Did the Chevrolet Bolt Kill the Apple iCar?
T hink of it. The Silicon Valley company that began its comeback with the cool, non-beige translucent iMacs a duo of years before BMW revitalized the Mini Cooper with a funky and colorful palette of personalization options, the company that revolutionized portable music and then mobile telephones all while inspiring Fresh Millennium auto interior designers to incorporate its milk-white product language into car dashboards, desired to get into the individual transportation business.
Our own Art St. Antoine gushed over the possibility of renting an electrical, collective Apple iCar back in April 2015, a few months after the company`s Project Titan came to public light.
I Told You So Alert: I was one of the skeptics. During a latest appearance as a guest pundit on «Autoline After Hours,» I told host John McElroy that I was no more interested in driving an Apple car than I was interested in making calls on a Chevrolet smartphone. And I`ve been a loyal Mac possessor since I bought one of those translucent desktop computers back in 1999.
On Monday, Bloomberg reported a months-old rumor that «Apple Inc. has dramatically scaled back its automotive ambitions, leading to hundreds of job cuts and a fresh direction that, for now, no longer includes building its own car.» Tho’ Apple isn`t talking on the record to Bloomberg or anyone else, it`s pretty demonstrable it never intended to «build» its own car.
This comes down to semantics. It would have been folly, even with its $216 billion in cash reserves, for Apple to embark building automotive assembly plants for the electrified, autonomous iCar – as the telling goes, with racing, et. al., «how do you make a petite fortune in the car business? Embark with a big fortune.» Apple abandoned U.S. manufacturing years ago in favor of farming out production of iMacs, iPhones, iPods, and other i products it sells to cost-effective China-based contract production.
Farming out iCar production to an established Chinese manufacturer would have given Apple a giant advantage over Tesla, which has yet to make a quarterly profit (using generally accepted accounting procedures) from the $66,000-plus electrical luxury cars it builds at its Fremont, California plant it inherited from Toyota.
But a large cost advantage over Tesla doesn`t equate to cost parity with General Motors, Ford Motor Company, Toyota Motor Company or Daimler AG.
A few weeks ago, McLaren contradicted with this statement a Financial Times story that said Apple was in talks to buy the supercar manufacturer/Formula one team: «We can confirm that McLaren is not in discussion with Apple in respect of any potential investment.»
This said nothing of whether Apple might have been in talks with McLaren as a potential contractor to build iCar prototypes, much as Google had Roush Industries build more than one hundred electric-powered autonomous test vehicles a duo of years ago. McElroy put this theory forward on the same program I mentioned above.
So what happened? For one thing, Google has evidently lost the lead – in Silicon Valley to Tesla and in Detroit, Stuttgart, and Tokyo to all the usual automotive suspects in the autonomous car race. One major setback was that California`s Department of Motor Vehicles at very first declined to give in to Google`s (and Apple`s) intensive lobbying and permit fully autonomous testing on public roads until Michigan`s state legislature approved a bill permitting precisely that.
About the same time Project Titan began its retreat earlier this year, Google Auto signed a deal with FiatChrysler in which the autonomous car division of Alphabet Inc. will evidently supply some self-driving software technology to Auburn Hills, Michigan.
More importantly, I think, General Motors began trickling out specifications for the upcoming Chevrolet Bolt EV. The battery-electric hatchback will have an EPA-estimated 238-mile range and a sticker of $37,495 before the $7,500 federal tax credit. The Tesla Model Trio`s sticker will commence $Two,500 south of the Bolt and suggest two hundred fifteen miles of range, much sleeker styling, and the anti-Detroit, anti-dealer franchise law name, tho’ even Elon Musk chuckles when he claims production will begin late next year.
In a column back in February, I quoted former GM CEO Dan Akerson`s comments to the Detroit News that Apple would be disappointed with automotive profit margins of less than ten percent, far lower than what it makes on iPhones and iPads. Journalist Matthew Yglesias countered Akerson`s argument in Vox, telling Project Titan «will be a high-margin car because Apple makes only high-margin products.» Don`t compare Apple`s car with Chevy – compare it with Mercedes.
Or compare it with Tesla, which still doesn`t make a profit on its cars.
Conversely, GM – and Ford Motor Company, whose CEO Mark Fields this year confirmed it was working on a Chevy Bolt competitor, and Toyota and Honda, which already make fuel cell cars – can afford to sell low-volume, high-tech cars because they also sell lots of high-margin, mainstream SUVs and pickup trucks to bury losses from the fresh technology. The fatter an automaker`s global volume, the cheaper per vehicle it is to buy all those everyday car parts that work identically well on electric-powered hatchbacks, compact SUVs and luxury sedans. And considering all the advances in battery development GM and its suppliers have made in latest years, the two thousand seventeen Chevy Bolt should be considerably less unprofitable than the two thousand eleven Chevy Volt.
So consider Project Titan`s retreat good news, even if you`re a Mac-daddy and especially if you`re an Apple shareholder. Considering the emerging car-sharing autonomous electrified vehicle market, we very likely need fewer, not more car brands, even as everybody from Ssangyong to Peugeot-Citroen to Skoda to Geely`s fresh Lynk & Company consider importation here. Silicon Valley will be more satisfied and economically healthier if it jams to supplying autonomy, connectivity, and car-sharing technology to the companies that already have made the kind of capital expenditures that keep their stock values low.
