All the secrets of Apple's car are here

On the evening of March 15, Ming-Chi Kuo, a well-known analyst at Tianfeng International Securities, broke the news on social media: Apple's car team has been disbanded for some time. If Apple Car is to be mass-produced in 2025, it will need to reorganize the team within 3 to 6 months. Prior to this, he had predicted the launch time of Apple Car several times, from 2025, 2027, and then changed it to 2028.

Not long ago, this analyst, who is known in the industry as "the most powerful Apple analyst on the planet," broke the news that Apple is working with the Korean company OSAT to develop chips for Apple Car's autonomous driving functions.

No one knew when, or even if, the Apple Car would be released until CEO Tim Cook took the stage to make the official announcement.

But it’s hard for people to resist the temptation of Apple. Even though there are already hundreds of electric cars on the market to choose from, the idea of ​​owning an Apple Car is still attractive. In recent years, iPhone sales have stabilized, and Apple also needs to come up with a groundbreaking product that will shock the world.

For competitors, the golden signboard of Apple and the halo of design and technology accumulated by the brand over the years are enough to keep other brands awake at night when they have not even seen the shadow of the car. Li Bin, the founder of NIO, once said that the ultimate opponent of NIO is Apple.

Over the past seven years, news about Apple cars has been reported from time to time. From these news fragments, we have pieced together a panoramic picture of Apple cars.

Apple's "Three Ins and Three Outs" in Car Manufacturing

People have almost never heard any official news, and Apple has always been ambiguous about making cars.

In February 2015, someone broke the news that Apple was working on a car, and for a while, everyone was talking about the prospect of an Apple car.

According to the Wall Street Journal, the iCar project was code-named Titan and initially involved hundreds of employees. From the limited news at the time, it was only possible to confirm that Apple was researching relevant technologies in the automotive field, and it was not known whether it was just developing software or preparing to build cars.

Tony Fadell, Apple's former senior vice president and known as the "father of the iPod," revealed in an interview that he had discussed the possibility of making cars with Apple founder Steve Jobs many times; Phil Schiller, another Apple vice president of marketing, also confirmed that Apple had actually considered making cars before releasing the iPhone in 2007.

Amid the rumors, Apple has never admitted to making cars. The only time was when Bloomberg interviewed Tim Cook in June 2017, when he rarely revealed that Apple was developing autonomous driving technology. "The development of autonomous driving systems is the mother of all artificial intelligence projects, but it is probably one of the most difficult artificial intelligence projects to advance," he said.

However, in an interview in 2021, Cook refused to respond to the host's questions about car manufacturing.

In May 2018, Apple and Volkswagen announced a collaboration, but it was not the driverless car as rumored, but an unmanned shuttle bus to ferry employees to and from work. After a series of technical difficulties and frictions, the collaboration between the two companies came to nothing.

News about Apple's car-making project resurfaced in July 2019, when the FBI arrested a former Apple employee and accused him of stealing the company's trade secrets, including "Apple's wiring harness assembly diagram for self-driving cars." This case not only shows that the car project is ongoing, but FBI documents also show that about 5,000 people at Apple have participated in the project.

Seeing that the news of Apple's car manufacturing was finally confirmed, in the same year, it was reported that Apple fired 200 people working on the Titan project. When things seemed to be coming to an end, Apple acquired Drive.ai, an autonomous driving company on the verge of bankruptcy.

At the end of 2020, Apple's car-making efforts heated up again, with Reuters citing "informed sources" saying that the Titan project was restarted in December 2020. In January 2021, a Bloomberg report claimed that a team within Apple was working on "powertrains, vehicle interiors and exterior body design," not just autonomous driving systems.

This time, rumors of dissolution are spreading again. Apple’s car-making journey has been full of twists and turns.

The leaders are constantly changing, and the team is undergoing a major change

There were signs of turmoil in Apple’s car-making project early on.

