Refuse to buy Tesla Apple originally left this hand!

Multinational automobile manufacturing is nothing new. A few days ago, Xiaomi and BYD officially "rumored", and the news that Apple, the "overlord" of the mobile phone industry, made cars began to ferment again these days.

As far as foreign media reports are concerned, this news has been confirmed by Apple's key component suppliers. It is said that Apple plans to release the first Apple in September next year. Car, two years in advance.

As soon as the news came out, some people even said that Apple? The prototype of the car has been tested on roads in California; Responding to Apple? Automobile inventory demand, as well as Dalian, China Trade Federation and other big factories have experienced explosive growth. In addition, it is reported that Apple's chip manufacturing partner TSMC is cooperating with Apple to develop an "autonomous driving chip".

It is not surprising that Apple makes cars. I have been groping for progress since before!

As early as 20 10, Steve Jobs, the former CEO of Apple, considered the possibility of building a car and even had a series of discussions with a start-up car company called V-Vehicle. Later, with the global "explosion" of iPhone and the death of Jobs, Apple's idea of building a car ran aground.

In 20 15, a truck rented by apple appeared on the streets of northern California, and several cameras were placed on the roof. Then the Wall Street Journal broke a heavy news. Since 20 14, Apple has been secretly carrying out a "Titan Plan" to develop electric vehicles, recruiting thousands of employees from within Apple and exploring under the leadership of Steve Zadsky, vice president of product design at Apple.

At that time, Apple did not have a clear vision for the future car. There are many internal differences about whether to drive automatically or semi-automatically. The direction of the team has gradually shifted from building cars to technology research and development of self-driving cars. 2065438+In April 2007, Apple got the license to test self-driving cars in California, and it still used a Lexus SUV. It seems that Apple has given up the dream of building a car.

However, a series of subsequent behaviors showed that it did not "give up". 2065438+In August 2008, Guo Ming, a famous Apple analyst, said that Apple would officially launch Apple from 2023 to 2025. The car will be positioned as the "next star product", which means that this car will completely change the car market like the iPhone released in 2007.

2065438+In June 2009, Apple also acquired Drive.ai, a self-driving car startup, and transferred many employees in engineering and product design to their own car projects. Although its focus is still on other products such as iPhone, the exploration of cars is in full swing ~

It can be seen from these that Apple really doesn't just talk about building cars. After all, at the beginning of 15, five executives were poached from Tesla. Although Apple's car-making plan has not made much progress or even suffered heavy losses, it has never stopped digging talents. By the end of 20 19, Apple had poached more than 300 people from "Leek King" Tesla. In addition, there were traditional vehicle companies such as Ford, Mercedes-Benz, FCA, Chrysler and Volkswagen, as well as experts in the fields of autonomous driving and battery companies such as NVIDIA, Waymo and Samsung. This shows that this posture is not simple ~

Even some netizens on the Internet ridiculed that the arrival of Apple's car would directly fuck Tesla, just like subverting Nokia that year. Personally, I think this is reasonable. After all, for Tesla, this is an opponent who may not win.

Musk himself said before that it was because of Model in Tesla? When the project was in financial trouble, he took the initiative to contact Cook to seek Apple's acquisition of Tesla, but was ruthlessly rejected. Cook is not even interested in the talks. At that time, Tesla's market value was only 60 billion US dollars, and now it has exceeded 600 billion US dollars.

And it is probably well known that Musk doesn't like Apple very much. He hates people comparing him with Jobs, and even more hates the media naming him "Jobs' successor". /kloc-When Apple dug the corner of Tesla in 0/5, Musk once sarcastically said, "Apple can only recruit people we don't want. We call Apple "Tesla's grave". If you can't work in Tesla, go to Apple. I'm not kidding. "

He publicly underestimated Apple's prospects in the automotive industry. "Seriously, it is a good thing for Apple to invest in this field, but cars are much more complicated than mobile phones and watches. You can't tell Foxconn to build a car for me. " However, Musk himself is not from the automotive industry. He is an entrepreneur in the internet industry. He entered Tesla as an investor and led the electric company to launch several subversive products one after another, making it an emerging electric vehicle industry. Leadership.

Although the surface publicly belittles Apple, Musk knows very well that Tesla's biggest opponent in the future is not the automobile giant of traditional enterprises, but the giant apple of the electronics industry. No one will like his competitors! In addition to Apple, I have repeatedly ridiculed Bezo's Blue? Origin-space? X's biggest competitor, well, yes, has something to do with his building rockets! ! Max: I really despise you. I don't know if I can beat you. I'll spit a few words first and feel refreshed ~)

For Apple, building a car is a new field, but it must be imperative. In the past few years, Apple has been trying to expand new revenue sources. They have been too dependent on the iPhone, once accounting for more than two-thirds of revenue; The smartphone industry is saturated, and iPhone sales stopped growing from 20 15. It is necessary to raise the average price to maintain income growth. Last year, iPhone sales even dropped by 15%, relying on the watch headphones previously laid out. It has survived the most difficult time, and now the proportion of iPhone revenue has dropped below 50%. Therefore, according to the global passenger car sales of 65.5 million vehicles last year, China and the United States are the two largest markets, with sales of 210.045 million vehicles and10.696 million vehicles respectively, which shows that this automobile market is bigger and can better meet its growth demand.

The most important thing is that it has great advantages ~

First, the high-tech industry pays more attention to the application of artificial intelligence and the Internet of Things in the automotive field. Apple's complete ecosystem and specific human-computer interaction, customer experience and other aspects have unparalleled advantages. Apple only needs to copy the operating system into the car driving and connect it with the driving operation in the car.

Second, a major threshold for new forces to enter the automotive field is the issue of funds. At the beginning of 2020, Apple's cash reserves reached $207 billion. As long as Apple wants to play, hardware design, production, research and development, and talent reserve are all trivial matters!

Although its own advantages exist, car production is by no means an easy task, not just doing it, as Cook himself said, "Cars and mobile phones are completely different. A car has more than 10000 parts and needs a huge industrial chain. The car factory alone needs to invest billions of dollars. Apple is used to the light mode of OEM, and the chips and products are handed over to the foundry for manufacturing and assembly. " So it's also quite difficult ~

But if you really enter the automobile industry and occupy a place, then KO Tesla is estimated to be a matter of minutes. I think the reason why Cook will reject Musk may be that Musk belittles Apple, or the real direct reason is that he believes that Apple can build a better car, just like subverting the glory of Nokia. We will wait and see! Do you think this Apple car will work?

This article comes from car home, the author of the car manufacturer, and does not represent car home's position.