Apple May Realize Tesla's "car Dream"

Cook is "restarting" jobs's "car dream".According to DIGITIMES, Apple's first car, the apple car, will be launched in September 2021. At present, at least dozens of Apple car prototypes have been secretly tested on California roads. In addition, apple is working with TSMC to develop an autopilot chip and explores the possibility of establishing a factory in the United States.Jobs said publicly before his death, "we have a platform to design a car, and we want to build a car in the near future.". After cook took over apple, he made a slight attempt in the automotive field, but the response was not satisfactory, and was finally ranked by musk.

Yesterday, apple built cars on the hot search listIn the field of new energy vehicle manufacturing, everyone wants to be the second Tesla. But as Cook said, "pure electric vehicles are just large electronic products". Now, apple, which "gets up early but catches up late", doesn't seem to want to give up its ambition in building cars.Dig corners and change looks

How can we reduce the threat of competitors? Cook's solution is to face hard - dig corners.American media business insider has said that many Tesla employees have changed jobs to apple. As early as early as 2015, apple poached five executives from Tesla, and then the "talent competition" between Tesla and apple lasted for five years.According to incomplete statistics, by the end of 2019, Apple had poached more than 300 people from Tesla. Even musk himself joked, "if you can't stay in Tesla, you'll have to go to apple.".

Apple and Tesla enjoy digging corners with each other. Doug field, former Tesla senior vice president of engineering, returned to apple in 2018 after being poached by Tesla for five years. The return of Doug Field undoubtedly rekindled Apple's determination to build cars. Since 2017, Apple has gained more than 100 patents in the automotive field, and acquired the Drive.ai of auto driving start-ups last year.The return of old friends is undoubtedly a small victory secretly won by apple. Therefore, the change of coach has also been put on the agenda.Just the day before Apple was released to build the "car core", there were reports that the automatic driving Department of Apple was adjusted by AI veteran John Giannandrea and was fully responsible for the subsequent development of Apple's autopilot system. Doug Field and its team of hundreds of engineers will join the AI and machine learning team of John Giannandrea.

For a long time, apple regards the strong user group of iPhone as the core car making weapon, and is obsessed with the presentation of human car interactive experience and AR technology.In 2017, apple took the confirmation of automatic driving as the general direction of R & D, invented a patent for AR windshield, and used Carplay to realize the deep integration of vehicles and mobile devices. Among the more than 100 automotive related technology patents obtained by apple, it covers many aspects, such as charging, on-board system, body structure optimization and so on.Apple may be able to compete with Tesla, today's car maker.

Want to build "automobile core"At the beginning of the birth of most new car building forces, they claimed to be "apple in the automotive industry". Now Apple continues its "car dream" and wants to be "Apple car".In early December, some media revealed that Apple was conducting preliminary negotiations with automotive electronics suppliers, and Apple's chip manufacturing partner TSMC was cooperating with apple to develop "automatic driving chip".

Now, it is clear that TSMC has already deployed Apple car and has an exclusive R & D plant in Nanke.In fact, it is no surprise that Apple will cooperate with TSMC to build auto chips. There is a lot of cooperation between apple and TSMC. At present, the A-Series processors used in the iPhone and iPad and the M1 chip on the Mac are produced by TSMC.Apple's car making is bound to be tit for tat with Tesla. Tesla is also cooperating with TSMC to develop automatic driving chip. Its upcoming hw4.0 chip may be mass produced in the fourth quarter of 2021.

DIGITIMES quoted relevant industry insiders to point out that the apple car model is similar to Tesla, and the market supply chain overlap rate is high. Based on Apple's strong control over the supply chain, it should quickly determine suppliers to ensure supply.At present, many industry suppliers have begun to send samples for preliminary negotiations with apple.DIGITIMES reported that according to the automotive industry chain news, Apple has recently established a plan to design factories and produce in the United States, and began to cooperate and negotiate with the upstream and downstream of the global automotive electronics supply chain to further understand the technical specifications, quotation and future technological growth momentum at this stage.

From the supplier's point of view, Taiwan auto parts suppliers such as Heda industry, ftu-ky and Futian electric have been included in the apple car supply chain. At present, the assembly task is determined to be undertaken by Honghua advanced, a joint venture between Honghai group, an old friend of apple, and Yulong automobile.In addition to apple, Amazon also seems to actively cooperate with Taiwan suppliers to win orders. The industry calls the two enterprises "American double a".It may not be long before Apple will "just drive" with Tesla.

There are still "hidden worries"Although favored by the outside world, Apple's car dream has experienced twists and turns in seven years.Apple announced that it would enter the automotive field in 2013. At that time, it released the "IOS in the car" plan, and then launched the "project Titan", determined to create a new model that completely subverts the automotive industry.

Seven years later, Tesla achieved subversion, and the three brothers of ideal, Weilai and Xiaopeng also subverted. Jia Yueting's FF seems to be on the way to subversion.In the twists and turns of the process, Apple's autopilot project "Project Titan" has repeatedly become a victim of corporate restructuring. In January last year, "project Titan" laid off more than 200 people. In March this year, another 190 people were laid off.Obviously, cook's "large electronic products" are not as simple as creating an iPhone. Last year, apple "stepped back" and reduced the intensity of automatic driving road test. In 2019, only 23 of Apple's 69 vehicles registered with the California motor vehicle administration were tested on the road, with a road test mileage of 7544 miles (about 12140.89 kilometers), only one tenth of that in 2018.

Compared with it, it is an all-round rolling from the industry. Waymo, the ancestor of automatic driving, had a road test of more than 1.45 million in 2019, and the cruise test mileage of GM, which ranked second, easily reached 831000 miles.The importance of road test is self-evident. For the research and development of automatic driving technology, subject to the performance of sensors, a large number of test verification is a necessary condition to ensure the safety of automatic driving function. The slowing pace of Apple's road test inevitably makes the outside world suspicious.The supply chain of automobiles is far more complex than that of mobile phones. Tesla, the current car manufacturing overlord, borrowed the parts supply system of Mercedes Benz and the industrial chain foundation of GM and Ford to learn the quality control and problem traceability system from Toyota before creating the model s.

At present, the pressure Apple faces in the field of new energy vehicles is only increasing. There are old auto manufacturers such as Volkswagen, Ford and general motors in the front, and then Tesla, a strong enemy, is waiting.However, apple can still fight, and it still has an ace in the IOS ecosystem. When major car companies and Internet giants have built ecosystems, Apple has long been far ahead.