LET IT be known that developing cars is largely a retrospective activity. Only when the competition moves on do we realise the short-comings of our own product and areas for refinement. We rely on marketing to tell us how other cars are perceived by the customer. These, cars that were conceived four or five years ago, used to direct cars that still have another four years to become a reality. By the time a car is launched, the opinions used to forge it are nearly a decade old. Still, when the whole industry does it, no one seems to mind.
Tesla slapped the car industry in the face. Soon it will be Apple’s turn, if the rumours of an Apple car are to be believed. Tesla staff have been wooed to the big Apple; personnel from Daimler, too. It wouldn’t be too far fetched to imagine that Marc Newson’s recent appointment to the orchard has something to do with wheels.
Newson was responsible for the superb Ford O21c (above), a concept developed in tandem with Ford that eschewed the conventions of automotive design. That Newson is so adept at detail design too makes him the ideal candidate for a product as complex as a car.
So what will it look like? How will it differentiate itself? How will it operate? These are just some of the questions being asked by established car companies as they come to terms with this invisible threat. Even if they knew the answer and what a likely retort might be, implementing it would require another loop of marketing feedback. Knowing, or not knowing, what the Apple car will be is purely abstract: it will invariably be a revolutionary product. It has to be. Apple is under pressure to use its $150billion liquid assets to increase shareholder return.
Aside from the overall form, one of the biggest differences will stem from an idealist design culture conceived under Steve Jobs and Jonathan Ive. They will, I imagine, have dictated what they want, and find a way to make it -a far cry from other companies bound by platform-sharing and marketing appraisal. Volkswagen Group might have a competitor in cut-line quality and flush glazing. The interior is probably a little easier to imagine that the exterior, and one marked change must be interior quality. A comprehensive interface is surely a given, mixing voice, touch, and analogue controls. The analogue will be most interesting; already the Apple Watch shows how a classical form can be reinterpreted in an intuitive manner, and the materials used for the bracelets give some clue at least to the taste, if not the breadth, of the interior fabrics.
With so much talk around the Californian collection, notably Tesla, Google, Faraday Futures and Apple, it is worth mentioning the efforts from Europe. In the smooth-as-a-pebble Citroen C4 Cactus, Citroen has found what must be the most Apple-like car since the Ford O21c concept, while BMWi progresses with establishing tangible sustainability as a core component by which cars are judged, not to mention the extraordinary powertrains. BMW, it is worth noting, uses energy from a hydroelectric powerstation in its manufacture of i brand cars for zero carbon footprint.
Then there is the matter of cost. How can smart-phone wielding twenty-somethings on zero-hour contracts make the leap to car ownership? You can expect a new take on vehicle leasing for a start, paying per usage with guaranteed buy-back values so that only the difference between new and used is paid for. Costs will also be saved by the dealership network -alone enough to turn an industry on its head. Forget about showrooms. The car will be the centre-piece in Apple stores (why not suspended behind glass?). Order on-line and they will bring one to your phone location. When something goes wrong, they will replace with a new one, all your customised settings automatically transferred.
There are some things out of Apple’s control. Like stone-chips. Like bird-droppings. Like scrapes from a shopping trip (though the 1964 GM Runabout got around that one). It is one thing protecting your iPhone in a pocket; quite another thing to leave a car at the behest of its surroundings. Much of the appeal of Apple products is that immaculate first impression: expect their cars to feature self-healing paint at the very least. This is expensive, and it will make it very hard for competitors to offer options like this on their own products at a price-point already accepted by the customer.
The biggest question by many is what it will be like to drive. There are three answers to this. First, and most obviously, you won’t be doing all the driving, the car will, provided Apple’s legal eagles can get the law to bend in favour of autonomy. Google has: no interface, no lawsuit. Answers two and three depend on how ambitious Apple is willing to be. The conservative answer it that it will drive just fine. Planted, safe, responsive; all those things marketing has divined from public consultation. But this assumes the car behaves only in one way. The third answer I’m hoping for is that the Apple car will feel exactly as you want it to feel. Imagining downloading an app that makes the car feel like a Lotus Cortina. Or a Duesenberg Model J. Or a Cadillac Seville. The better your driving, the more options open up. Cars are already so variable in their dynamic set-up, that imitation of another car is surely only a matter of time, performance limited only by power-train.
