Also: insane supply-chain management chops, a skill that is more and more transferable - especially for electric cars.
Also: insane supply-chain management chops, a skill that is more and more transferable - especially for electric cars.
For instance, logistically things are very different in the automotive space. Many, many more people are required to ship a single unit. You also have many more variables that can hold up a production line anywhere in the hierarchy because you rely on more 3rd parties for parts. While these things are also true of consumer electronics, you may rely on a dozen suppliers for an iPhone, car companies often rely on hundreds.
Materials are also very different in the automotive space. You have to build with materials that will last 100k miles driving a 80mph in all weather, day/night, freezing/scorching etc etc. It is a very long tail to cover. Apple can do it, but it will take years and many, many partners to get it done.
>The number of parts/unit differs by an order of magnitude
>car companies often rely on hundreds of suppliers
See above. You must be thinking of ICE cars.
>aren’t as transferable as you may think
Other than pulling a few things off the shelf like tires, windshields, and wheels (and more; those are just a few examples) the manufacturer of my car stated from scratch. Prodigiously hard for sure but Apple is good at hard.
>will last 100k miles
Try one million.
>will take years
Again Apple excels at this.
The real problem for Apple is having Tesla as a competitor. They are used to competing with Google, but it’s easy to compete with lame. Tesla is not lame, by a long stretch.
Guess what? I drive a white model 3 long range AWD and I love it. I'm still 1: an engineer with 10 years of hardware experience and 2: skeptical of every ounce of BS Elon Musk has ever spread.
You know how many parts are under the car? Have you taken one apart? They're complicated machines with, again, orders of magnitude more parts than a phone. Forget ICE vehicles, we're just talking about EVs and iPhones. You don't think Tesla relies on thousands of suppliers? Who do you think makes the screens, wiring hardness, cameras, brakes, glass, acoustic devices, steering, battery temp management, motorized seats, etc etc. And who do you think supplies their parts? And theirs? And so on and so forth. Its a complicated web of suppliers and manufacturers, much more so than what goes into a single iPhone (which is still very complicated). This is why a Tesla costs 35k+ and an iPhone costs ~1k. There are more parts that are more complicated and manufacturing them takes more time, effort, and people. Elon may have a magic car printer in his wet dreams but that won't happen in reality for four, five, or six decades.
Also, nobody, I repeat, absolutely nobody is holding their breath for you to hit 1m miles in your Tesla. Currently they don't even have a story for repair and so many parts are fused that if something breaks you can't replace it. The car is totaled. I recommend you watch all of the early Rich Rebuilds on YouTube if you really want to understand some of the nitty gritty details of these vehicles. Yes they are simpler than a normal ICE. By an order of magnitude? Certainly not. Progress is made at the margins, in increments of 1% then 5% then 10% then 15%. Not 1000% in one swoop.
EDIT: clarification
Comparing the Model S to the Model 3, and now the Model Y, we see with each generation simpler designs, reduced part counts, and easier assembly which all translates into improved reliability and, often, repairability.
Sandy Munro’s Tesla tear downs are a great reference for this stuff.
Cars use many more off the shelf parts, they have far easier supply chains to tap into.
Designing and building the CPU, GPU, camera systems, neural chip/software, touchscreen, FaceID, etc. All of these components require way more competence to build than any single part of an electric car using an off the shelf computer.
Cars have more parts, but they are dramatically bigger, less intensely complex, less intensely integrated. Just the CPU alone of a phone puts an entire electric engine to shame in terms of difficulty of engineering.
So it’s an interesting comparison. But I’d put money on Apple making a great car before Tesla made a great computer.
Tesla has shipped their custom SoC in every new car since April 2019.
In particular, you assert that:
1 - phone is more complex than a car
2 - if phones is more complex than a car, then the organisation that produced it can produce a car.
You have provided nothing to back them up. I am in particular disagreeing with the second one.
Making the leap from "Apple makes many complex hardware parts" to they can make a car is a smaller leap than the opposite - Tesla literally didn't exist and made a car, so to assert Apple somehow couldn't is... weird.
Things Apple builds already that are in cars: custom glass, speakers, lights, complex aluminum frames, computers, cameras, knobs/dials, batteries, screens, wheels, fans, materials from leather to rubber to plastic, memory foam...
There has been some improvement over ICEs though, at least in the precision-machined parts and assemblies department.
