The iCar may be closer to reality than anyone knew — but the road to success is paved with potholes.
Apple is known for keeping a tight lid on innovation, yet records show it registered the domains Apple.Car and Apple.Auto on Dec. 9, the latest sign that the Cupertino-based consumer electronics giant is developing an electric vehicle. The only reason for Apple to show its hand on a pivotal new product is because it had to — development of a website for its long-rumored Apple-branded vehicle is likely well under way, if not nearly completed.
The fast-tracked development of an electric vehicle constitutes the most ambitious project to date by the most valuable company in the world.
And it’s destined to end in an unsightly wreckage.
Apple’s top brass don’t know the first thing about entering the car industry. It takes more than a boatload of cash and hundreds of poached automobile hires to become an automaker.
Yet Apple’s car envy is also understandable. It would be hard for a company at the forefront of innovation to sit on the sidelines for the most seismic shift consumers will see in their lifetimes. Autonomous cars hold the potential for cultural and environmental changes the likes of which have not been seen since the advent of automobiles themselves.
The end of traffic jams, accidents and excess pollution may all be on the horizon if someone gets this right. But not yet. Not soon. Not even by 2030.
This development will take time, and Apple is far too late to the game. Google had a decadelong head start. Its self-driving vehicles have completed 2 million miles of autonomous driving and are still not ready to come to market.
The latest vehicles from Tesla Motors have self-driving capabilities on highways, with fully automated vehicles coming in three years, and even that company has struggled. Meanwhile, the major automakers — who know a thing or two about mass producing vehicles — are following closely behind.
And yet all signs point to Apple entering the car industry.
In September, the California Department of Motor Vehicles confirmed a meeting with Apple to review autonomous vehicle regulations, a huge leap of faith for a company that has yet to even unveil an electric car prototype.
Apple has been poaching automotive experts from around the globe, and recently settled a lawsuit from battery maker A123 Systems alleging that Apple had hired high-level battery engineers and chemists in violation of noncompete agreements.
Recent hires include researchers from Toyota and Honda, an automated driving expert from Volkswagen and apparently several leftovers from Tesla.
“They have hired people we’ve fired,” Tesla CEO Elon Musk said in a recent interview. “We always jokingly call Apple the ‘Tesla Graveyard.’ If you don’t make it at Tesla, you go work at Apple. I’m not kidding.”
There’s nothing about what Apple does well that lends itself to building cars. In fact, quite the opposite: Apple has always excelled more on form over function. But there is no room for error when it comes to auto manufacturing. In fact, you could argue that cars are ultimately all about function.
Wall Street investors may greedily demand more year-over-year profit from Apple, but the company needs to take its foot off the gas on this project — or it will surely crash and burn. Otherwise the next domain it should register is something along the lines of iRecalls.com.