Ah yes, the powertrain. Apple is brilliant at producing products that consume energy; not so hot at providing energy. If Apple really wants to succeed, they must take note from Elon Musk and consider how to cleanly match the energy demand of their cars. One option is that Apple matches Honda’s aspirations in its Home Energy Station, in which case the Apple car is partner the Apple home. Then that $150billion starts to dwindle quite quickly, though such a proposal might send stocks soaring. In an industry is notorious for turning a lot of money into a little money, pity Honda that has the nous but not the promotion or brand awareness to capitalise on their ingenuity.
Assuming there is any change left over, the final point is how one product can satisfy a global market of varying road-widths, people-size and preferences. Answer is: there will likely have to be more than one Apple car. A Nano, perhaps? Wait -Tata beat Apple to it. At this rate, Samsung might well do too.
Robert Forrest writes about car design (sometimes) here.
Paul Niedermeyer’s musings on the Ford 021c is here.
Of all the cars “designed” with input from non-car folks, the best (IMHO) have been those designed by clothing designers. While I have admired some Apple products, it hasn’t prompted me to own anything with the Apple name attached.
BTW, Tata’s Nano is considered to be a flop.
I can imagine a car where all serviceable items are proprietary. And a non-removable battery pack.
🙂
And you won’t be able to pump fuel into it with just any ol’ nozzle.
No, it will require a proprietary “Lightning” nozzle that lists for four times as much as the regular nozzles, but Apple will sell you an adapter for about twice the price of a Lightning nozzle.
There will be a chip in the Lightning nozzle to prevent you from using knock-off nozzles, but even the genuine ones will be poorly made, and they’ll quit working for no apparent reason.
But the nice thing about the Lightning nozzle is that it will allow you to pump fuel from either side of the vehicle.
“pump fuel from either side” now that is an old concept,Jaguar XJ6 or XJ12,1st series.
Yes, but you couldn’t fill the entire tank from either side…or could you?
To clarify for those who are not iDevice aficionados, that remark was meant to poke fun at one of the few advantages I’ve found to the Lightning connector over that of USB: The connector can be inserted either face up or face down (in fact, there is no discernible “face”).
Best comment of the thread.
An Apple iCar would cost twice as much as it should, and you can’t replace the battery, and You could only fuel up at the iGasStore. OTOH, A Microsoft Car-10 would require frequent updates and would crash once a week. I’m holding out for a Linux Limo!
Linux? Will that require memorizing command strings to adjust the wiper interval?
I prefer to think of the command line as a New Age manual transmission.
lol
Samsung already sells cars. Developing a new car from scratch is extremely expensive and time consuming. It is much more complex than developing a phone. If they do a build a car, I think they will most likely take a route similar to Samsung.
http://www.foxnews.com/leisure/2015/02/23/apple-may-be-building-car-but-samsung-already-has/
https://group.renault.com/en/company-vehicles/discover/renault-samsung-motors/
I think you’re right on this. People are (generally) willing to accept alpha- and beta- stage glitches and inadequacies on their watches and handhelds, but I don’t think the same could be said for a car. The economies of scale in producing cars relative to Apple’s current output are incomparable, and the risk profile of an automobile for the consumer extends far beyond FOMO.
The computer in the Colorado a friend owns does glitch. Every warning light comes on and it stops running. He has to disconnect the battery and wait 30 seconds to fix it. He was told it’s easier and cheaper to do that than fix it if it only happens every once in a while. My Samsung phone needs a battery-ectomy about once a week.
There are some things out of Apple’s control. Like stone-chips. Like bird-droppings. Like scrapes from a shopping trip (though the 1964 GM Runabout got around that one). It is one thing protecting your iPhone in a pocket; quite another thing to leave a car at the behest of its surroundings. Much of the appeal of Apple products is that immaculate first impression: expect their cars to feature self-healing paint at the very least. This is expensive, and it will make it very hard for competitors to offer options like this on their own products at a price-point already accepted by the customer.
Someone needs to tell my iPad it’s self healing, because I’ve had it for 3 months and it kinda looks like shit now.
Maybe they’ll open up a cottage industry of large tacky covers to protect them.
I don’t particularly care for the idea of a self-driving car, but I’m pretty intrigued by the idea of an iCar. I think you can count on Apple to have a fresh approach to things. Even if nothing comes of it, this should prove interesting. I mean, it’s an understatement to say that they changed the way we look at cell phones. Not too many people are walking around with BlackBerries and flip phones these days.
