Apple cancels Apple Car project after more than a decade

And it slows itself down after 5 years… to save battery!

Nah they couldn't figure out how to do it without windows.

Yeah, it actually got some new press over the last six months because of some internal design team moves.

They definitely applied for a shitload of patents:

https://www.macrumors.com/2022/07/25/apple-car-patent-applications/

https://www.patentlyapple.com/autonomous-vehicle-technology/

And I seem to recall Apple themselves have declared it abandoned at least once before, haven't they?

Publicly traded companies need to constantly grow.

Apple started out with desktop computers. So by 'staying in their lane', they'd never made ipods, iphones, Apple silicon, earpods and airpods, the watch, etc. I think they had quite the success by diversing themselves.

Ever expanding profit requires ever expanding scope until it doesn't, then you can divest for profit and try again.

I think the market for home computers has dried up.

A lot of these tech companies got into cars because they viewed vehicles as a major new computing platform. Especially autonomous vehicles.

INFINITE GROWTH

Well with that mentality Nintendo would be a trading card company and we wouldn't have Super Mario Galaxy, and my 3rd grader past self has suffered enough without having their favorite Wii game taken away on top of everything else!

With that strategy, there would have been no iPod and therefore no iPhone.

Hell, there would probably not even been a computer mouse since Rank Xerox would have been focusing on how to make copies of paper.

Your head must be buried in the sand then.

Maybe it was, but I think it was because analysts argued that full self driving will be a multi trillion dollar business. And Apple wanted a piece of that pie.
Now I guess they figure the pie might be less attractive compared to just working on AI without the car.

It feels like this comment is supposed to be negative/sarcastic, but Apple Maps is actually good, so I am not sure where you’re going with this.

Jesus christ, you realize that happened 11 years ago, right?

Rivian feels like it would be right up apples alley, that said, I'm glad they didn't, I'd like to purchase a Rivian some day, and I don't want it to be part of the apple ecosystem

Because Apple is not a car maker. Making their own electric car was already pretty weird - buying an auto maker and having to run it would have been a huge distraction.

It would have made more sense for them to partner with another company on the car (maybe they even did?) than start buying and running a whole car company.

It looks like they basically wanted to operate like they’ve been operating for years. Apple engineers and designs, then they farm out manufacturing to a 3rd party. But no car companies wanted to be the Foxconn of cars.

Have MB been for sale?

My opinion: Because Apple didin't want to be a car manufacturer. It's a lowish margin and capital intensive business (especially compared to what Apple does). And just becoming one of many wouldn't actually move the needle on apples scale.

Most articles I've read focus on the electric car part, but imo that nowadays is essentially a solved problem. And even when they started I think it should have been clear that electric cars will actually have less complexity than cars with combustion engines. And the hardest part is the battery chemistry, which will in the end also be a commodity.

The general software they are already providing with Apple carplay and as seen this doesn't really require them to build cars.

The real technology problem to solve is autonomous driving. And it seems like Apple wasn't really able to solve it or at least make faster progress than others. Similar to Tesla which hasnt been able to deliver on that front either and is the only car manufacturer priced as a technology company. Which would have been Apple's goal.