But a smartphone is analogous to the infotainment display in a modern car. There's still a lot of car attached to that. I think many people commenting on this don't have the slightest clue what the average automobile is composed of beyond the engine, interior, exterior, and wheels.
0) Blue P3D AWD + Blue 3 AWD 1) 30 2) Right there with you, but that is a red herring.
It would have been sufficient to clarify that you held the opinion even about electric cars, without the histronics and name calling. You may be right, because cars certainly are complex.
Your electric car has doors. The doors have hinges, latches, interior handles, exterior handles, locks, lock switches, power window motors, power window switches, power mirror motors, power mirror switches, etc. Those are all moving parts. Those are all just in the doors.
Apple has negliglible experience dealing with the raft of certifications and demonstrations of compliance that car manufacturers have to go through.
> The ECG app is intended for over-the-counter (OTC)use. The ECG data displayed by the ECG app is intended for informational use only. The user is not intended to interpret or take clinical action based on the device output without consultation of a qualified healthcare professional. The ECG waveform is meant to supplement rhythm classification for the purposes of discriminating AFib from normal sinus rhythm and not intended to replace traditional methods of diagnosis or treatment.
https://www.accessdata.fda.gov/cdrh_docs/pdf18/DEN180044.pdf
If you follow the submission you'll also see they were granted approval to market as a de-novo filing as a class II device, so it's not as much work as a PMA but the regulatory work is not peanuts. Since then they have self-predicated for a 510(k) on a newer version.
Even for a smallish software only project like this, it means they had to set up all the basic infrastructure and have it audited. They also wrote a ton of formal engineering process documentation, a full design history file, etc. These skills at least are pretty transferable.
That's like saying English is a transferable skill. Domain knowledge is what counts here. It's the same reason medical device makers don't try their luck in the automotive market and vice-versa.
You'd have to hire a bunch of people with domain knowledge, but you are better off than starting from scratch.
If I am hiring engineers for aerospace, I'd rather bring someone in from medical devices than no regulatory experience, all else equal. Same in the other direction. Principle extends reasonably.
I guess there are lots of reasons I'd think it would be a big jump for apple, but "they won't get their head around the regulatory requirements" isn't really one of them.
There are many many engineering and manufacturing companies who specialize in being suppliers for regulated industries. Like machine shops that specialize in aerospace, medical and automotive parts. Electronics manufacturers that do the same. At that level its more about process control and running a smooth operation and not the specifics of the application.
If their staff can’t figure it out, they have plenty of cash to hire the people or organizations that do.
- Pack has to go through an order of magnitude more charge cycles than a phone
- Must operate in a much wider variety of conditions than a phone
- iPhones don't need to drive themselves
- iPhones don't need to pass crash tests
- Brakes don't exist on iPhones
- Suspension does not exist on iPhones
- iPhones don't propel themselves at 100 mph
- iPhones weight orders of magnitude less than a car
- Regulatory requirements are way less stringent for phones
- Lights
- ...
I'm sort of dumbfounded by the level of conversation here given this is HN and the reputation is one of very thoughtful discourse on current events relating to technology and engineering.
EDIT: line breaks, looks like I'm further contributing to the downward spiral here.
I don't think this is true. Most electric cars are re-charged once a day, which is about the same as a phone.
> Must operate in a much wider variety of conditions than a phone
Also, not really true if you look at the range of temperature and conditions an iPhone is rated for. (Including water resistance. Mine went through a washing machine cycle and came out fine.)
> iPhones don't need to pass crash tests
iPhones protected highly delicate components against hard impact on concrete. That requires similar engineering delicacy as protecting human meat in car crashes.
> Brakes... suspension
The complexity of the accelerometers and camera systems deal with similar engineering challenges of the same quality.
> iPhones weight orders of magnitude less than a car
Does weighing less make something harder to engineer? If anything making complex machines that are feather-weight seems more challenging. Certainly you'd acknowledge that smartphones are harder to build than mainframes, even though the latter is an order of magnitude heavier.
> Regulatory requirements are way less stringent for phones
This is true. But given Apple's unrelenting engineering excellence, there's very little chance they'll design a substandard or unsafe product. Therefore regulatory compliance is merely an issue of hiring enough lawyers. Apple has plenty of cash to hire lawyers. Certainly much more than GM.
> Lights
iPhones definitely have lights.
I am sorry, are you trolling?
