Jean-Louis Gassée, writing for Monday Note, presents three terrifically well reasoned analogies, all designed to bring home a single point: That Apple is not prepared to enter the automobile business.
Jean-Louis would love to see an Apple Car, just to be clear:
I would love to be wrong about the AppleCar — I join the choristers who would love to see what Apple could do with a car — but we’ve heard a bit too much about Apple’s ability to design an interesting electric vehicle and not enough about the industrial part, about the machine that makes the machines.
But the anecdotes make their own case. A very interesting read.
Apple already design its own manufacturing processes and owns the machinery plus there is no one that better manages the supply chain than Apple right now. Jean-Louis analogies don’t hold water.
New Yorker article is pure hubris. Mr. Ive believes design can change any industry and that Cars are not designed according to his taste. Just sayin’.
Agreed.
I don’t think that New Yorker article was meant to imply Apple is designing a car. Jony Ive is a designer. I’m sure he’s constantly looking around and seeing things he likes/doesn’t like. That doesn’t mean anything in terms of Apple’s product roadmap.
Citation please. I know Apple has in the past purchased equipment for use in it’s contract manufacturers’ facilities, but I’ve never heard how prevalent it is, and I know Horace Dedieu has pored over Apple CapEx numbers to determine the extent. If you know something he doesn’t, please enlighten us.
The more I think about this, the more I am reminded of Michael Jordan playing for the White Sox. Michael Jordan was a physical specimen, arguably the greatest athlete in the world. His hand-eye coordination was unparalleled, his court vision among the best and his body control and competitiveness unmatched. All of which are critical skills in baseball and should have transferred over. Anything that people said he could not do in basketball, he did in spades. Yet, when he moved to baseball, he struggled at the Double A level and washed out. It wasn’t that he lacked the core tools or abilities for baseball, but he spent his whole life optimizing for basketball. The differences in how to use the skills are subtle, but critical. This is Apple. They’re Jordan and the car companies are the tubby guys who play baseball but know how to get the bat on the ball.
Apple wants the Apple Digital Lifestyle everywhere, from your desktop to your pocket to your TV to your… car. I agree with those who say Apple wants to give you great access to your stuff while in your car and they’ll likely do it from the dashboard somehow. Apple won’t even make a TV, and they’re going to make a car? I think some folks in Cupertino are laughing their asses off over this rumor.
In one of the comments in the above article, this image of the Tesla chasis was posted: http://teslaadvice.com/auto_img/2013/06/07/2012-32-04-tesla-chassis-in-store.jpg
This was very compelling for me. It was amazing to see how beautifully simple the modern electric car is compared to internal combustion based automobiles.
I still don’t believe Apple will try to develop automobiles from the ground up, but I now think it’s less crazy of an idea.
Lit Motors based out of San Francisco is doing some interesting things in the personal vehicle space.