Apple Car seen as serious competitor by auto execs

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Interesting reactions from around the auto industry. From Volkswagen:

“If these two companies intend to solely produce electric vehicles, it could go fast,” Volkswagen AG Chief Executive Officer Martin Winterkorn said at the Geneva International Motor Show. “We are also very interested in the technologies of Google and Apple, and I think that we, as the Volkswagen company, can bring together the digital and mobile world.”

From Germany’s Center for Automotive Management:

“The competition certainly needs to be taken seriously,” said Stefan Bratzel, director of the Center of Automotive Management at the University of Applied Sciences in Bergisch Gladbach, Germany. “The closer we get to autonomous driving, the weaker the connection becomes between the customer and the car. And Google and Apple aren’t burdened with old technology but can start fresh.”

From BMW:

“We never underestimate any competition,” said Ian Robertson, Bayerische Motoren Werke AG’s sales chief. “The entry barriers, which were in the past maybe more substantial, are now slightly lower. But at the same time, the complexities of the car industry are still there as well.”

From Jaguar Land Rover:

“The traditional thinking in the automotive industry isn’t suited to exploit the opportunities in the Internet community,” Wolfgang Ziebart, Jaguar Land Rover’s head of engineering, said in an interview. “If you need committees and so on to make decisions, then you’ve lost before you started.”

From Toyota:

“The key element is to make sure that when we’re working with them — and we’re totally open to work with any of them — it’s a real win-win,” said Didier Leroy, Toyota Motor Corp.’s European chief. “The carmakers don’t want just to become a kind of commodity, where somebody will only deliver an empty box and somebody will put in the box something which will be the real added value.”

The common elements to all of these? Respect, with a tinge of fear.



69 thoughts on “Apple Car seen as serious competitor by auto execs”

  2. “Respect, with a tinge of fear.” Of a product that does exist, can’t exist for a decade (and not without a huge telegraph to the whole world), from a company that doesn’t know a damn thing about heavy industrial manufacturing? No, I don’t think so. That being said, I think these guys have all seen the video of Ballmer laughing at the iPhone, and none of them wants to be that guy.

  3. By not dismissing Apple, the auto industry clearly is not following the phone and watch industries.

  4. So glad the Apple car rumor has put the ‘fear of God’ into these execs. Even if Apple never develops a car, this event has provided a much needed jolt of motivation to the industry. I believe all companies are acutely aware, possibly even paranoid, about a tech disruption to their industry.

    Wolfgang Ziebart’s comment resonates most with me. “If you need committees and so on to make decisions, then you’ve lost before you started.”

  5. Toyota’s Leroy needs to be hit over the head with a clue stick. Toyota just announced they’re not interested in working with Apple on CarPlay or the Android equivalent at Google. They want to roll their own solution.

    So much for insight. Eh?

  6. You underestimate Apple like Ballmer and Blackberry. And you are probably assuming they want to take on GM, Ford, Chrysler and the biggies.

    Nope. They are (if this hard-to-believe rumor is true) taking on BMW, Alpha Romeo, and other small makers. So they don’t have to build up a massive infrastructure. Apple can run circles around them on using a tight supply chain and just-on-time manufacturing. It won’t happen tomorrow. But then the iPad was in the works before the iPhone was. Apple does things in their own time.

  7. I’m not sure you have any idea what you’re talking about. There is nothing “small” about BMW or even Alpha Romero, which happens to be part of the Fiat Group (and which have been building engines, automobiles, and other vehicles/components for 99 and 104 years respectively). When it comes to auto-making things, start at “massive infrastructure” and only get bigger. Auto production lines are in factories that are measured in acres not square-feet!

  8. Why are these companies responding to a fictional Apple product that may or may not exist?

  9. Can’t exist for a decade? Apple can bring most devices from prototype to finished product in just a couple of years, sometimes closer to 4-5 years if it’s a new product/market.

    Doesn’t know a thing about cars? Thankfully they’ve been on a massive and aggressive hiring spree, hiring dozens of top automotive engineers and experts.

    Ramping up manufacturing might be a problem for a company without money but Apple has almost $200 billion. If they can build their multi-billion-dollar, 3-million-square-foot campus in 3 years I’m sure they could build a similarly-sized manufacturing plant (here, China, Brazil, wherever) and have cars shipping by 2020 if they really wanted to.

