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Originally Posted by Eugene
Okay, I'll bite. CarKit would arrest too much control from the automaker while still requiring bespoke programming/design collaboration between Apple and the automaker. Also nobody really chooses a car based on who developed its autopilot...it's going to be part of a package deal. I love Apple, but I have no intention of limiting my choices to CarPlay enabled cars. The same goes for autopilot or "CarKit." Tesla is ahead of Mercedes and almost nobody else matter right now, especially Apple.
I wish we knew more about their car project...all we know is they have a less ambitious vision than before.
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I'm not arguing the point, I just don't see any evidence that Apple is actually developing a car. You know, the thing with four wheels and some kind of propulsion, etc. The software does
not come first. It can come simultaneously, but it cannot come first. Not, that is, if Apple hopes to have an actual car to sell anytime in the next ten years. The industry consensus is that it takes 5 years to develop the
hardware of a new car—the physical, rolling bits. And that's if you have the capacity to manufacture the thing once you're finished developing it. In other words,
if you already have an assembly line. If you don't already have an assembly line, then that line must either be developed alongside the car, or you can add another 2-5 years to your development cycle.
Plus, you have to show your concept if you want to get people interested in your car. Auto design is
very important to the consumer. This is why Tesla showed its Model 3 two years before even attempting delivery. Had the Model 3 been ugly as sin, sales would flop no matter what kind of super-powers it had. People like to look good in their cars!
If Apple's car looks like a globe on four wheels, only Google-glass-wearing tech-nerds are going to buy one, and that's not a big enough market to justify the multi-billion dollar investment that is single-model car development.
"Noises coming from a factory", engineer-poaching, and Appleinsider-says-so is not proof of car development. Hell, even Chevy can't keep the cat in the bag regarding their super-top-secret ZR-1 project, nor their even-more-top-secret c8 Corvette, or anything else for that matter. Cars must be road-tested, safety-tested, crash-tested, reliability-tested, and happy-eye-candy-consumer-tested. Established automotive manufacturers utilize top-secret test tracks (not so top secret anymore with the invention of the drone), auto-body disguises, and night testing to hide their work, and even then the secret is out long before the car is.
Basically, while you can design the car in secret, build a clay model in secret, wind tunnel test it, etc., all in secret, the car must eventually go out onto some track and prove to the engineers (and the Uncle-Sam) that it can handle 70mph over smooth-ass-pavement that transitions to frost-heave-induced-pothole-crap at speed, and then slow to a screeching halt within a couple hundred feet, all while keeping its passengers tightly constrained inside their little, aluminum and glass bubble.
There have been words that Apple has purchased (or leased) space for an assembling line, but that line is not going to be built in secret. Too much big-ass equipment like robots and overhead conveyor systems that at least one person is likely to photograph and/or report having seen.
If they are, and they pull it off without little more than a whisper escaping the project, then they will set a new standard of secrecy within the industry that has so far been entirely unattainable.
I'm not sold this is the direction Apple is headed.