Apple Is Said to Be Rethinking Strategy on Self-Driving Cars
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I think the scale of this downsizing is being underestimated. I think Apple car is dead.
2013ish everyone looked at the Google car and thought 'OMG, it isn't some pie in the sky thing, this is real, we need to act now and act fast.' Remember how much hype there was around deep learning then- it seemed like it could do anything.
Now Tesla, Uber, Apple and the carmakers are all figuring out just how hard a problem autonomy really is.
Project Titan initially set out with a (rumoured and ridiculous) 2019 production goal. Now they're like, 'okay more like 2025 if not later', and adjusting their strategy accordingly.
This is the Apple of 2016, leaking that it's killing moonshot projects it didn't ever announce. Meanwhile you can't buy a MacBook with a '16 processor..
The value in the business to Apple will be in the design, interior, and performance of the vehicle. Self-driving technology is going to be a commodity; buyers are certainly not going to be evaluating the self-driving capabilities when deciding which car to buy. The most important part is making a nice car, the self-driving tech is an implementation detail (and it will be like deciding whether to use Bluetooth and/or Wi-Fi for a wireless protocol like AirPlay). Many companies are working on self-driving tech, including Uber which Apple is indirectly an investor in now (and won't be competing with each other, like Google). There will be plenty of time to work on it internally, license/buy it or collaborate with someone like Uber. Their development efforts should be focused on everything else (like manufacturing processes to enable scale and avoid Tesla's problems), that's what their business will really be about.
[1] http://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2016-07-28/apple-taps...
Totally disagree here. We have no idea what the range of capabilities will be with self driving cars. I could easily see some versions which would be more independent than others. For example, perhaps one manufacturer can only make them drive well on highways with your hands on the steering wheel, while others can be completely autonomous so it can drive itself over to pick your kids up from school or make its way over snowy and icy roads or dirt roads with no markings.
That kind of difference would easily surmount the tribal brand loyalty most car buyers have. It's a killer feature, not a commodity.
The "skill level" of an autonomous vehicle is continuous, not binary. I could totally see people buying a car based on how trustworthy it is (crash statistics).
Perhaps there will be some legally standard terms or discrete statistical thresholds makers will have to meet in order to legally claim certain levels of autonomy.
Right now those numbers are roughly tabulated by insurance companies, but they're not really published as part of the boilerplate posted on the car where miles-per-gallon are often shown.
If people knew they were buying a death trap they'd probably give it some sober second thought.
The problem with such an idea is that even if you sell 100 000 cars in the first year after launch (really good), you'll have to wait for about five years before you have the statistics to claim you car has any better than average safety record. But after those five years, your model is going to be near end-of-sales, so it won't matter.
And that's with safety records today. As cars keep getting safer, this gets worse and worse. Remember, NHTSA averages today are over the entire car population. Today that population has a significant tail of cars from the late 80s or early 90s without basic safety measures like airbags and crumple zones. These will have a much higher fatality rate. But it ten years, when those are mostly gone from the roads, it's going to be ludicrously difficult to make statistically valid statements about car model safety while that model is still being sold.
>But after those five years, your model is going to be near end-of-sales, so it won't matter.
I don't get this reasoning at all. Brand reputation matters a great deal. For example, Toyota put out a new Tacoma this year but people already assume it will be reliable and safe based on Toyota's track record. They don't have to start all over again and win all the customers back.
While models change and structural safety will change slightly model to model The brain of the car will continue to improve and we won't be starting over because they change the body lines a little bit.
Saying "our AI avoided four potentially-fatal accidents" is also a vacuous statement, since a) you don't know whether an accident would be fatal or not, since accidents are ridiculously chaotic systems and b) there is no way to say that a human driver would not also have avoided all those accidents.
In fact, most accidents are caused by people driving under the influence of alcohol or drugs, or falling asleep, or being on their phones. Using AI to detect and deny these people from driving would be orders of magnitude easier than autonomous cars, and provide 95% of the potential safety increase with none of the drawbacks. Why don't we do that? Consumer backlash is the answer. Even alcohol-preventing locks, mature tech today, is not being made mandatory because consumers would be mad.
I agree that brand reputation matters a lot. But people think we are going to see huge paradigm shifts in autonomous driving over the next ten years, and then your track record is for something completely different. Meanwhile the Tacoma is just a slight update and restyling of mature technology.
