Apple

“There were other strange ideas, such as not having windows on the front or the back of the car, and the idea being that the front and back look identical, so the car could drive in either direction, and it's always driving forward.”

“And this was clear admission of failure and admission of a need to disperse some of the resources from that program to other projects at the company, such as the work going on in generative artificial intelligence.”

“They had ideas about not having windows that can open. And so instead of that, they put microphones outside the car with a, you know, a high tech spatial audio system inside the car that could present The user with the feeling that they have open windows.”

“And he made the decision ultimately to recommend that Apple winds down this car program. He thought it couldn't be done. He didn't know, ah, when they'd be able to pull off autonomy, and so him alongside Williams, you know, ultimately wound down the Titan proj…”

“There is a major disruption looming there. What we've talked about focusing on publicly is we're focusing on autonomous systems, and, ah, clearly one purpose of autonomous systems is self-driving cars. There are others, ah, and we sort of see it as the mother …”

“I think ultimately, to be honest with you, the biggest factor was probably, ah, the lack of profitability and the lack of strong margins that they saw coming from the car project.”

“Initially, the first part of the car project was examining what it would take to acquire Tesla, integrate Tesla, and take Tesla to a new level under Apple ownership. And so they spent a lot of time exploring the possibility of acquiring Tesla. Apple's head of …”

“The first time that I caught wind that Apple was developing an electric vehicle was probably about eight or nine years ago when I had found out they have started to hire people from the automotive industry and from the AI industry related to autonomous driving…”

“I think they could have gotten it right if they didn't get so far down the road on level five autonomy, building its operations around level five, building its autonomous system around level five, spending 10 years building different car designs and infrastruc…”

“The big disagreement that, that Apple was facing from the get-go of the project was the level of autonomy to work through, right? Would it be something close to no autonomy? Would it be something like level two, like you see in a Tesla? Would it be level five …”

“Buying Tesla would have been the basis of their own car project. I don't think it would have operated necessarily as its own subsidiary. I think it would have been the beginnings of, you know, an Apple vehicle.”

“I quite frankly don't think Elon Musk would have lasted long at Apple, right, with Tesla. I think Elon Musk would have wanted control. I think Elon Musk would have wanted to run, you know, probably the whole company, obviously a very ambitious guy, and certain…”

“Flew throughout the world to meet with different car manufacturers. They held discussions with Mercedes, Volkswagen, BMW, McLaren, self-driving company called Canoe. If you can name the company, they thought about working with them in some fashion.”

“Well, certainly the first embarrassment started to come out around 2016, 2017, when they had to do the first major pivot of the project, which was refocusing around that autonomous driving system, paring back some engineering and operations related to the deve…”

“You know, I think Apple sees the Vision Pro as potentially a long-term replacement for multiple different product categories. I think they see it as something, ah, that has potential to replace the iPad as a consumption device, potential to replace the, ah, th…”

“So certainly they were thinking and putting an incredible amount of time into fallback options for the autonomy because they were Till about two years ago, very much all in on the lack of pedals or steering wheels.”

“He implemented a lot of the fail safes for the backup to the autonomy, but he ran into issue after issue related to disagreement, Indecision from top Apple executives, including Tim Cook and really a desire to bring something to market while having this inhere…”

“There was talk of having a game controller-like interface in the car to be able to drive the car, because the big idea was having no pedal or steering wheels, of course. The other idea was being able to call into a 24 seven Apple Command Center and have them d…”

“The Vision Pro went on sale in February, 2024, so a little bit earlier this year. But development of that project kicked off around the same time as the Apple Car project, and you can argue the Vision Pro was an eight, nine, year, 10 program as well.”

“And I think that the very core of the car looked something like the Volkswagen ID Buzz, Which is their, you know, new generation concept reimagining of the 19 fifties, 19 sixties micro bus, right?”

“And so the decision was made to delay their planned release date a couple years to the twenty-twenty-eight, twenty-twenty-nine time frame, so about five, six years from now, and re-architect the car around a level two, two-plus design.”

“We have a similar approach as some other technology companies like Apple. We really focus on where we can design and product position, strategy, customers, and so forth, rather than trying to run a world-class, you know, manufacturing facility, which is its ow…”