Apple Cancels Work on Electric Car, Ending Decadelong Effort

Shifts team to generative AI.
If your car development team can be transferred to AI developement you weren't building much of a car.
- This is referring to the team working on the self driving functionality.
  
  Still, self driving and generative AI are very different. Just because they fall into the same big "AI" bucket doesn't mean it's the same.
- Not sure if 100% a joke or just partly but Volkswagen was probably providing the mechanical engineers who were retrofitting Lexus vehicles of the project as they had for the already-deployed driverless vans. See NYT & MacReports
- Except news always was that Apple was pushing pretty hard into self-driving vehicles, which would use much the same AI learning systems as you need for generative AI.
  
  Ehh, that's a bit of a stretch. They're very different technologies with only limited overlap.
  
  Unless Apple had invented artificial general intelligence and not told anyone then the technology isn't transferable.
- Skilled developers can easily transition to another field of software engineering.
  
  Even in 2024, there's still a lot of non-software (automotive) engineering involved in building a car -- even an electric one.
  
  Yeah but a car is mostly made of engines and bolts and wheels and stuff like that, you know.
  
  No one can become a skilled ML/AI dev overnight. That will still take a year or two or more of working with it daily. If you transition to a new field you basically become a junior dev all over again for a while. Domain knowledge is a big part of being a good programmer.
- One question for you smarty pants: is their car real, or artificial?
  
  Well, at this point it is theoretical.
- Once upon a time, stoves had a dial you set, and it was basically a resistor and some wires. Today, a stove has a computer built in it that operates the entire thing.
  While the computer in a modern oven is simple - it is an illustration that more, and more of what we have is computerized. When you add in reinforcement learning algorithms to adjust factors like say, If the fridge is aware of what time you generally open the fridge it can opt to kick on the heat pump a little before that to bring the temperature down and avoid running while it is open. This could save pennies of electricity in a year. But more importantly - could lead to less duty cycles on the condesor that could cause a fridge to say instead of lasting 10 years, last 12 years.
  If you are starting a car company today, what you have to be thinking about is a reality where we move to "Humans don't drive, the cars drive you" - I mean even a manual control situation could have the AI actually being a watcher in effect we "Let" people drive, but if the AI detects an unobserved obstacle etc it immediately takes over and adjusts. Well: You need to build that - and that, is AI.
  If a company isn't thinking about AI, and makes anything but basic appliances - they are likely on a limited time window because at some point Autonomous cars WILL be good enough, and the safety consideration will make both people, and governments, along with insurance companies to eliminate human driven vehicles.
  Apple isn't looking next year, or a year after. They are looking 5 to 10 years out and they don't see a path where they can effectively compete in the car industry and make the profits they are after. However, if they can solve the AI driving problem - they don't NEED to make a car, they can sell the brains and system that drives the car.

Thank fucking god. Imagine the kind of monetization that would exist inside an Apple car. You think subscription seatwarmers are bad, and they are, but I can guarantee Apple had much worse in mind, and that most companies would simply follow suit.
- Or blaming customers for problems, "You're shifting it wrong."
  
  Not sure if you're aware that EVs don't "shift" or if that's an indictment to the level of idiocy that would likely be employed by Apple.
- That does seem more like their kind of style
  
  TBF This is how luxury car manufacturers sell their options. Always have been.
  Space Karen sells his false self-driving option for €7500 as a software option.
  
  "Base model is this, but if you want seat heaters that's another ~~$8,000~~$10,000, if you want lane assist, that's another ~~$5,000~~ $25,000 and requires a 512GB storage bump for $2,000"
  Ftfy to more realistic numbers
- They would come up with a charging port that only existed in the parking lot of Apple stores
  
  Also it would on the bottom of the car
- Genuinely, this is the best news I've heard in a while for the reasons you listed. Apple is already fucking up the phone industry with anti-consumer policies that become industry trends. I shudder to imagine how deeply and irrepairably they would have fucked up the car market for consumers.
- Poor people shouldn't drive an Apple car /s
- Up to a certain point only. In most places you cannot hope to be able to sell a car that has not a minimum set of features mandated by the law.
  And Apple cannot hope to compel states to change the rules just because so they can sell their car.

I was genuinely looking forward to them refusing to install airbags because it compromised the dashboard being 100% screen, and then later installing airbags in a “notch”, but calling them iBags, and advertising them as a revolutionary new feature that only Apple could think different enough to invent.
- Courage. You need to put courage to charge extra few grands somewhere to complete the apple experience.