Are you seriously comparing smash test on a phone with regulatory crash test on a car? Have you thought about this at all? Do iPhones have crumple zones designed in? Do they asses performance of the chassis after 30 years of corrosion? Do they operate in 50 degree Dubai or -30 Siberia? Do they travel at 100 m/h? How many Gs does an SSD (~100) survive as opposed to a human brain (~10)?
I am sorry for namecalling, but this post comes across as very arrogant.
Seriously, you putting a bullet point with no explanation, and got an equally terse rebuttal. You didn't "win" that.
A phone light is just a little LED you could buy for a dollar and put on your keychain.
Yes they are. You don't get to point to random fancy things and call them "requirements".
> A phone light is just a little LED you could buy for a dollar and put on your keychain.
You're taking "phones have lights" too seriously. It was a deliberately vague and useless rebuttal to a deliberately vague and useless point. The real answer is what I already said. Replicating the functionality of a bulb/socket/housing is not hard to such an extent that the only reason to bring up lights is for jokes. So the joke got a joke back.
I'm sorry, but do you honestly believe that automobiles are more complex from an engineering standpoint than microelectronics? How could you possibly explain why the microchip was invented 100 years after the automobile?
Every domain has its own engineering challenges. Apples has consistently shown execution excellence across a wide range of disparate areas though. And more importantly an ability to quickly and effectively spin up expertise in new areas. From silicon to machine learning to acoustics to compilers to optics. Read this HBS case study[1] to be amazed at its ability to leverage cross-functional expertise across disparate domains. No large org in the world operates like it. There's a reason AAPL has a 50 times the market cap as GM. There's zero doubt in my mind that if Apple pursues autos, within a decade they'll acquire 5%+ global marketshare.
[1]https://hbr.org/2020/11/how-apple-is-organized-for-innovatio...
Yes, car makers have to worry about hardening against nation states. Probably don't do it as well yet however.
However I agree that Apple could go into that direction.
Thats done by TSMC, but you are right, I have much higher confidence in them producing a car than I do in Apple.
> do you honestly believe that automobiles are more complex from an engineering standpoint than microelectronics?
By two orders of magnitudes, at least! Modern car encompasses microelectronics, safety critical software and hardware design, passenger safety, repairability, corrosion, and thousands of other issues phones and laptops never face. You can't just push an OTA and fix a flawed engine. You can't tell you users 'they are holding it wrong'
> How could you possibly explain why the microchip was invented 100 years after the automobile?
How do you explain that Segway was invented after the microchip?
And yet, that massive gulf is the whole point here.
Apple is treading in 95% unfamiliar waters, but the company has proven time and again this is its secret power. They'd never made portable music players before; they'd never made phones before; they'd never made watches before. A car is simply the ultimate expression of this, bringing to bear all of Apple's experience in entering a market where they have no experience.
Wat.
Phone safety compared to car safety is like comparing bottle rocket to Saturn V. If bottle rocket/phone goes south, you generally don't expect loss of life.
Fuck, Tesla can't seem to wrap their head around this. They used standard phone like quality components in car. Which caused stuff to stop working in regular car conditions e.g. noon left in car.
> iPhones definitely have lights.
This has about as much relevance as nothern lights do.
>I don't think this is true. Most electric cars are re-charged once a day, which is about the same as a phone.
A car has a much longer service life than a phone, at least 3-4x longer. The battery pack, being the most expensive components of the EV, pretty much has to last the life of the car.
I get you have a lot of knowledge on the matter.. but you're biased and quite emotional it seems.
You're shifting topic a bit.
You were talking about part count, not part complexity. My iPhone battery doesn't have a cooling system and my car doesn't need to fit in my pocket (<= absurd arguments for the sake or arguing outside of the original question)
How many doors are there on an iPhone? Door latches? Door locks? Door handles? Door close sensors? Weather stripping to keep the rain out from inside the cabin? The little sticker inside the door listing the OEM specs of tire pressure?
How many wheels are there on an iPhone? How many tires? Wheel lugs? TPMS sensors? TPMS readers? Hubs? Brake rotors? Brake calipers? Brake pads?
And on, and on, and on...
For a company like Apple, making a car is child's play.
To compare the complexity of a car and a phone (any modern phone - they're all fundamentally similar inside) belies immense ignorance of both.
Phones are functionally complex, but physically quite simple. The complexity is dealt with by the chip fab and software. Electronic manufacturing processes are basically the same for every device, and so are very well understood and optimised.
A phone is a model of system abstraction. The incredible complexity of the processor and digital logic is abstracted into little black boxes which are then soldered to a PCB. The assembly is then a straightforward sandwich of all the bits.
