Apple Taps Bob Mansfield to Oversee Car Project

It has some of the finest plastic money can buy.

The difference is that cell phones can't inadvertently kill people to the degree automobiles can.

There's a huge difference between iterating an iPod into a phone and moving from consumer electronics to a completely different market that just happens to depend on some electronics but requires a whole lot more engineering know-how that Apple has in its stables.

Sorry, I call BS on this. I know a good bit about the semi-secret history here. I worked at Motorola before and during the launch of the first iPhone and also knew some of the people on the original iPhone product team. While it is true that they started with very few mobile industry veterans, they hired a few key people; they either quickly learned how to maneuver inside Apple or disappeared without a trace.

So it is not accurate to say Apple just learned how to make smartphones really fast, more that they effectively hacked the whole process with a number of Jedi mind tricks as well as key product decisions, all cemented by classic Steve Jobs dickery.

1. They cultivated us at Motorola shamelessly by pretending to make an "iTunes phone" (remember the Rockr?) while they were just pumping our teams for information on how the byzantine portfolio and terminal acceptance process at carriers worked. They never intended that phone to ship and used the whole sordid con to get into Ralph de le Vega's office (sorry, Ed Zander).

They then used all the persuasion and BS they had to convince AT&T to give Apple a pass on the incredibly complex field network testing all phones must pass. The reason the overall phone experience of the first iPhone was so bad was not just because Jobs and co wanted it to be a great music and Internet experience first, but because they couldn't make a great phone at all then.

I don't see the exact analogy with teh car industry. cars. The mobile phone business was laughably over-regulated and unlike the extremely competitive phone industry, wireless carriers were not really. And oh yeah, smartphones were terrible, and cars today, whether you like the way they look or not, are some of the most incredibly optimized products ever made by man: safe, reliable, efficient.

Cars just can't be disrupted via a Jesus phone coming in at the high end with innovative features. The Jesus car already exists (Tesla) and it has been extremely successful at influencing one of the biggest industries in the world in numerous ways. But if your goal, like Apple, is to not just influence but manufacture at scale, then Tesla has failed and it appears it will take any company, even Apple, decades to learn how to really make cars for more than a few.

I sure hope this isn't just abut cars as a service, because Apple has demonstrated it just can't do services, even when latched to a truly beautiful shiny object it has made.

Yup, there seems to be worrying trend on HN that any company not a part of the tech inner circle has no idea what the are doing.

Funny because more than once there have been articles here about how assuming unusual/ugly code is the work of an incompetent engineer is short sighted, as often professionals DO know what they are doing, and it was done for a good reason that is not immediately apparent.

>Tesla also started from zero.

Yes they did, 15 years ago. Even with their deep pockets, Apple has a long way to go from zero to production.

> Your assessment, whether correct or not (I've no idea), has an oddly familiar ring

I'm going to go ahead and claim your argument adds little value due to overgeneralization. Just because some guys were wrong in their criticism of Apple doesn't mean everyone who criticizes Apple is wrong.

If I weren't feeling lazy, I would produce a long list of quotations that wrongly claimed the iPad would deprecate desktop computing (from both inside Apple and outside). The term "post-PC era" was being bandied about. So no, Apple doesn't always achieve their goals - even stated ones.

Ford is probably ahead or at least in parity with BMW/Mercedes.

That you lump Ford in with GM is a huge red flag to the rest of your contentions.

Just like Ericsson and Nokia? They didn't stand a chance, as history has proven. Especially given most of these car companies don't have a huge pile of cash on the sidelines.

I agree with that, but you haven't given any information or insight to substantiate your claim that the Apple car will be the next iPhone. Merely saying "it will be awesome!" doesn't convince anyone :)

As someone who drove a Tesla S here in UK - the only cool things about that car were the dashboard display(where your speedo is normally) and the quiet drive paired with stupid acceleration. Other than that, it had fantastically poor interior, plastic everywhere(I've noticed this in almost all American cars - even very expensive Chevrolets, Chryslers, US-spec Fords are just full of plastic for some reason). The huge screen is awesome for first few minutes, and then you realize you can't change temperature without looking down - who thought that putting everything on a touchscreen was a good idea?? I guess I would maybe buy one for the fuel saving? But seriously, I would much rather buy a BMW/Audi/Merc/Jaguar for the same price, unless my main priority was fuel saving.

I'd say long range and self driving is evolutionary not revolutionary. They won't exactly be unexpected when they land... It's a when not if scenario.

My petrol car has a long range. I don't think anyone will be impressed by a car with a long range.

the difference is that back then you could buy off-the-shelf components and have your phone built in china (what apple did and does). you can't easily do the same with a car. yes apple can create good software for a car but they might be better off licensing it to car manufacturers than providing an end to end solution.

Is there anything Apple could announce they are making where you wouldn't post this quote? Private prisons? Spaceships? Artifical asteroid colonies?

> No wireless. Less space than a nomad. Lame.

Apple could release a car that has fewer features than a Tesla or Mercedes, and if it was designed very well, with seamless integration with the iPhone, lots of people would buy it.

Ballmer in a 2007 interview with USA Today:

"There's no chance that the iPhone is going to get any significant market share. No chance. It's a $500 subsidized item. They may make a lot of money. But if you actually take a look at the 1.3 billion phones that get sold, I'd prefer to have our software in 60% or 70% or 80% of them, than I would to have 2% or 3%, which is what Apple might get."