Adding to this is the fact that one freak accident will completely shatter a company's records. Imagine if a Tesla with next-gen Autopilot filled with seven passengers is driving through the Alps in October at 2°C: while the car is inside a tunnel, subcooled rain starts falling, covering the road in an invisible layer of super slippery ice. (This actually happens). The car goes off a cliff and kills all seven. Yes it's far-fetched, sure. But it will still be seven fatalities caused while the AI was driving, and that suddenly puts the AI car on par with a 2002 Honda Civic.
Which can't ever happen with AI driving. That's a huge sales pitch to consumers in itself without even having to wait for the data.
>Meanwhile the Tacoma is just a slight update and restyling of mature technology.
Wrong!
>A: What is carried over from the previous Tacoma in this new truck?
>S: Not much. Maybe a seatbelt bracket! The base frame has been modified. The base frame rail design is similar but it’s not carryover. The body shell and body structure are new. For the structure, we use hot-stamped steel.
http://www.automobilemag.com/news/q-a-with-2016-toyota-tacom...
If that's a slight update new models of autonomous cars can also be slight updates.
Average consumers aren't sitting around arguing statistics either. They will be marketed as safer. It's plain to see how autonomous cars will be safer in many respects already (Drunk driving or distracted driving for example). The convenience factor is by far the biggest selling point though. Sleep/work/read on your commute! Rent your car out as an autonomous taxi to earn more cash!
Because that's what you're talking about, steering wheel-less autonomous cars. It surely isn't plain to see that they will be safer. We've already seen the first fatality on Autopilot. And I, for one, don't think these will be in the hands of consumers for at least another decade or two. Simply because of costs and liability.
>Tesla says Autopilot has been used for more than 130 million miles, noting that, on average, a fatality occurs every 94 million miles in the US and every 60 million miles worldwide. The NHTSA investigation, Tesla says, is a "preliminary evaluation" to determine if the Autopilot system was working properly, which can be a precursor to a safety action like a recall.
so according to this, autopilot is already safer than the "average" driver.
http://www.theverge.com/2016/6/30/12072408/tesla-autopilot-c...
Incidents of that sort with a human driver are easily explained. If that happened with a self-piloting car it could scare people off the very idea.
The cars should have some kind of basic self-preservation tests.
Yet even though "alcohol-locks" have been mature tech for five years, no car manufacturer nor politician dares to make it default, simply because there would be public outrage.
Also, stuff like brake pads or tires completely worn down already comes with basic safety features: both will cause the car to make relatively loud, screeching/rumbling ominous noises.
Or you could do near-infrared spectroscopy built into the gear lever (this is already being pushed by the NHTSA, and will probably be in cars in a few years).
Or it could even have a selective alcohol-lock using current-gen tech that only triggers a check if alcohol is detected in the air circulating in the car.
Mandatory adherence to the OEM's maintenance schedule (and every appointment dealer-only!) is every car maker's dream.
Low tire pressure? Breaks not operating outside of acceptable parameters? Tires behaving strangely? It's manual or nothing at that point.
For a time, when it's brand new, having better self-driving tech certainly will be a differentiator. But the question is how long that window will last and how it aligns with regulatory changes.
If I have a perfect fully autonomous car but I have to keep my eyes on the road and hands hovering over the steering wheel at all times, and can't "operate" it after having had a couple of drinks, then what's the point?
I'm not sure if there will be time for better self-driving tech to ever be a meaningful differentiator because for a long time it will probably be illegal to use.
Apple's exceptional skill has generally been in building consumer brands, managing operations, and timing when to release a new product after the underlying tech has been somewhat commoditized. I suspect they will not rush to release the best underlying tech six months or a year ahead of the competition. They'll wait until other people have figured out what works and then release their take on it.
What you are talking about is assisted driving and auto-pilots.
Therefore, to most consumers, all real self-driving cars will be driving good enough, whether they are powered by Google, Tesla, Ford, BMW or Apple, but some are going to look nice and have a thought-out design.
Why anyone would own one ? Why park a car when they can drive all the time and you can hail one for super cheap ? Cities will have zero parking space, streets would be reduced to one lane for most of them, no red lights, etc...
Cleanliness, customization, storing of personal items, availability at odd timings or locations. There are plenty of reasons why many will still own a car.