I don't think anyone's arguing that phones are not complex, but that cars have an order of magnitude more bits to assemble, and that means manufacturing complexity that the existing manufacturers obtained through decades of iteration.
Tesla's a great example - they completely underestimated the complexity of manufacturing (building the machine to make the machine), spent billions of dollars on it and are still struggling with poor fit and finish.
Of course, any company can put the processes in place to build a modern car - it will just take time. To argue that a phone requires as many assembly processes as a car is simply ludicrous.
I drive a 2017 Santa Fe. Its a pretty basic car tech-wise compared to many others on the market these days. There's still the computerized ABS and traction control system taking samples thousands of times a second and making split second decisions on how to handle the car. There are radar sensors tracking the distance to vehicles around me, that data is being fed to computer systems for automatic cruise control and alert aids. The car features lane keeping features which is based off computer vision systems to track the lines on the road. The transmission system is computerized, being more like a computer controlled manual transmission rather than a traditional automatic. The infotainment system is obviously driven by some kind of computer and contains WiFi, LTE, Bluetooth, GNSS, satellite, AM, FM, and digital FM radio systems along with cameras and radar sensors.
I'm sure I'm forgetting some additional computerized systems on this list. So honestly there are several iPhones worth of computer systems on this list, all with more extreme hardening requirements to expect a longer deployed lifetime than an iPhone and all of which need to reliably talk to each other in some kind of fashion.
Not only that but the regulatory standards of EV in US/EU/Asia varies so widely that I don't see how they can get a product to Market in less than 5-10 years unless they're just making EV clones of what is already out here or partner with a Manufacturer. And burned factories in India are not going to cut it on the logistics and supply chain so they'd need to work that out, too.
I can honestly see them partnering up with Nissan-Mitsubishi Motors who are in dire financial straits and want get out of their alliance with Renault-French Government after all the Ghosn corruption and are taking their entire lineup to EV and want to improve on the in-cabin AR side of things, all of which Apple could help build and have the finance to support it.
Having worked at Nissan I think its focus is on tech and still makes cars to prove and refine it's technology, they had an Aerospace division in Mountain View, and used the supposed 'auto pilot' features Tesla has on some of its Infiniti chassis (lidar based cruise control and lane staying signals) in the early 2000s.
I hope it happens, to be honest I dislike anything Apple makes and I despise their business practices for obvious reasons (Foxxcon) but I'm forced into their ecosystem as of now. I'd like to be open to their products if they it did happen.
So Apple, the world's most valuable company, isn't going to be able to make their own car? You're dreaming.
I've followed Tesla since the Roadster days, and I lost count how many times they've almost gone Bankrupt. The only one here that is clueless is you if you think it was without 'issue.' Hell, I worked for Kimbal who is on the Board at Tesla and he openly talks about how many times Tesla almost went under in the few interviews/podcasts he's been on. What echo chamber do you live in to think there was no issue?
> This is such a clueless comment.
I've been in Motorsports with close ties to manufactures since I was 17, and then went on to work for Volkswagen Audi Group (the largest manufacture of cars by scale) and then to BMW and then back to VW because of Diesel-gate, then Nissan in various capacities from technician to supply chain. Then I tried my hand at Tesla during Model 3 ramp up and saw FIRST HAND why/how the delay in ramp was occurring in 2017 with 2 trips to the Fremont Factory before deciding to decline and focus on SpaceX instead.
What experience do you have in that Industry to call it clueless?
I know Apple cultists are as rabid as Elon worshipers, but the two combined are completely toxic.
> I doubt anyone here would say Apple couldn't make their own car, but the idea of Apple mass manufacturing a brand new car in four years is a bit crazy. In your example, Tesla took nearly a decade of focus and half a billion in capital to begin small production of the Model S.
In 3 years? A prototype to build hype and take pre-orders that still needs all the regulatory compliance to be on the road ahead of it, sure; a refined 49-1 street legal product that's mass produced with scaled production line, distribution channels and supply chain to accommodate domestic, let alone international, deliveries: HELL NO!
Money alone won't buy you that, especially if COVID is still shutting/delaying down so many factories, International supply lines and look at the distribution system Tesla had to INVENT because it refused to play by the dealership system.
You FAANG guys live in an unrealistic bubble and think because it works for mobile/computers, and I laugh when I say 'works' because look at India, it should work for several ton vehicles with way more complexity and red tape than you can possibly imagine.
