Technology giant Apple has entered the auto industry with high profile, but its car-making plan is once again facing "difficult production".
On the evening of March 15, Eastern Time, Guo Mingxi, an analyst at Tianfeng International Securities, posted on his personal social media account that Apple's auto project team had been disbanded for some time. If the mass production target is achieved in 2025, the team restructuring will need to be achieved within 3 to 6 months.
According to the data, Guo Mingji graduated from the Department of Business Administration of National Chengchi University in Taiwan, and worked as an analyst at KGI Securities, tracking Apple and its supply chain for a long time. Regarding the prediction of Apple products and suppliers, especially Apple's mobile phones over the years, Guo Mingxi's revelations have been basically confirmed, and he is also regarded as Apple's "breaking news king".
If the news is true, it means that Apple's car-making plans have changed again, and it has also cast a shadow on the goal of full mass production in 2025. Apple's car-making plan has been shelved again, who should be responsible?
The senior management of the automotive team left the company
In the past 8 years, Apple's car project team has undergone several blood changes.
In January, Bloomberg reported that Joe Bass, head of software engineering project management for Apple's automotive project team, left the company. At this point, the executives of the car-making project team formed by Apple in 2021 have all left. More than 100 engineers on the team were also poached by Meta.
In the past 3 years or so, Apple has completed the whole process from large-scale recruitment to team dissolution.
In 2020, Apple released job postings for special project groups on its website. Among them, most of the positions require a professional education background in electrical engineering, and give priority to those with experience in the automotive industry, with more than 300 positions, covering battery power management, road safety, automobile experience, machine learning and artificial intelligence and other fields.
In 2021, Apple completed the team formation of the automotive project, including 11 industry experts with rich resumes, including Apple Watch head Kevin Lynch, AI artificial intelligence master John Jennandria, former Porsche chassis head Manfred Haller, and former Tesla Model 3 production head Pipeg Field replaced Bob Mansfield as team leader, who was responsible for the development of the MacBook Air.
Apple launch
With $250 billion in cash in hand and a dedicated team, Apple looks set to make a big splash on the automotive track. In October last year, Ford announced that The former head of Apple's car-making project, Pipe Ge Field, will serve as for Ford's chief director of advanced technology and embedded systems, and also unveiled the personnel earthquake of Apple's car project team.
In the months leading up to Gerfield's departure, four executives had left. With the departure of Joe Bass, the management of Apple's car-making team was officially dissolved.
Behind the frequent personnel changes in the Apple car project team is the hesitation in the choice of Apple's car-making technical route, and Apple CEO Cook cannot escape the blame.
Professional manager Cook
Compared to former CEO Steve Jobs, Tim Cook is more conservative and reluctant to take too many risks.
As early as 2014, Apple launched a car-making plan code-named "Titan". Cook doesn't want the company to take the risk of opening up the auto market, and Apple's car-making projects are slow to progress. It was not until 2019 that Cook officially launched the car project. On the 2019 earnings call, Cook responded when asked about Apple's car-making plans, "We like to do a combination of hardware and software, but only if the market is big enough." At that time, the new car-making forces and traditional car companies have launched a number of products, and the market share of pure electric vehicles has been basically saturated.
Under normal circumstances, technology companies enter the automotive industry, there are two technical paths, one is to provide intelligent driving solutions to car companies; the other is to directly go down to build cars.
Cook is undecided in the choice of route and lacks some patience. Before 2018, the titan program was mainly responsible for Bob Mansfield, Apple route selection and Google similar, developed high-level assisted driving, provided intelligent solutions for car companies, and applied for nearly a thousand related patents. But compared to Google's subsidiary Waymo, Apple's road test data is far behind. In 2018, Apple tested 79,000 miles a year; waymo reached 10 million miles.
In 2018, Apple poached Gerfield from Tesla, who served as vice president of hardware research and development at Apple from 2003 to 2008. As self-driving research and development fell short of expectations, Apple laid off 300 automotive team engineers in 2019 and turned to vehicle design and manufacturing.
According to Cook's idea, the automotive business line is similar to the mobile smart terminal, designed by Apple, looking for traditional manufacturers for OEM. Some media reported that Hyundai Motor and Apple had previously contacted and cooperated to build cars, but Hyundai Motor gave a rumor. Some Hyundai executives believe that the cooperation between Hyundai and Apple should retain more autonomy and be able to achieve some technology sharing, such as Apple's intelligent assisted driving should also export technology to Hyundai's own products. If it is simply OEM for Apple, it will be reduced to a second "Foxconn".
Industry insiders believe that Hyundai Kia, as the world's leading car company, engine, gearbox and chassis and other fields, Hyundai has mastered the core technology, but also reflects the strong ability of independent research and development, simply reduced to a foundry, Hyundai is certainly unwilling.
It is worth noting that Tesla CEO Musk once shared a past on his personal social media account, "In the darkest days of the Model 3 development process, I tried to contact Apple CEO Tim Cook to discuss the possibility of making Apple buy at one-tenth of the current market value of Tesla ($60 billion), but Cook did not accept to meet with me. ”
At present, Apple under the guidance of Cook has not gone well in the car-making route, and it has also provided some reference value for other technology companies that have made cars. Software-defined cars make it possible for tech companies to enter the car. On the one hand, technology companies need to cooperate with traditional car companies to learn from existing technologies; on the other hand, traditional car companies generally believe that the biggest opponents in the future come from the technology industry, which means that both sides will eventually become rivals.
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