I assume they will have sealed engine compartments, non replaceable batteries, and be sold at Walmart?
The Citroen Cactus has just gone on sale in Australia today and what a fascinating design.I do not like nor do I trust vehicles which make drivers almost redundant.I have read many scientific reports re mobile phones and their towers and the many other sources of electro magnetic radiation and despite assurances from the proponents of those items regarding their safety,I am not so sure.So with modern cars with all their systems designed to protect you but sending signals to cars in front and behind you,what are the potential ramifications for the health of those humans ensconced in those vehicles.Have read scientific reports which say using a mobile phone in a train or bus/coach dramatically increases the level of EMR within that vehicle which affects all passengers.How do you all feel about cars taking more control over you in the “driving” experience?
Personally, I’m not in favour of it. But it does seem inevitable in principle. I think within my lifetime human piloted cars in heavily urbanised environments will become a privilege for the very few.
http://www.abc.net.au/news/2016-03-01/google-bears-some-responsibility-over-self-driving-car-crash/7210086
That is interesting, to some degree I agree with Volvo’s having stated that they will take responsibility for any crash caused by their self-driving cars, but in this case I wonder if there is an indication from the car to the ‘driver’ about whether it is going to make a certain action or wait to avoid another vehicle etc, so that if the driver is paying attention at the time (!) they will have the opportunity to override.
http://www.volvocars.com/intl/about/our-innovation-brands/intellisafe/intellisafe-autopilot/news/volvo-cars-responsible-for-the-actions-of-its-self-driving-cars
It will be a big call for human-driven cars to be outlawed. I would expect that many people would have philosophical objections, plus there are not many areas of law that are changed retrospectively, ie banning human-driven cars.
You could compare it to the situation where it is only on urban freeways that didn’t exist decades ago and where alternative roads exist that you are banned from riding a horse, while there is nothing from stopping you riding one anywhere else.
Also how long after the last human-driven car is sold could such a ban reasonably be introduced – 5, 10, 20 years?
Very interesting article Robert. One point I noted was the carbon neutral power from hydro; surely the construction of the dam (huge amounts of concrete) and loss of vegetation need to be amortised against the power generated? While lower than coal power, I am not quite sure you could call it zero carbon.
I can’t even imagine banning human driven vehicles. For instance: I often drive my pickup on the lawn or across a field to load or place material. This is just one of very many scenarios where I don’t see self driving vehicles being able to do what humans can do.
I think self driving (only) cars will implement in certain urban areas, primarily as taxis/Ubers, etc. regular cars will probably have increasing amount of self-driving capability, but would still need/or be able to have a driver.
Banning driving is simply out of the question in the foreseeable in so many areas of the US where folks live on large lots, in rural or semi-rural areas. There’s no way that a vehicle can know that you want it to ford the creek and drive to the cows to drop off some bales of hay. At least not until artificial intelligence is drastically improved.
I don’t think they’ll be banned. As I mentioned below, I think the rural and semi-rural populations will still require human piloted vehicles. I do think it is a distinct possibility that they will be strongly discouraged within heavily urbanised environments. I think part of this will be a campaign akin to the anti-smoking initiatives that have progressed from ‘soft’ discouragement via public service campaigns towards the sort of legislated restrictions we are now seeing.
Though I’m not a pro-smoking advocate, I think there has been an ongoing and multi-pronged effort to reduce smoking; the focus on individual health (including the brilliant passive smoking strategy) and the burden on the public (health) system. It’s the second prong that I think will be the main platform for the self-drive automobile initiative. The main difference will be that whereas the cigarette companies have fought these initiatives, the emerging automobile companies will encourage them. Google, Apple and whomever else have infinitely more resources and leverage in these sort of circumstances. It will be a slow-starting yet inexorable campaign. From what I read, it has already commenced.
I hate being tinhat about this. But we are seeing populations migrating to heavily urbanised populations around the world. We are seeing insane levels of localised pollution in some of these emerging clusters as well as some established ones. It won’t be just about health either – whether a reduction of accidents or emissions based. It will also be about productivity gains via less gridlock and heavy traffic. What I’m saying here is what I’m already reading in the press articles starting to emerge.
We will probably always have the choice as to where we choose the live, but as more of us choose to live in a city then the idea of what constitutes a properly functioning city may well have to change.