Did the Chevrolet Bolt Kill the Apple iCar, Automobile Magazine
Did the Chevrolet Bolt Kill the Apple iCar?
T hink of it. The Silicon Valley company that began its comeback with the cool, non-beige translucent iMacs a duo of years before BMW revitalized the Mini Cooper with a funky and colorful palette of personalization options, the company that revolutionized portable music and then mobile telephones all while inspiring Fresh Millennium auto interior designers to incorporate its milk-white product language into car dashboards, wished to get into the private transportation business.
Our own Art St. Antoine gushed over the possibility of renting an electrical, collective Apple iCar back in April 2015, a few months after the company`s Project Titan came to public light.
I Told You So Alert: I was one of the skeptics. During a latest appearance as a guest pundit on «Autoline After Hours,» I told host John McElroy that I was no more interested in driving an Apple car than I was interested in making calls on a Chevrolet smartphone. And I`ve been a loyal Mac possessor since I bought one of those translucent desktop computers back in 1999.
On Monday, Bloomberg reported a months-old rumor that «Apple Inc. has dramatically scaled back its automotive ambitions, leading to hundreds of job cuts and a fresh direction that, for now, no longer includes building its own car.» However Apple isn`t talking on the record to Bloomberg or anyone else, it`s pretty evident it never intended to «build» its own car.
This comes down to semantics. It would have been folly, even with its $216 billion in cash reserves, for Apple to commence building automotive assembly plants for the electrified, autonomous iCar – as the telling goes, with racing, et. al., «how do you make a puny fortune in the car business? Commence with a big fortune.» Apple abandoned U.S. manufacturing years ago in favor of farming out production of iMacs, iPhones, iPods, and other i products it sells to cost-effective China-based contract production.
Farming out iCar production to an established Chinese manufacturer would have given Apple a ample advantage over Tesla, which has yet to make a quarterly profit (using generally accepted accounting procedures) from the $66,000-plus electrified luxury cars it builds at its Fremont, California plant it inherited from Toyota.
But a ample cost advantage over Tesla doesn`t equate to cost parity with General Motors, Ford Motor Company, Toyota Motor Company or Daimler AG.
A few weeks ago, McLaren contradicted with this statement a Financial Times story that said Apple was in talks to buy the supercar manufacturer/Formula one team: «We can confirm that McLaren is not in discussion with Apple in respect of any potential investment.»
This said nothing of whether Apple might have been in talks with McLaren as a potential contractor to build iCar prototypes, much as Google had Roush Industries build more than one hundred electric-powered autonomous test vehicles a duo of years ago. McElroy put this theory forward on the same program I mentioned above.
So what happened? For one thing, Google has evidently lost the lead – in Silicon Valley to Tesla and in Detroit, Stuttgart, and Tokyo to all the usual automotive suspects in the autonomous car race. One major setback was that California`s Department of Motor Vehicles at very first declined to give in to Google`s (and Apple`s) intensive lobbying and permit fully autonomous testing on public roads until Michigan`s state legislature approved a bill permitting precisely that.
About the same time Project Titan began its retreat earlier this year, Google Auto signed a deal with FiatChrysler in which the autonomous car division of Alphabet Inc. will evidently supply some self-driving software technology to Auburn Hills, Michigan.
More importantly, I think, General Motors began trickling out specifications for the upcoming Chevrolet Bolt EV. The battery-electric hatchback will have an EPA-estimated 238-mile range and a sticker of $37,495 before the $7,500 federal tax credit. The Tesla Model Trio`s sticker will commence $Two,500 south of the Bolt and suggest two hundred fifteen miles of range, much sleeker styling, and the anti-Detroit, anti-dealer franchise law name, however even Elon Musk chuckles when he claims production will begin late next year.
In a column back in February, I quoted former GM CEO Dan Akerson`s comments to the Detroit News that Apple would be disappointed with automotive profit margins of less than ten percent, far lower than what it makes on iPhones and iPads. Journalist Matthew Yglesias countered Akerson`s argument in Vox, telling Project Titan «will be a high-margin car because Apple makes only high-margin products.» Don`t compare Apple`s car with Chevy – compare it with Mercedes.
Or compare it with Tesla, which still doesn`t make a profit on its cars.
Conversely, GM – and Ford Motor Company, whose CEO Mark Fields this year confirmed it was working on a Chevy Bolt competitor, and Toyota and Honda, which already make fuel cell cars – can afford to sell low-volume, high-tech cars because they also sell lots of high-margin, mainstream SUVs and pickup trucks to bury losses from the fresh technology. The thicker an automaker`s global volume, the cheaper per vehicle it is to buy all those everyday car parts that work identically well on electric-powered hatchbacks, compact SUVs and luxury sedans. And considering all the advances in battery development GM and its suppliers have made in latest years, the two thousand seventeen Chevy Bolt should be considerably less unprofitable than the two thousand eleven Chevy Volt.
So consider Project Titan`s retreat good news, even if you`re a Mac-daddy and especially if you`re an Apple shareholder. Considering the emerging car-sharing autonomous electrical vehicle market, we most likely need fewer, not more car brands, even as everybody from Ssangyong to Peugeot-Citroen to Skoda to Geely`s fresh Lynk & Company consider importation here. Silicon Valley will be more satisfied and economically healthier if it tucks to supplying autonomy, connectivity, and car-sharing technology to the companies that already have made the kind of capital expenditures that keep their stock values low.