with Huggies in the diaper market! If you paid attention to your own blog, you’d know that 95% of Apple rumors do NOT come true!
If this rumor about “giving Tesla a run for its money” implies that Apple is planning to make electric cars anytime soon, the answer is no. Just no.
Reblogged this on pundit from another planet.
Apple will come out with a car only when they can revolutionise that market. This means flying cars.
Ask a pilot if a flying car is a good idea. The idea that untrained people could take to the sky is frightening.
People wouldn’t fly. The car would fly aka a computer would fly, the passengers sit there and read their embarrassing Facebook posts from friends of acquaintances of friends of friends of acquaintances of people they don’t even know. Before you say that the computer could mess up, uhh yeah, it could, and that’s why there would be extensive safety measures including multiple computers.
What about auto pilot?
“contacted by an Apple employee who says the company is planning…”
That does not sound like Apple at all. Only that affirmation by itself is very suspicious.
My guess as to what they’re doing with that car: building a virtual reality of wherever they’re driving it.
I emailed Tim Cook and told him I think they should be working on 3D mapping drones to build virtual realities. Get permits to fly them through national parks and build virtual realities of parks. It would be absolutely phenomenal to experience Yellowstone if you have no prospects of ever getting to in real life. Beyond that the possibilities for virtual realities are endless.
I had the idea just for example that Walmart should have 3D mapping drones that fly through the stores every few days (store layout changes frequently) which build a virtual map of the store layout, coupled with thousands of iBeacons placed thoughout the store. This information in the Walmart app for iPhone and Watch would mean smart shopping lists. Imagine having a shopping list on your Watch which through algorithms ordered your list into the fastest order in which to navigate through the store to place the items in your cart, and akin to driving directions, the watch would invisibly lead you through from item to item with Taptic Feedback. A frequently updated 3D map, coupled with iBeacons near items on your list would make this possible. Granted it’s a trade off for Walmart, give customers ultimate convenience or continue to let them meander where they’ll usually end up buying more than desired.
I think this could be a case of Apple just doing mapping, but also self-driving cars. This van isn’t self driving, but is instead creating a complete 3D model of wherever it is driving. This isn’t just duplicating Google street view.
There are articles where Google reveals that their auto-driving cars can only work in places that have already been mapped out. They drive all over Silicon Valley, but drop a car in Cleveland and it will struggle or not work at all. This is because it is hard to map the world in real-time, but if all it has to do is map the difference in what it expects the world to be, and what it actually is, it is much more manageable.
This could give Apple, and Google, a huge advantage over Tesla. Assuming Tesla isn’t also doing something like this. But Apple/Google already have incentive to map the world to improve their Maps offerings. Tesla would have to do it with the hope that self-driving cars will be feasible/legal/etc. A huge sunk cost.
I’m not really sure the self-driving car market suits Tesla or Apple though. The biggest advantage of self-driving cars will be taxis/car sharing, where higher use can offset the additional cost. Design and user-experience don’t matter as much with something that isn’t owned, and are the big value add for both Apple and Tesla.
Personally I would love to see Apple not make their own cars but rather work with a handful of existing manufacturers like Fiat, Toyota, Honda, or VW to offer aesthetic and technological advice for interior design while getting CarPlay in more autos at the same time. I can just imagine a deal where all Hondas have Apple designed interfaces for the Infotainment and Dash for all Toyota models (not just a crazy edition).
I don’t think it is a self driving car or electric car. The first thing Steve did when he came back to Apple was kill projects that didn’t make sense and focused on a small focused set of project. Cars in my opinion would completely unfocus Apple in my opinion.