The self driving or Icar is not something I’ll ever buy, The Cactus is quite cool theyve had some at my local PSA store for a while I had a nosey recently.
I’ve never liked the idea of a fully computerized and software-driven automobile where unpredictable software glitches/crashes renders the car all but undrivable and unuseable. I agree with y’all that the Apple iCar (like iMacs, iPads, etc) will most likely have sealed battery and proprietary components replaceable only at an Apple iCar dealership at twice the price it should be. Also I can envision the car body and components fabricated by 3-D printers with final assembly in China or India. Basically what we’re looking at is a very profitable (read “green greed”) $20K-$30K recyclable disposable car with a three-year lifecycle like all computer and electronic products.
Here’s a rare photo of Steve Jobs driving an early “off the shelf” technology demonstrator at the Apple test track near Antelope, Oregon circa 1984…..
Did he visit the salad bar afterwards?
Yeah, that sure looks like Steve Jobs. BTW Jobs didn’t have a driver’s license and drove like he owned the road.
Actually he lacked a license plate. His hippie Buddhism apparently made no difference in how he treated people, yet he is idolized. Typical American rationalization: It’s OK to be a jerk so long as you Get Things Done.
Now Wozniak is a nice guy, but how much is he admired (outside the engineering community)?
It’s genius in retrospect how Rolls-Royce copied the B-body look for that generation. Americans, and Americans alone, expected “British understatement” from a Rolls, everyone else (including the Brits) saw it as an in-your-face display of wealth all along. So they built it to blend in on streets full of Caprices, Delta 88s and LTDs but stick out by way of sheer size and bulk in Europe.
America’s Wackiest Legislature™ here in beautiful, backward Indiana has been attempting to force through a law that would prevent auto manufacturers (read: Tesla) from selling direct. Gotta preserve that dealership structure!
Probably the same reason the Nat’l Assoc. of Realtors & banking industry have long supported the mortgage-interest tax deduction.
the only thing that appeals to me would be the concept of programming in the driving characteristics of your favourite car.
To me the automobile has always represented freedom of movement. These new driverless cars or semi-auto driving car is a complete repudiation of the concept of freedom. Cars are loaded with electronics that give away your location, distances traveled, speed, destinations…etc. Why are we so anxious to give up even more.
I don’t have a problem with driverless taxis, delivery vehicles, long distance trucks because they do not infringe on the individual’s freedom.
Is the C4 Picasso actually selling? I recall that the Tata Nano hasn’t done nearly as well as Tata expected (although that may have changed since I last checked). Likewise the smart fortwo and the defunct Swatch car. The trick with doing Different is that it may just end up out of step with what people are buying. The Ford 021c was a nifty auto show bauble, but I don’t think it would find much traction as a real car.
I have a hard time seeing the Tesla as a game-changing revolutionary thing. It’s been quite successful in taking the EV, which previously had the image of golf cart or environmentalist hair shirt, and making it into a series of fashionable baubles for the eco-conscious rich — a canny bit of marketing, that — but the idea that they have redefined the car or proven that EVs can be practical and all the other click-bait stuff seems a stretch too far to me. (Plugin vehicles are still impractical for most apartment-dwellers, which is, er, many of us.)
I have no strong feelings about self-driving cars. I suspect that it’ll be longer than people think for that to become common just because it makes regulators understandably twitchy in a way that’s sort of self-defeating. For example, there’s a lot to be said for a car that could drive you home if you’re too sleepy/drunk/sick to safely manage it yourself or take you to the hospital in an emergency, but the way state laws are written, you probably couldn’t use a self-driving car that way without violating the law anyway. (That’s the direction California is currently going.) So, while I can see the temptation to have a car that can drive you to work while you play games on your phone or catch an extra 20 minutes of sleep, what’s the point if it will still get you a ticket? Would you pay a bunch extra for a feature you could hardly ever really use?
The Cactus is actually selling well in Europe, where the B segment CUV segment is literally exploding.
I’m warming to the idea of self-driving cars, given the poor quality of human driving I often see nowadays. One fellow commuter drifted off the road not once but again, and almost immediately after; lane discipline in general seems to be getting worse, usually onto the shoulder, which ought to worry cyclists.
Maybe folks paid attention to those Nissan ads mocking the idea of “staying between the lines.”
Problem is many of those people will still be driving regular ol cars, the only hope you have is your autonomous car has excellent collision avoidance, but the laws of physics still apply.