Not sure why everyone's cheering, more competition is never bad and there are already plenty of manufacturers adding subscriptions and such, I doubt Apple would even have been the worst.
At the very least, they probably would've had a slick UI in a world of crap infotainment UIs.
However they announced Carplay 2 a few years ago and I'm hoping manufacturers will go ahead with adding that as an option so you could just opt in to Apple UI all over the car and revert back at any time. This is probably the best of both worlds. There are plenty of companies that know quite well how to build a car, they just mostly still all suck at UI.
- A problem with apple...Like if my friend has a Toyota, i can borrow that. If they have an icar, I probably couldn't drive it because I don't have an iPhone required to start it or apple shoes required to activate the pedals. You know they'd be dicks like that.
  
  Warning: unauthorized, non apple certified tyres detected on your iCar. Disabling airbags due to security issue.
  Setting destination to Apple Genius bar.
- Competition usually isn't bad. Unfortunately, Apple has a tendency to not only be terribly anti-consumer, but also tends to be a trendsetter. They do shitty things, and other companies learn from their example. Thus, the competition becomes a race to the bottom.
- Apple can't compete in that space. Their schtick is producing moderately inexpensive nice looking goods for exorbitant prices that are designed to be impossible to repair by anybody with them.
  Tesla has already corned the market.
  Trying to block people from repairing? check, trying to block sales of used items? check. Getting rid of all the buttons for all the interfaces and making you work with a tablet in the center of the car? Check.
- Apple isn't competition, Apple is a closed market, more anticompetitive than Microsoft and only undone by the degree of their control.
  
  Microsoft wasn’t creating a car, and Apple wasn’t the dominant car manufacturer
  
  ...a closed market you don't have to participate in...
- The fear for me was that Apple would grow quickly in the EV space due to its mainstream popularity, and then start doing the ecosystem thing so driving anything but an Apple car makes you a second-class citizen. Obviously it would only support Carplay and not Android Auto, and probably lack any sort of non-Carplay connectivity so you just can't connect your Android phone to it at all. Presumably it would also have a proprietary charger that doesn't work with other cars or vice versa.
  
  I bet they wanted, but in EU they couldn't
- they probably would’ve had a slick UI
  Apple hasn't had a slick UI since Apple II PC.
  
  To clarify, I meant not just the UI itself being pretty, but also reaction speeds. IOS is still smoother than any Android distro I've touched and macOS, while sometimes lacking in the UI department, does nearly everything better than Windows. It doesn't do many things better than my Gentoo install with KDE Plasma, but that's hardly something for the common user who doesn't need all the customization and wants a smooth system straight out of the box.
- I was kind of hoping that Apple and Tesla would just feud with each other for control of the "economy-quality product marketed as a luxury-quality product" market share.
- they announced Carplay 2 a few years ago and I'm hoping manufacturers will go ahead with adding that as an option so you could just opt in to Apple UI
  Yeah but you actually have to have an iPhone in order to use it because they are the world's biggest dicks.
  Nah sod that, that we need open source UIs. The world doesn't get better if we have more proprietary nonsense, that doesn't help anyone.
  
  Yeah but you actually have to have an iPhone in order to use it because they are the world’s biggest dicks.
  You also need an Android phone for Android Auto.
  What we need then, isn't an open source UI, but rather a standard API that could be implemented by any mobile OS (or just an app, even).

Aww and I was looking forward to a chipped windscreen requiring the replacement of the entire cabin, unless the car had ever been in the rain, in which case fuck you buy a new one.
- That's a Rivian.
  
  And the cybertuck

I really feel for the engineers and devs who don't get to see their project released into the world. Especially after so much effort.
- I guess we will never see an electric car with the charging port on the bottom
  
  I know this is a joke about the stupid Apple mouse, but a car with a bottom (and normal) charging port would be pretty cool. Imagine just pulling into your garage and a giant MagSafe charger snaps to the bottom of your car. (Yes, I know this is unreasonable with current technology due to poor energy efficiency)
- As an engineer who's spent a good chunk of his career working on stuff that got cancelled, it's really not that bad. You're generally paid well and looked after, learn a tonne on someone else's dime, have good job prospects, a strong network of talented colleagues, plus most engineers are there for the team problem solving and challenge anyway. The final product release is just the cherry on top.
- After all the layoffs in the tech sector, it's doubtful it were even the original engineers working on the project.
- It’s kinda part of the job. Several times in my career I’ve put in months of effort on projects that then get canned for various reasons. One of them was 100% complete. No real big deal, it’s still a good billet on my resume.

Maybe the i-bike is more appleish? Imagine this, it's a bike like other bikes, but you only need to pedal with one leg, and if you turn the pedal, the whole bike turns. Tilt it back to stop. Sure, you may look fucking stupid running around with only one pedal while your other leg does nothing at all. That's it. Oh, and it's white and smooth in gorme plastic-like design. You can charge your bike but you must remove the seat and turn it upside down using our special turning device since it's 700lbs.
- Also you can only use it on roads built by Apple!
  