You're comparing vastly different Industries that have little to nothing in common.
Nissan just announced that it will be making its EVs in Japan [0] instead of Sunderland, so unless Apple decides to detract from its business model built on slave labour in Asia, chances are it will not happen.
0: https://finance.yahoo.com/news/nissan-picks-japan-over-sunde...
Nobody gives a damn about the infotainment or door knobs.. it's delegated to one supplier just like a phone charger or any secondary part.
The car mechanics, engine, battery and control units are what I was mostly thinking about.
If Musk keeps on going their EVs car body will be two cast parts, so in terms of supply chain management the complexity is gone into the manufacturing process.
Google and Nest on the other hand...
For reference, a single car has about 30,000 parts, built by dozens of suppliers.
“We’ve learned and struggled for a few years here figuring out how to make a decent phone,” he said. “PC guys are not going to just figure this out. They’re not going to just walk in.”
(Palm CEO Ed Colligan, regarding Apple’s prospects in the mobile phone market)
Motorola had no clue about Apple making a phone, and Apple wasn't getting phone-making knowledge from them.
If you mean about before, their single phone collaboration with Motorola was just a 100% Motorola phone design running an Apple-provided music player part.
Motorola didn't collaborate with Apple on the design of that phone or anything, Apple didn't get any IP or copied any elements, and nor was the iPhone anything like it.
I'm also not sure what Apple's edge here is. At this point all I really want out of an entertainment center is a screen for my phone to plug into. Everything else is better done as knobs and buttons.
Apple is quite good at knobs and buttons, and what may eventually become interior finishes.
Good: iPod click wheel, iPhone side buttons/switches, old chiclet keyboards, trackpad.
Bad: Butterfly keyboards, AppleTV remote is awful (swipes and edge-clicks for all sorts of things), their mice have always been a pain to use (wanna right click? Better lift your left finger completely away from the mouse)
But they also aggressively remove physical interfaces where possible. One-button mice, removal of home button on iPhone, removal of function keys on MacBooks, etc.
I hope they don't do that with a car. There should be a dozen knobs and buttons that have dedicated features. Not just wipers and signals either. I'm talking about volume control, seat adjustments, windows, etc.
I just hope they agree that eyes-on-road interactions will require more of that, and less of the touchscreen-only stuff. They probably will. One way to look at it is how much they care about accessibility on iOS. If they put that much effort into those features there, then nailing those details in a car will be natural.
Apple has been doing CarPlay for years. If they do at least as well with the rest of the interior they’ll have an edge over most luxury cars today.
https://www.theverge.com/2019/10/9/20906777/volvo-xc40-suv-e...
And ultimately buttons and entertainment centers only move the needle for relatively comparable cars. Apple would first have to get as good at Toyota et al at building the rest of the car before a better UX can win.
I imagine more practically minded luxury car buyers would jump at an Apple car that met Tesla on the performance front and exceeded them on the ease of ownership.
I'm sure Nokia had the same confidence in 2005.
> “We’ve learned and struggled for a few years here figuring out how to make a decent phone,” he said. “PC guys are not going to just figure this out. They’re not going to just walk in.”
It tool them 4 generations to get there, and a lot of money.
I don't think that's true. For example, less than a year after its release, the iPhone accounted for 28% of smartphones sold in the U.S. (and presumably for a greater percentage of smartphone-sale revenue): see https://arstechnica.com/gadgets/2008/02/iphone-owns-28-perce....
And half a year after that, the news was better still: https://arstechnica.com/gadgets/2008/10/apple-officially-sur...
So... by & large nobody had an iPhone or smartphone. They all had Razrs (or other feature-phones) instead.
That's a difficult statement to support. It set the stage for everything that came after, and it knocked the industry back on its heels. I'm not sure of the margin or unit numbers but for lots of values of "commercial success", that alone is hard to ignore.
Would a car be like that now? Batteries are close to too expensive, but 38k model 3 says we are close...
Not that much about the iPod changed between 2001 and 2005. A simple to use interface, large storage made it great from the start, but windows support it what made it successful.
To me, car electronics should be like a Kindle is for reading. There is a period after you launch the Kindle but before you start reading where you interact with it like a smartphone or tablet. But then once you get started, the notion that you're interacting with a digital device just disappears.
I want my car experience just like that - set up Spotify, Google Maps etc. before I go, then hands off any touchscreen until I stop. And I only use the audio driving instructions from Maps.