Here (Austria) you do see them but not in large quantities. Looked at one before I bought my current car, liked the styling but was not convinced by the choice of very small engines or the fact that the most powerful unit had only 110 hp which, to me, is too little. It did not help that the dealer was only prepared to allow a very short test drive. In the end I wondered into a Mazda dealership (quite unplanned) and went away with a 3…
Regulations are what make it seem like a pipe dream to me for the foreseeable future as well. Drinking and, err, riding, in particular seems very dicey. Not everyone is going to buy autonomous, the problem with many utopian fantasys, and until they do(forced to?) laws will need to apply to both. DUI while parked is rationalized by the assumption that the inebriated operator was driving prior to officer intervention or was about to drive had there been no encounter. They’ll still be busting people in non-autonomous cars in that scenario for the forseeable future. What happens when they pull over an autonomous car with an inebriated person 4 inches away from the self drive button? I suppose they could incorporate a breathalizer device into the cars to lock it out, but I suspect most people won’t be too keen on having to do that every time they drive, especially responsible/non-drinkers. Same issue arises for driving while texting laws (although that’s almost never enforced).
Main thing is legislation would be gridlocked trying to incorporate these things into law. You start writing special rules whereby autonomous cars put out some kind of a radio signal to alert Police the car driving by is being driven autonomously and shouldn’t be pulled over, and you’ll get two sides of representatives furiously bickering about the implications – on one side how the elite</em in their expensive new self driving cars get a free pass while the marginalized working class will be targeted in older driver operated models, and on the opposite side of the fence you'll hear that it would impede law enforcement(minor traffic violations open the door to fishing), not to mention reduce revenue. The technology may very be in reach/already here to make this reality physically possible but it's still fleshy low tech human beings that ultimately have final say to unleash it or not.
I agree. From a class standpoint, of course, the rich and upper class already get a pass to a substantial extent on a lot of laws — affluent-looking white people are less likely to be stopped in the first place and the rich can finagle DUIs that would have a working-class person taking the bus for the next three years — without creating technological free passes.
From an automotive standpoint (to forestall the inevitable political arguments), I think those issues are likely to keep self-driving or even partially self-driving cars mostly in the realm of technical parlor trick for luxury cars. (By “partially self-driving,” I mean stuff like automatic parking and radar cruise control, which we already have.) It’s easy to see why someone would think it’s a neat idea to show off to their friends, but once you start getting down into tougher price classes where people have to weigh whether something is worth paying extra, I think people will start saying, “Well, am I even allowed to use this stupid thing?”
I don’t think it’s the elite who’ll have self-drive, I think it will be the rest of us who will be forced into them. The threshold will be when urban planning mandates self-drive systems on the road. Once there is a fleet of self-drive cars, it will fundamentally shift the rights and privileges of car ownership. Human-piloted cars will become the aberration in the model; the nuisance factor which will be imposed with heavy registration and other financial burdens. It will be the preserve of the wealthy to be able to drive their classic Porsche or Ferrari.
So maybe I’m coming across as a bit dystopian. But when I read the press around self-drive, the benefits to the community and the environment seem to outweigh the trespassing on individual freedom. Less gridlock, less pollution, less financial burden on the domestic purse (sort of) and fewer accidents will be the platform upon which this system is foisted upon us.
In answer to Roger’s query below re: profits etc. Fleets of self-drive cars will be provided within public/private partnerships (like the toll roads of today). We will not own these vehicles so much as hire their use for a period of time. The revenue will be in the trickle, e.g. my Apple-based Creative Suite design software can no longer be purchased outright, the only way I can access it is to pay a monthly fee for use.
The Apple car will arrive before the self-drive car, but I think they would both be heading in the same direction.
Unless the fees outweigh the cost of a brand new autonomous car, which at best will be no less expensive than any brand new car today, there’s always going to be fiscal sense for many people to buy older cars for less money, and older non autonomous cars are guaranteed to exist in great numbers for quite some time – the switch isn’t going to happen overnight and modern cars are by and large pretty reliable and robust long term transportation, so I’m betting quite a few 2016(and 17, 18,19 ect. likely) beaters will be sharing the roads in the theoretically autonomous 2036 or whenever.