  It's a special magnetic stripe road that illuminates the Logo properly....can you use it on regular asphalt? Nope! Why? Oh apple has looked into it and it is very challenging but they will work with authorities to see if it can be accomplished.
- Designed by Apple in Cupertino, made in China
  
  Hey! It has a breathalyzer integrated into the...what, why do you need a butt breathalyzer? Oh...
- DAE I'm too poor to afford Apple products?
  
  Swing and a miss

Apple was hoping to white label a Chinese ev and slap an iPad in it but the trade war is too hot now for them to deliver.
- You joke but it's not terribly far off.
  Their real hope was to get Hyundai Kia to build EVs for them. While letting Apple act like they were the majority stakeholder of the deal.

I think all those dongles hanging off the car would have been a problem anyway
- We put the charging port underneath the car!
  
  Lightning (in the US; USB-C in the EU)
- The windscreen is made from high-tech Apple SpaceGlass, and the integrated HUD (*Pro car only) presents all non-Apple cars as green bubbles in real time
- You need a dongle for that, sir.
  A what?
  A dongle.

Maybe they relized rhat they cannot trademark the itire and remotely lock it, and sell it for 20 times the price of a regular tire.
- Did they even contribute any meaningful technology discoveries or anything in the field?
  
  CarPlay was a’ight.
  
  Well, they do what every company wants, charge way more for their hardware, and still getting away with their bad practices.

TFA: decade-long
Spell-check: decade-long
OP: decadelong
Stop trying to make 'fetch' happen, Felicia.
- Maybe delong is a unit. So one decadelong = 10 delongs
- What
- I didn't realize Star Wars had an opinion on proper writing style.
  
  What do you think woke it up?

This is good news for everyone else

lol

That's disappointing. I hate apple, but I'd love to see more competition in the EV market
- More? 22 brands released EVs last year alone. There are a LOT of options out there, with more to come. Apple would have been like, the 4,000th entrant in this market.
  
  And what the EV market needs is a Model T, reliable and affordable. Not all these luxury models that go 0-60 in 3 seconds.
  
  But their Cars would Cost ten Times as much and still there would be someone cultists defending the price
- Sure. There's lots of competition in the EV market, but one more player wouldn't hurt.

Oh no all those developments that they introduced all going to stop, like nothing, bugger all, and zip.
They literally didn't do anything, they announced the car I think they had a concept vehicle which looked very apple, and then they did nothing at all ever again.

Instead of trying to make a full electric car, I'm surprised Apple and Google aren't focusing on making a smart AI "head unit" that's compatible with third party car manufacturers. The head unit would control all aspects of the car through the CAN bus and also take camera/sensor inputs from the exterior of the vehicle, and be responsible for things like self-driving, lane assist and all those difficult AI-based features.
This way the car manufacturers could focus on what they do best (building safe reliable hardware) and outsource all the hard AI software problems to tech companies who specialise in this area.
- I'll pass on having evil corps like Google put AI in my car.
  Comma.ai is open source and does exactly what you are describing as that "head unit", not too mention is widely compatible with many car manufacturers.
  
  Couldn't agree more, but I'm just highlighting it seems like a much more profitable and attainable commercial goal for them in the short term than trying to enter the vehicle manufacturing space as a competitor. The fact there's an awesome open source project tackling this idea already (thanks for the link - I didn't know this existed!) says it's viable.
  They've already dipped their toes in with Car Play/Android Auto and have the relationships with third party vehicle manufacturers, so this seems like a logical next step. Perhaps that's what they're actually doing by shifting their car team to AI.
- This is pretty much the goal of CarPlay
- That’s b2b business which apple and google don’t do. Or aren’t good at, at the very least.
- I can see the sharks on Shark Tank telling them - “license it!”
- Its sounding more and more like companies are giving up on full self driving. There's been a lot of money poured in without FSD materializing. Maybe just another lane autopilot wasn't game changing enough for apple to justify staying in the game.
  
  Honestly, people getting out of that game now are the smart ones. Our roads just aren't set up to be able to handle FSD. It's a money pit and a lot of companies are falling for the sunk cost fallacy.

lmaoooo, I've been saying for years there's no way in heaven or hell apple is making a car, and now look what happens
- I have to say that I’m still not convinced they were. It’s just so far from their core business I don’t see how it ever could have been real
  
  They approached several car makers at one point, but were rejected when the car makers heard their terms

I remember when Tesla begged Apple to buy them
- That would actually be a terrifying precedent. "Can not pair phone to iCar™. Please use an iPhone next time, moron".
  A massive corporate monopoly enforcing the use of its devices by purposefully removing cross compatible functionally between different platforms. Spineless governments don't do anything cause they are toothless and on the payroll.
  
  As more of our lives move online and we become more dependent on technology, soon we'll only be able to live our lives in the way Microsoft, google, or apple give us permission to.