There are many reasons why you'd want to own a car, but the number of reasons for you to need to own a car plunges dramatically when the quality offered by shared rides meets or exceeds the experience your average car-owner has.
Imagine a car that always has sufficient fuel or battery power to get you where you're going, that is clean every time you use it, that never has to be parked, that comes reliably within minutes of being summoned, and never, ever has to be taken in to the garage to be fixed.
That's the future if things come together as they should.
Rich people will own their own cars, probably several of them, but your average person won't see the need. If they want to splurge they'll rent a car solo. If they want to save money, ride-share with a few others.
Autonomous cars may be the future, but it'll be decades before not owning a car really takes off. Maybe for single people or couples without kids it will be possible, or those times you don't have the kids, but for the rest of us it's just not feasible.
The amount of junk you carry seems to scale in proportion to the convenient carrying capacity of your transportation. If you have a huge SUV of course it will be packed with all kinds of stuff. If all you have is a stroller you'll scale back accordingly.
"There's no way that'd be possible" is utter defeatism. Somehow as a species we survived for tens of thousands of years before cars. I doubt autonomous cars won't be embraced by millions just because you personally find them inconvenient.
A slightly customer-friendlier option would be to take the picture every time the car is vacated, and then clean (and charge) when the detritus reaches a certain level. After all it wouldn't be right to penalize people who are simply in too much of a hurry to care about previous travelers' candy wrappers.
If the vehicle is detected as being "messy" it can swing back to the depot for a cleaning or have someone dispatched to clear it out.
I don't own a car since 2012 because I was not using it enough. I'm using car sharing now and a little more trains. It's much less expensive, maybe a little more time consuming, but that time is gained because I have less things to care about. Cars became a commodity for me, and I see no reasons why they shouldn't be. All I ask from them is be safe.
Google, on the other hand, who intended from the beginning to license it's OS out to carmakers has yet to secure any meaningful partnerships.
That being said, I believe Apple will still build the self-driving car. This could really be Bob just shaking up the entire team, given his hardware background. One explanation - there's just no other sensible way to spend their humungous, growing cash pile.
1) $CAR_PROVIDER_X: 00.005% your daughter dies in a car crash
2) $CAR_PROVIDER_Y: 00.0045% your daughter dies in a car crash
3) $CAR_PROVIDER_Z: 00.009% your daughter dies in a car crash
IMO it's going to completely transcend previous safety ratings. People will evaluate the quality of self-driving tech in the beginning, maybe after awhile people start viewing it as "god like" but in the beginning they will be PICKY.
But you're right that people will choose their cars based on this. But the information they will have will just be rumour, innuendo, fear-mongering click bait journalism and other sources of FUD. It's going to be ugly.
You could easily extend that to a test track with all sorts of stuff self driving cars find hard - oil spills, diversions, people / animals / plastic bags jumping out and so on.
The Model S is the best performing electric car on the market. It is a luxury vehicle with nearly every modern accommodation for comfort, the ability to accelerate to 60 mph in as little as 2.5 seconds and well over 200 miles to a single charge.
I can't even conceive of how someone could say Apple is the company to make a no compromises car to beat Tesla with a straight face. I can't even see a compromise.
No, I'm obviously not in the target demographic for an expensive BMW but I don't think everyone who can afford to buy an expensive car is simply looking for luxury. If the trade-off is between driving around in hihgh luxury in a smelly, polluting car or driving around in modest ‘luxury’ in a car that is a much more elegant technical solution to private transport than I know which side of the fence I fall.
Yes, an electric car should look good, have good performance and be elegant. But I don't think it needs to reach the high end of luxury, even in the present price bracket in which the model S sits.
Or alternatively
It's a sports car, but in the form factor of a huge sedan.
Those are definitely big compromises, not that there's anything wrong with compromises.
Additionally, a lot of the people still buy Teslas with the motivation of saving the environment and abandoning fossil fuels. Where as hopefully Apple would just make an all around superior car.
... and building domain expertise. Apple is at the top of the smartphone game and still gets manufacturing significantly wrong at times - see the bendy iphone or the antenna-case that can't call if you hold it the wrong way. Jumping the fence to the world of vehicles is a brand new domain to make mistakes in.
Keep in mind also that Apple has gone back on things they've said in the past. Radios in ipods were never going to happen, then they did. Mocked users of a stylus, then released Pencil. The iPhone is the perfect size for your hand... then they embiggened it. Getting it right the first time is something Apple sometimes does, and sometimes fails at.