Anything to mitigate that quite large elephant in the room just won’t be happening I don’t think. For one, people still will own the cars they already have I presume, and basically any artificial action taken to make their cars burdonsome would basically plummet the resale of every single car that isn’t autonomous, which would probably cost every last legislator who voted yes to that proposition their career from an infuriated public(big reason a European style gas tax wasn’t instituted vs. CAFE in the US), and leave an extremely bitter anti corporate sentiment in the companys making these cars. There is the environmental and safety aspect sure, but both are divisive issues as far as legislation is concerned. The key to a utopian society is the same issue that prevents a truly dysopian society – pretty much everyone, everyone meaning in the 90% range, would have to be enthusiastically on board the progress train… initially(in the case of a dystopia). I don’t think that many people greet autonoumous with embracing arms as the press would make you think, and as AUWM speculated, when a few cars have it as an option people may realize it’s basically a gimmick in the real world as we know it, the shock and awe of the advance may just wear off prematurely.
Matt, I generally agree with you, which is why I characterised it as a dystopian vision. Mandatory self-drive rentacars is not a future I would personally welcome.
I think the single biggest barrier to implementation is not actually ‘constituency buy-in’, but the legacy infrastructure in the many heavily urbanised environments that already exists. There is so much effort and expenditure required to make this work, but I’m pessimistic that governments will be able to withstand the ‘entreaties’ of big business and feel that ultimately the relatively choiceless ‘rentalife’ proposition fulfils the commercial imperative model more efficiently.
I’m not entirely pessimistic about the future however. It seems like just a matter of time before household energy consumption can be sourced entirely from within rather than from a utility company, and the fundamental shift in the balance of power inherent in this may make for a completely different future view.
Another limiting factor regarding self-driving cars: Just because it exists, not everyone wants it. By the time automatic transmissions became available on low price makes (mid 1950s), I’m betting there were those that thought that “everyone will have one eventually”, But 60 years later, many folks would rather “stir” their own gears!
I don’t think this is likely any time soon for the same reason EVs (or, in many parts of the U.S., comprehensive rail service) are going to be commonplace — the projected or expected benefits presuppose Someone making big investments in new infrastructure and traffic systems, which when it comes down to it, no one seems very eager to do. I don’t know about your area, but in the States, legislators rarely seem to find the will to fix the roads we’ve already got, much less set up the sort of automated transport pod system that the Utopian or dystopian planners envision. (The fact that we even have an interstate highway system is a fairly remarkable thing politically and at this point seems like a unique historical anomaly.)
Also, in the U.S., there is really no one-size-fits-all transportation solution. Some cities are densely packed and reasonably grid-like, so it’s possible or even preferable to just use public transit most of the time, maybe calling a cab or an Uber for certain unusual or urgent circumstances. In areas like Los Angeles, which sprawls all over the place, that’s only feasible in certain relatively narrow zones (if you live, work, and socialize in corridors that have light rail or comprehensive bus coverage, great — if you live in the Valley and work in the South Bay, forget it). In rural or semi-rural areas — and we have lots of those — it’s often impossible or very difficult. Someone in San Francisco who takes BART and buses everywhere might be perfectly content to occasionally use a self-driving hire car, but for rural Kern County, that’s not going to fly.
So, even if the regulatory questions can somehow be resolved, there’s far too much economic and social inertia for there to be a big shift into the future envisaged by the old Rush song “Red Barchetta.”
Agreed, and the points you make are the saving grace against the rentalife future view I touched on above and dread. Particularly the fact that there will still be many in rural or semi-rural areas.
But I’m reminded of an old building developer’s trick when dealing with a property that has a heritage overlay preventing development of the site; let the building degrade naturally to the point where it must be torn down for reasons of safety. If the roads are so bad, and the authorities are unwilling to fix them, then private interests will step in. It won’t be the governments that pay for this new infrastructure; they can barely address the current needs of their constituencies as it is.
The congestion tax in London’s CBD is, for me, a strong demonstration of this sort of privilege/rights paradigm shift. It may have reduced congestion in that area, but it has barely dented the wallets of its wealthy residents.
The situation in London I think has to be understood in terms of a lot more factors than congestion, but that gets into political areas that I’m sure Paul would rather we not argue about here. (Those other factors tend to support your point, mind you, they just aren’t automotive even tangentially.)
The idea of a completely privatized highway system is also more nightmarish than I really want to contemplate deeply.
