It’s one of many worst-kept secrets and techniques within the tech trade that a big group of Apple workers are engaged on a automotive undertaking, identified internally as Project Titan. But there’s a distinction between engaged on a undertaking and really transport out a completed product, and the CEO of Volkswagen is the newest voice to publicly forged doubt over the prospects of an Apple Car making it to market.
Reuters stories that Herbert Diess stated yesterday: “I’m not sure if Apple will actually bring cars to the market in the end. It would be a big effort.”
Diess, who was talking at Berlin’s hub.berlin tech convention, added that he was positive that Apple desires to enter the automotive market on the software program aspect, however that’s not fairly the identical factor.
Diess definitely has some extent. The automotive trade has a excessive value of entry and will probably be troublesome for Apple to make an precise automotive with out the help of an present automotive producer. The tech large is notoriously troublesome to work with and asking an auto maker to assist with the creation of an Apple Car is a bit like asking turkeys to vote for Christmas.
It’s additionally essential to notice, nonetheless, that Diess is certainly not a disinterested observer in all this. In 2021 he insisted that VW just isn’t afraid of the competitors an Apple Car would pose, however Tesla’s success means the automotive trade is properly conscious of tech’s disruptive potential. Telling the world that the Apple Car is not going to change the trade is a technique of attempting to verify it doesn’t, by dampening enthusiasm and persuading Apple shareholders that this is able to not be a productive avenue for growth.
And right here’s one last tidbit which illustrates each how lengthy the Apple Car has been operating and the peculiar love-hate relationship the corporate has had with automotive producers. Back within the day, Volkswagen itself reportedly held talks with Apple about collectively creating a automobile, however negotiations got here to nothing. In these days each corporations had totally different CEOs; VW was headed by Martin Winterkorn, and Apple by a man you’ll have heard of by the identify of Steve Jobs. Because this occurred in 2007.
Perhaps in one other 15 years the Apple Car will lastly be a actuality. Or maybe we can have lastly stopped speaking about it. But proper now, each appear to be distant prospects.
Source: www.macworld.com