Palm CEO Ed Colligan in 2006:

"We’ve learned and struggled for a few years here figuring out how to make a decent phone," he said. "[Apple is] not going to just figure this out. They’re not going to just walk in."

I think it has to do with the car industry being the best out of a bunch of bad options. You simply don't need the kind of liquidity Apple has on hand to run a business with the current Product Lineup Apple has on offer. Sure they could do more here and there, but compared to the insane amounts of capital Apple has, any effort in the computing/telco space is just pocketchange.

If Apple ventures out of computing and into areas that need that kind of capital to be feasible, you start comparing lots of medium to low margin industries, the car industry being one of them.

When you look at Apple's brand, company focus and in-house experience, there's only a few industries where diving into could make it a relatively safe bet for the capital involved.

Cars make sense because they are complex technology, already very brand and UX focused in their usual sales processes, and there is a lot of money to be made in the optimization of the supply chain, all things which Apple is second to none.

There were surely other options and I imagine are still being discussed in Cupertino.

Large Scale Urban Development seems like a similar viable candidate, but the salescycles and product lifecycles are probably too much at odds with the rest of Apples business. But the prospect of an build to order Apple Campus must seem quite exciting to some people that are having a blast building the new spaceship.

Among other industries, i could also imagine the Hotel industry being on their marks for similar reasons.

My guess is they will rethink what a "car" fundamentally is all about. They'll create a vehicle that has new features that play to their strengths, even if the "car-ness" isn't a big improvement on existing models in the market.

Back when the iPhone first came out a lot of people dismissed it because it wasn't a very good phone - the audio quality and reception tended to be worse than a good Nokia. Who cares if it has all these extra whiz-bang features like a touch screen and a web browser if it's not a very good phone, the thinking went. A lot of people didn't appreciate that Apple was creating a communication and information retrieval device, and not just a traditional phone with some extra features.

I suspect Apple will create a car that provides a great experience for people getting from point A to point B. It will probably not be a great car to drive. But it will probably be an awesome car for passengers. My guess is that they are betting that there will be more passengers relative to drivers over the next decade or two, and that passengers will, in a perhaps indirect way, become a bigger force in car buying decisions than they have been in the past.

So, by the metrics traditionally used to compare cars it will probably be only an incremental improvement over existing models - or it might even be a step backwards. But by the metrics that we'll use to evaluate cars in ten or fifteen years it will be an amazing improvement.

Isn't that what they did with the smartphone market? The big difference is that the iPhone is a computer running OS X -- all things Apple has huge experience with. A car is something they have no experience with.

Why Apple went into music with the iPod? Well... The rest is history.

Bringing something truly disruptive to the automobile market could be impossible. There's so many companies actively working with cars that maybe there is no room for disruption.

Think about the smart watch market. Many other companies are iterating their products in public. Apple couldn't really surprise the customers with their product. Maybe they build a better product than others, but it was no iPad (which took the whole market by surprise).

> If they proceed with the Apple Car, I would imagine it would be a disrupting concept that Apple would be uniquely prepared to handle.

That's what people thought about the Apple Watch as well, but it seems these days Apple is content with releasing products that simply complement their portfolio rather than create new markets

>Africa is a prime destination for second hand cars coming in from developed countries. I'm skeptical there is much growth opportunity there for car manufacturers.

That's mostly because New Cars were unafforable to All. At least in the places I've visited there are more and more new cars.

- because people are richer than a few years ago

- because financing options that didn't exist now do

- because laws banning imports of cars "older than x years" also help (even if they have unintended consequences)

Don't drop your phone while trying to use it to steer.

Shattered glass

Yeah I'd have gone full Uber and ditched the car if it wasn't for having kids that need seats.

>The car will fill up with people on the same route for cost savings.

Yuk. No thanks.

We could ask the aviation guys, they also have autopilot and cabin cleaning crews ...

Whether the cars are individually owned or shared, somebody's going to have to build them. Apple could easily sell into a shared pool too, if that's how things are by then. (Although I think you're 3-5x too optimistic for how long it'll take to get there.)

> By 2021, (hopefully) the primary mode of individual transportation in developed cities will be using your phone/watch/R2D2 to call a self-driving electric car to your location.

In 5 years? Unlikely.

> What might Apple's advantage be in that world?

If the world changed that fast, then instead of trying to sell cars, Apple would just create their own car service, and integrate it with iOS/Apple Maps/Siri/etc., and everyone in the Apple ecosystem would seamlessly also be on Apple personal transportation platform. (At least, in the places that service had rolled out, which would probably be chosen in order by the density and likely transport profitability of the existing Apple ecosystem population.)

There is also a big difference in the importance of reliability. Half the people I see with iPhones older than a year have broken screens. But with a car, you can't engineer it to last for two years and then expect the owner to scrap it and buy a new one. For all the talk of AR, shiny UX etc, keep in mind that a car has to retain at least some resale value for at least ten years, preferrably closer to twenty. Otherwise you'll be left with a lot of angry customers. Planned obsolesence is out of the question.

Apple's ability to put together a supply chain and get the right partners in place is not to be underestimated.

The logistics of building a car are surely harder by orders of magnitude, you can't just FedEx cars around like you can crates of watch parts, but I'm sure there's a team that can execute at this level within Apple.

If I were GM, Ford or any other big vendor I'd keep a close eye on the supply chain for industry robots. When Apple makes a move they're probably going to buy up a year's supply of these.