Actually, if Apple can live up to its past (success – there were quite a few magnificent failures, too) record, we’re all being way too conservative in what we’re visualizing. Probably the best comments here are describing an Android car or an mp3 car, not an iPhone or iPad car.
A car is usually described at its basics as a box on four wheels with a steering wheel. I’d expect Apple to manage to change at least one of those three parameters, and still make it acceptable to the buying public. Otherwise, they’re just another car manufacturer.
I think that would be tough. With other consumer products, the main boundaries are interconnectivity, price, and consumer expectation, and the first is probably the less daunting aspect. (A smartphone that can’t use existing wireless networks and that isn’t compatible with existing file and message formats is obviously going to have a tough time.) With cars, there are whole stacks of regulations with all kinds of specific requirements. One could conceive all kinds of clever original approaches to lighting, passenger space, and controls, but a lot of them would not fly in almost any established automotive market.
That can be both good and bad, of course. I remember in the ’60s there were a lot of arguments, some with reasonably compelling evidence, that there were better approaches to steering than the steering wheel, but buyer and regulatory resistance made them non-starters. On the other hand, a lot of the safety- and emissions-related regulations exist for good reasons, which shouldn’t be lightly dismissed even if it were legally permissible.
Admittedly, I’m no great prognosticator when it comes to technology. I still have no idea why tablets became popular. Smartphones make complete sense to me, but tablets seem to combine the least-useful aspects of laptops and modern touchscreen smartphones with the advantages of neither.
To a certain extent, Apple will have to adapt to an automotive mindset rather than vice-versa. People are already starting to complain about the “need” for frequent hardware upgrades and moving from a carrier-subsidized iPhone to a many times more expensive iCar that faces an expected lifespan that’s edging past 20 years and 200,000 miles will force them, for the first time perhaps since the Apple II days, to design for repairability.
Granted, Tesla is fighting this tooth and nail; http://syonyk.blogspot.com/2016/03/is-tesla-building-throwaway-cars.html
Wow, that was an interesting article, thanks for posting it. I don’t know if I’d call them “throw-away” but they certainly lock you in tightly. It really changes my perspective on the company, nobody in their right mind should support that business model. And I’d bet my last dollar that Apple would try the same things.
The software industry shows how planned obsolescence in the car industry is child’s play by comparison. Though I own Apple computers, that doesn’t mean I want an Apple car; “Keep It Simple, Stupid” is still a sound engineering principle forgotten most of all by the computer industry.
So my advice is to keep the tricky software in your smart-phone or pad computer, not your car’s dashboard. Modern cars are complicated enough already.
An Apple car would be the ultimate Liberal car, and that’s all I have to say about it.
If you’re going to bring politics into it, a Microsoft car would be no less so.
Yes, I can agree with that. Cars for the texting generation both.
Well constructed review and thought provoking.
My question is why would Apple want to get into such a capital intensive, low margin industry as the auto industry?
Yes, we all need cars, or at least mobility, but insn’t the holy grail really an urban mobility network solution, rather than a personalized individual product?
I can’t think of a logical answer to your first question other than “hubris.” And even if they saw an opportunity, it seems like it would be a lot cheaper and more practical to take over an existing company (e.g., to buy Chrysler from FIAT), retool it, and re-brand. That might make it a little harder to present the results as All-New, All-Different, but that gets us right back to the question of why they think it’s a good idea in the first place.
Have to say that out of the very many interesting articles here,this one and all its posters bring so many viewpoints.Back in 1980 I wanted to buy a Renault 16TS and looked at a 1975 model for private sale.The car wasn’t up to scratch and it had an automatic gearbox which needed repair,the repair was the computer component which operated the transmission,rang the Renault dealer and the part was $500 then,quite a lot of money.Electronic components are increasingly a part of the automotive culture and they are far from infallible.Audi acceleration issues,Toyota etc,what happens if your driverless car decides to malfunction and develops a mind of its own and takes you on the ride of your life,or possibly your last? I like catching the bus or riding my mountain bike.No trains or trams in Tasmania anymore.In Paris France they have had cars able to be used by city dwellers for many years now.So,jokingly,in the future I could telephone my car to come and pick me up to go shopping or dancing and I would have to have blind faith that it would understand my instruction,deliver me to my destination and be there when I wanted to go home.Would those cars have an inbuilt road rage capability? What if you have no iphone or if your prepaid credit has expired,will your car be sympathetic?.