Talk about a Dallas-style season-ending cliff-hanger: No leaked tidbits implying impending drama, no rumours that some game-changing denouement was afoot, just two quick .38s to JR’s chest and then a quick fade to black as the world held with bated breath for any sort of revelation as to what the heck just happened.
Friday, the Wall Street Journal shocked the world — at least the automotive part of it — with the headline “Apple Gears Up to Challenge Tesla in Electric Cars“, the newspaper reporting the world’s most valuable corporation was developing an automobile — code-named “Titan” — that would marry minivan-like utility with an emissions-free electric powertrain. The authors — Daisuke Wakabayashi and Mike Ramsey — detailed Apple’s hiring of former automotive executives and designers, speculated on the out-sourcing of production to Magna’s Magna Steyr (who manufactured the X3 and Mini Clubman for BMW) and even quoted the Financial Times as noting that dozens of Apple employees have been researching automotive products and patents. Then, WSJ went radio silent, leaving the rest of the automotive blogosphere in a complete tizzy speculating on whether this was a self-driving play — no, says the Journal — or what Apple might name its little electric minivan — iCar, natch.
Is this just a development of CarPlay?
Of course, even as dramatically as the Journal built the case for Apple actually building a car (citing all manner of diaphanous quotes; “There are products that we’re working on that no one knows about,” said CEO Tim Cook last September), it cautioned that this could all be some further development of the company’s CarPlay in-car infotainment system revealed last March and slated to see use in everything from Ferraris to Honda. But, where’s the fun in speculating, wide-eyed, about mere user interface? Besides, why would Apple need 46 employees with Tesla experience (according to their LinkedIn profiles) if they were just working on a friggin’ computer screen?
Ted Cardenas, a marketing vice president with Pioneer Electronics, demonstrates the new Apple CarPlay powered by Pioneer, in San Francisco. Utilizing large, in-dash Pioneer LCD displays, CarPlay, featuring Siri voice control, gives iPhone users the features while allowing them to stay focused on the road.
Eric Risberg, AP Photo
Apple to buy Tesla?
It certainly makes for juicy reportage. One gets to muse, for instance, how Apple, the world’s most valuable corporation, can easily afford to develop its own automobile. Sure, the billion or two it takes to develop a new car from scratch (not to mention the hundreds of millions to set up a manufacturing facility) would daunt most businesses, but with a market cap of $737 billion (all figures in USD) and a staggering $178 billion cash in its corporate coffers, Cupertino could develop an entire range of Tesla clones with just petty cash. Indeed, one analyst, Jason Calacanis, goes one step further, predicting that Apple will eschew the entire R & D investment and just buy Tesla lock-stock-and-barrel for $75 billion by 2018.
Read more: The hands-free car will disrupt everything
Is this just Google envy?
So, assuming that Apple really is developing something with four wheels and a motor, what would an iCar look like? Indeed, what would the Silicon Valley giant’s business model be? Is it just trying to copy Google, prototyping futuristic automobiles for “personal mobility” rather than individual ownership? Or are its ambitions even more grandiose and it’s looking to build its EVs for the luxury segment — hence those Tesla defectors — the only bright spot in an otherwise failed electric vehicle market?
The buzz around driverless vehicles — such as Google’s Self-Driving Car — offered more evidence of a rapidly changing auto industry.
PNG Merlin Archive, Driving
What would an Apple car look like?
More importantly, which Apple would show up to the game? Would it be the inventor of cutting edge technology like the iMac, iPhone and iPad? Or would it be the aggregator of recent times, a mere shadow of its once innovative self, content to increase the screen size of its iPhones and call them a revolution in communication? Will this be the Apple of iTunes or the screw-up that released Maps before its time? It’s been a long time since Cupertino has been the leading light of high tech, with recent advancements more about marketing than technology.
And, if that lethargy simply translated into yet another self-driving EV — the Journal claims that Apple is not working on self-driving autonomy but this is almost certainly the least believable part of its reporting — methinks the reaction, from both consumer and market, would be a barely stifled yawn. Being the world’s most successful tech company may indeed bring with it all manner of resources, but so too are the expectations; an iPhone 6s-like upgrade just won’t do if Apple wants to prove it can revolutionize the auto industry as it has mobile devices.
2015 Tesla Model S P85D
Brendan McAleer, Driving
The ghost of Steve Jobs?
But, if Apple can indeed channel the ghost of Steve Jobs, maybe there is a revolution in the making. Battery technology, so important to mobile communications, might see Apple leapfrog to the forefront of the automobile industry. Could Cupertino have some inside track into the much-hyped Lithium-air storage cell? An even bigger home-run might be some form of low-cost inductive battery charging infrastructure, with future EVs able to recharge literally as they’re being driven. And if CEO Tim Cook was particularly prescient and came to the conclusion that environmental perfection was some form of hydrogen/electric hybrid — both emission-less, the former solving the EVs range issue with the latter offering cheap inner-city commuting — then perhaps there really is something to Silicon Valley’s takeover of the automotive industry. One thing is certain, though; Apple is the master of innovative packaging and whether a future iCar is a minivan or not, Cupertino’s industrial designers would almost certainly shake up the stylistic status quo.
So let’s also hope the company comes up with something more determined than a few colourful icons and a new “killer” app. As badly as in-car infotainment systems need the Apple touch, what the world really needs is the automotive equivalent of an Apple II.
dbooth@nationalpost.com
Twitter.com/MotorMouthNP
