Apple Scales Back Self-Driving Car and Delays Debut Till ’26
bloomberg.com
bloomberg.com
1. Consumer-owned Electric Cars with advanced AI safety and lane-keeping assist (Traditional Automakers)
2. Corporation-owned Fully Autonomous Vehicles as a service. (Waymo, Cruise etc)
The former Apple is already having its presence known with CarPlay and will continue to expand with its 'next generation' previewed at WWDC that can take over all screens in a car. I feel as though by 2026 when electric cars will be even more mainstream the Apple version of a Tesla will be less differentiated and not high margin enough.
The latter is a more ambitious and disruptive long term goal. It's harder to do right, but has a much greater upside. The Apple Car may actually be the Apple Car Service with custom autonomous driving hardware and software developed by Apple. The service would be highly integrated into Apple's exiting ecosystem and would bring with it the luxury and trust that people associate with the brand
Next Gen Carplay: https://arstechnica.com/gadgets/2022/06/apples-next-generati...
I don't have a lot of money, but I own a mac, an iPhone, airpods, apple watch, and an apple tv. I own a ~$20k car and could never imagine a time where I would spend more than 50k on a car. Maybe I'm in the minority of Apple customers, but I would bet I'm not.
Like most things the value is in the eye of the beholder, but there are definitely circumstances where a $50k car is in fact more than $30k nicer than a $20k car, leading you to prefer it over saving the money.
Besides, as of this year, the average price of a car is $48k; even in 2019 (the last "normal" year, if you will) that figure was hovering around $38k, so it's not that big of a stretch.