Come to think of it, the same applies to running - set up music, tracking app etc. on your front porch, don't touch the screen again until you're finished, that's a sign of a good run.
Culture is hard, but the core of your business. To not embrace the culture your org needs to outcompete competitors is to embrace failure.
With tesla the over all build quality for price range isn't great (they are getting better), but the software integration and UX is really good.
Apple is really good at both those things, if it translates to cars that could be compelling.
It's about as hacky an afterthought as you can possibly get, though? It's a giant tablet on a stand. Effective, yes, but also definitely a hacky afterthought, too. There's no attempt of any kind to integrate it into the lines or flow of the rest of the vehicle. And they still can't be bothered to put some basic physical switchgear in the thing. There's nothing tactile about it, nothing that feels premium or well-designed.
Anyways, Tesla computer interface is so much nicer to work with than the system on my 2014 Honda Odyssey: the software there has all sorts of arbitrary limitations that makes things like “playing” music irritating. Plus, traditional car manufacturers do crazy things like treating the “navigation package” as a premium feature or whatever. Not to mention that the Tesla gets OTA updates regularly while I’m mostly stuck with whatever bugs or limitations my Honda had when it was built (unless I take it to a dealership and ask for the firmware to be updated.)
The issue affected nearly every iPhone owner I knew at the time, including a number of individuals who worked for Apple, and almost all of these people got their phones replaced by Apple under warranty as a result.
But a car is hardly just a large phone.
Apple does have smart people, and they obviously have a ton of cash. So they absolutely could make a play here. But to imagine that they'll walk in to a market that Tesla has been growing successfully in for a decade and be competitive out of the gate seems like a stretch.
They shipped like half a million cars this year! They own like 70-80% of every EV market they compete in. This is the kind of criticism you'd read about Tesla in 2014. The companies that "have been building cars for decades" are getting stomped by Tesla in this space, 12x more Model 3's were sold than LEAF's in the US last year.
At some point the established wisdom among some people that Tesla is failing is going to change, right? The ship has sailed on that, left the harbor, and is half way across the ocean by now.
And the weirdest thing here is that it's not an attempt to attack Tesla from the perspective of established auto makers but from Apple Computer, a company with no experience at all in the market and almost nothing to bring to the table but "brand status" (and a freighter full of cash, of course).
Tesla is profitable, but every single one of its quarterly profits is still the result of selling credits to other automakers, not from the sale of its cars. In that regard, Tesla joins such luminous counterparts as Fiat (1.4 million profit on accounting charge) and Hyundai ($140 million quarterly loss) as the only "major" automaker which doesn't make money selling vehicles.
And 7% is like half a year of profits growth in this cases for a company that is still growing rapidly and finding efficiencies.
It's spin, again. And I genuinely don't understand why so much of it continues to be deployed against this company when it keeps proving it wrong.
Profits are not fungible. Companies can, and do, determine profit and loss separately for each line of business, because it matters both for financial reporting purposes and for tax purposes. Even Tesla acknowledges that it is not profitably making and selling cars under GAAP (i.e., under industry-standard accounting); their unit margin deliberately excludes items that would normally be ratably allocated to each unit. Hell, Tesla even fired most of its marketing department and cut its marketing budget so that it could goose the financial metrics it needed to make the S&P.
In that sense, it worked. Tesla is on the S&P. The downside to being on the S&P though is greater scrutiny and more price friction. Tesla can no longer count on retail investors to goose stock prices with marketing stunts.
Otherwise, it's just a matter of prestige: the S&P lists are just the X largest (by stock value) profitable publicly traded companies.
The difference between S&P X00 and Nasdaq: S&P is just a list of publicly traded companies; it is not a stock exchange. Nasdaq is an actual stock exchange, like the NYSE.
iCar
Space gray, chamfered edges, 115 hp, 4 wheels
$100,000
So we're going into uni-body territory but with a faster, simpler process than milling/printing. If Apple is happy buying thousands of milling machines for laptops and phones, a chassis injection mould might be the process they'd need to break into the car space.
What does that matter?
There are Car manufacturers that have basically had infinite capitalization and funding for a decade and the legal system + technology barriers just didn't move. Supply chain was never an issue.
Apple's not going to see any different results, so I am puzzled by this optimism.
"Magna currently holds contracts to produce vehicles for BMW, Daimler, Jaguar Land Rover and Toyota."