  10. Because there’s enough smoke from these rumours for people to believe there’s a fire.

    iPhone rumour began as far back as 1999 when Apple purchased the domain http://www.iphone.org/ and grew until the official release in 2007. Until then there was much speculation and even responses from other CEOs, like Palm CEO Ed Colligan and his famous “PC guys are not going to just figure this out. They’re not going to just walk in.”. These CEOs don’t want to be the next Ed Colligan (or the next Balmer, for that matter).

  11. They can hire the expertise though that will (and has been) reveal that there’s something there. I’d expect them to consider buying some things (engines, etc) if they use hybrids or IC.

    But here’s the thing – if Apple does this, it won’t just be a car with deeper Carplay integration. They might do that TOO, but that doesn’t justify the enormous risk. I think that if Apple really does a full on car, they’ll want to do what they did with the iPhone and deliver a radically different vision. Imagine a self-driving car whose interior is more malleable (you can recline and nap, turn seats to face one another, etc). If we stipulate self-driving tech that works as well as or better than a human then cars don’t have to follow the form they have for a century.

    However, I think they will first do an iPod-style release and do deep integration of Carplay with someone. By deep integration I mean things like being able to unlock doors as you approach, being able to be listening to something in your house and have it pause as you leave, then pick up again in your car, being able to control HVAC, etc.

    This is iPod-like since it’s not radically new, but pushes the state of the art forward and makes them easier to use and, yes, delightful. The iPod started the clamor for a phone since people saw that Apple could make using something not only easy but fun. A Carplay that seamlessly works (perhaps delivered via an Apple head unit) could do this too. A full on car would inherit those lessons.

  12. How long did that Apple tablet take to come to market? And I’m pretty sure they had way more than dozens of engineers and experts they had working on it. As for the cash, the vast majority of that is overseas and can’t be used in the US without incurring a 36% tax bill.

  13. “Obviously as the tool up they will tip their hand in a pretty massive way.”
    And no one sane will believe it until then. Otherwise, it’s “Apple is building a TV” all over again. Hell, worse since Apple could probably build a TV without anyone noticing.

  14. What an exec, of any sort, says on the record usually has very little relation to what they actually believe.

  15. Yep. If I had to bet, I’d say that they’re looking to do what I call the ‘iPod release’ above – a more tightly integrated Carplay, very possibly with an Apple head unit (for those who don’t know, head units are standard sizes, so a double DIN (tall) unit will fit in any double DIN dash).

    That would allow them to do some very cool integration things with iOS devices and wearables while pursuing self-driving if they want to do that.

  16. I dunno, I think that the statements Steve Balmer, Jim Balsillie, and Ed Cooligan’s dismissive statements were apparently pretty close to what they actually believed, given their companies’ actions.

  18. Citations please. I went through 10 pages of Google results for the period of 1999-2006 and the only thing I saw were misdated recent pages.

  19. the product doesnt have to exist for them to worry about it. if you dont realize this, dont go into business.

  21. why couldnt they build their factory oversears? or contract out to asian car plants? oh yeah, they could do that.

    try harder.

  22. they arent just making a stock head unit. Alpine said online somewhere that Apple helped them design their recent CarPlay-equipped stock head unit.

  24. We don’t disagree. Read my comment again and you’ll note that I mentioned deeper integration past entertainment and maps.

  25. Oh, as far as I know the only item Apple produces itself is the Mac Pro, and that’s hardly a high-volume item. Everything else it farms out to Foxconn, Pegatron, et al. Hell, Apple doesn’t even fab it’s own chips, and, ostensibly, the A-series processors are far more intrinsic to its core business that cars ever will be.

  26. Of course they could. Apple could buy almost every other company in the Fortune 500. The question is why would they, and how long the senior executives would have jobs if they did?

  27. Yeah, that’s the registration. Show me the speculation and rumors before mid-2006. Hell, show me the talk of an Apple phone before late 2006.

  28. I would but they were part of a website called Think Secret that got shut down a number of years ago.

    You can probably find some articles about an Apple phone if you can find articles about the first Motorola ROKR.

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