Apple has also released a lot of turkeys over the years that people conveniently forget about. I just can't see them jumping the fence to a significantly different product domain and simply beating everyone else there at the game.
Pippin?
Many of the godawful mice? (Some are nice, some terrible)
The iPod boom box speaker?
Ping?
I agree with your argument that few companies could leverage the needed resources to compete with Tesla on a comparable electric vehicle, but I strongly disagree that Apple would be the company to do it.
[1] http://www.theverge.com/2016/9/7/12839686/apple-event-2016-s...
This feels like an obvious "buy don't build" scenario.
Elon gets ungodly amounts of money and mass production experience to execute his vision. Apple gets to make a ton of money if it works out.
But would Elon join one of the big cos when he thinks he could be a big co? I don't think so?
Having Elon focus on SpaceX would be a win IMO. I'm not sure when you're talking $20bn+ acquisitions that the founder/CEO would stick around beyond being an adviser.
Right now buying and operating a car kinda sucks in a lot of ways [0] because GM doesn't have anyone whose job it is to subordinate all business functions to UX. Steve Jobs did that at Apple and maybe today somebody is still carrying the torch. The fact that Apple has a culture of design and implementation oriented around UX is the value add.
Imagine the process of purchasing and repairing your car feeling like an Apple store. Imagine Jony Ive designing the fit and finish of the car hardware, inside and out. Imagine a center-console human interface that was designed by someone with taste [1]. All of this is going to be packaged seamlessly with that beautiful attention to detail in subsystems integration that makes my grandma want an iPad, just because it feels amazing, even though it does literally nothing useful.
Obligatory disclaimer: For political reasons I strongly disagree with Apple's walled garden philosophy, and it makes me so angry that the best laptops available run closed source OS's natively. But I have to admit that Cupertino's hardware, shopping process, and unboxing experience is beautifully designed, and that their focus on UX does lead to a nice experience if you stay within their ecosystem.
[0] e.g. http://blog.dilbert.com/post/147352433956/how-not-to-buy-a-c... but really just talk to anyone who has been near a dealership or repair shop
[1] We have been stuck in the center console design dark ages for decades, even in luxury automotive.
They've had such people. Read "Car Guys vs. Bean Counters" by Bob Lutz.
I'm trying to imagine what the unboxing experience of an Apple car would be like. :-)
It is strange to think that a piece of software lots of people hate so much was so decisive in turning around Apple.
Soeone is going to game the system and make cars that if not advertised to, known to be bad actors in that they'll take advantage of others to move faster through traffic. Especially if one of the favorite fantasy's, swarm driving comes true.
Someone is also going to realize if they pulse their sensors in a certain way they can get other cars to move, slow down, speed, up, etc that will be to their advantage.
Self driving cars aren't going to be some communist utopia where everyone gets there equally, it's going to be Darwinian capitalist just like everythign else. I mean if the car drives you what does any nice car have to differentiate itself from any other than the nicest tv, leather, etc. You might as well ride in an RV at that point. Who cares if your car is fast and sweet like a tesla? if everything is self driving in a utopia you can't acutally make use of that. It's about as useful as the top end speed of a ferrari in manhattan.
Traffic laws and regulations will become more precise in general, and especially with regards to cooperation between vehicles. Just as pollution is tested for today's cars, self-driving cars will be tested both in software and physical environments by regulatory agencies to verify that they behave within limits and cooperate correctly with other vehicles in the environment.
> Someone is also going to realize if they pulse their sensors in a certain way they can get other cars to move, slow down, speed, up, etc that will be to their advantage.
When requirements for self-driving behavior and cooperation are more precisely described, the data logged from real situations will make it far easier than today to identify bad actors after the fact. As long as there are manual cars and autonomous cars, some human drivers may find it amusing to exploit the carefulness of the autonomous vehicles. However if such exploits becomes problematic, the data available from the autonomous vehicles will make it easy to fine the offending drivers.
And if there is a market for paying people('s cars) to give way so you can make your meeting, I swear most people will ignore the market just to piss off the wanker in the braces.
But yes I can see there would be a market. Now, how are we doing on payment processing?
I think people are overestimating how many companies will be involved. Google, Uber, and others are going to try to get cities to sign transportation rights over to them and run much of the show. Because it is simpler to control all the cars than some of them, this happens first rather than later. It also explains the sudden interest in trucking, because you have to deal with delivery vehicle solutions in cities too.
It changes the way cities deal with crime because criminals literally will have no where to go. Every method of transportation will require biometric identification. Rob a bank and you may be flagged before you even walk out of the front door. Good luck on foot.
However I feel like Tesla is the Apple of cars and it's not clear what value Apple would provide above and beyond Tesla.
But perhaps more competition in that space would be a good thing. Or maybe Apple has the scale to take what Tesla started and bring it to the next level. Maybe they should buy Tesla instead.
http://cdn.pinthiscars.com/images/dodge-charger-2013-interio...
Then you have buttons and knobs for turning the sound system on and off, adjusting the volume, adjusting the temperature, turning the fan on and off, adjusting the fan speed, toggling the A/C, recirculating air, front defrost, and rear defrost, as well as having a physical knob to scroll through and select options on the screen.
I'm sure that there are additional things you can do on the screen, like navigation and more advanced climate control, but you can definitely operate the important controls without needing to take your eyes off the road. That's the complaint about the Tesla screen - not that it exists, but that there aren't buttons and knobs for the important controls.
Same with iPad, it was so obvious with tablet that everyone ridicule it for being an oversized iPhone.
Cars are boring and should be completely utilitarian. I'd rather not even own a car.
They had a thousand people on this. Doing what?
This seems to me like the recognition of the fact that its not fun competing in the space where the large margins are to be found in the services and components, less in the assembly and sales aspect.
Here's to hoping they knock it out.
...unless it's mechanical fuel injection.
If we're talking about a robust, reliable, commercially successful transportation service, really, nobody is early.
CEOs are talking ~2020, but the roboticists are like 'well, actually there are some fundamental unsolved problems that have to be adressed before level 4 autonomy can be much more than an amusement park ride.'
Google pioneers like Anthony Levandowsky and Chris Urmson are talking 30ish years now before we'll see unmanned cars driving across the country. This may have something to do with why so many google vets have jumped ship over the last year.
Source?
http://spectrum.ieee.org/cars-that-think/transportation/self...
Levandowski said “In 30 years, every single new car will be autonomous. That’s completely obvious", so I guess he's a little more optimistic.
https://www.theguardian.com/technology/2016/aug/19/self-driv...
There seems to be no change here. Silicon Valley will have autonomous taxis in this decade. You can't guarantee 100% of new cars sold will be autonomous until you have a plan for Calcutta and Barrow, Alaska.
It's certainly possible that at least subsets of highway driving could come much sooner. Which would be useful but you don't get to the whole potentially not own a car until you can self-drive without a human present on most roads under a wide range of conditions.
It's early days in self-driving cars, and Apple has a lot of talent, a ton of cash, and (generally) a huge amount of desire to nail the user experience in ways other companies cannot or will not. Clearly their project is experiencing issues, but I wouldn't count them out.
However, just because that sentiment was wrong in 2006 doesn't mean it's wrong now.
In hindsight, what was important about smartphone isn't what the established companies thought was important. Apple's core competencies translated over extremely well to what was actually important, which turned out to be user experience, full internet access, apps, and such, rather than things like telephony and data frugality which is what the established players concentrated on.
It's possible that the same thing would play out with cars. But I'm skeptical, and I'd want to see some explanation of just what advantages Apple would have, not just "they did it before with phones."
It's also not clear they understand the market or sales environment at all.
(They even guessed the name)
The iPhone is not that different from the Palm Pilot.
They weren't first on MP3 players, smartphones, tablets, online music stores, or smart watches, either.
I'll also add that this is a service economy, and while Apple get accolades for their physical products, even Apple fans say that their service offerings kind of suck.
And since when was Apple any good at building the platform for someone else's hardware? Motorola ROKR E1? Apple CarPlay?
I don't think that that's true.
Courage.
It's flopped for a reason Jobs would never tolerate, a lack of a unique vision that focuses on a consumers simple human need for a product that requires an immense but reachable extension of current technologies.
This is not a good sign for Apple. It's been several years and there's been nothing innovative big or small out of the behemoth. Elon Musk has run off with Jobs' mantle and Apple is left dithering on a mountain of cash. Now Amazon's Echo/Alexa is a product that would have had Jobs smiling.
At least that's how it looks to me though I would be happy to be proved wrong.