In January 2022, the LinkedIn profile of Joe Bass, head of software engineering project management for Apple's car team, changed, confirming that he had left Apple, where he had worked for seven years, and joined Apple's old rival Meta as director of VR technology project management.

According to the timeline of Apple's car manufacturing, Bass can be regarded as a veteran figure. Bloomberg columnist Mark Gurman pointed out that "with Bass's departure, Apple's car management team a year ago has fallen apart."

Prior to this, Apple had lost several generals, namely: Dave Scott, head of robotics engineering; Jaime Waydo, head of autonomous driving safety and regulation; Dave Rosenthal, head of autonomous driving engineering; Benjamin Lyon, head of sensors.

This wave of resignations began in September 2021, when Doug Field, Apple's vice president of special projects, announced that he would join Ford Motor Company. In December, Michael Schwekutsch, head of Apple's hardware project, also announced his departure.

In the same article by Gurman, it is mentioned that "more than 100 Apple employees have 'defected' to Meta in the past few months, and Apple will surely try to stop this number from growing."

From 2014 to 2021, the leaders of the Titan project have changed five times.

The Apple car project was launched in 2014 under the leadership of former Ford engineer Steve Zadesky, who previously headed the iPhone and iPod. Later, the project was led by former hardware chief Dan Riccio, followed by Bob Mansfield and former Tesla executive Doug Field.

After Field left the company, the leadership of the Titan project fell into the hands of Kevin Lynch. Unlike the previous four leaders, Lynch had neither strong expertise nor experience in the automotive field. His achievement was to make Apple Watch from a product with no clear purpose to an indispensable device for millions of users to receive messages and health monitoring.

After Lynch took office, he proposed a new and unique direction for the project: a fully self-driving car without steering wheels and pedals. A new emperor appoints new ministers, and such personnel changes are inevitable in the Apple empire.

Lynch's partner is also an executive with an automotive background. At the end of 2020, John Giannandrea, Apple's senior vice president of machine learning and AI strategy, was appointed head of the automotive project, reporting directly to Cook.

From now on, the two outsiders have replaced Apple's car-making team. The next step is to give up or rebirth. Gurman pointed out that "2022 will be the year that determines the success or failure of Apple's car project."

Who will produce the Apple Car?

If Apple continues to build it, will it choose a partner? Compared with designing a mobile phone, developing a car is more complicated and difficult, and the investment is huge, especially the platform architecture of the car, which is an extremely important and expensive problem. If it develops it from scratch, it means a huge waste.

Apple is a successful technology company, not a manufacturing giant. At the beginning of 2021, the news that Apple and Hyundai were preparing to cooperate and the cooperation broke down made headlines twice.

Apple is also rumored to have approached at least six Japanese automakers about possible partnerships and manufacturing. Honda, Nissan and Mazda declined to comment, while Mitsubishi flatly denied the possibility.

In addition, Apple approached Nissan, but due to disagreements on details, the negotiations were brief and did not reach the executive level. Nissan was worried that Apple would see itself as a hardware supplier, while Apple wanted to fully control the design and software of the car, and the negotiations broke down again.

The differences are simple and clear. Apple does not want to use manufacturing giants such as Foxconn or Magna to produce cars, but hopes to find a mature automaker that is willing to let it control hardware and software. However, these manufacturers with a glorious history in the era of traditional fuel vehicles are not willing to become "suppliers", even Apple.

The discussion about who will produce Apple cars will have to wait until after Apple continues to build cars, but what we know now is that the list of companies that have broken off relations with Apple already includes Volkswagen, Hyundai, Nissan, electric car maker Canoo...

Apple supply chain giants' sense of crisis

When it comes to Apple making cars, the suppliers in the supply chain are more excited than Apple fans.

Although initial signs indicate that Apple wants to find a new partner to jointly build its car business, suppliers who have made a lot of money following Apple do not want to be left out.

Foxconn, one of Apple's largest contract manufacturers, is extremely active in the automotive industry. On October 18, 2021, Foxconn's parent company Hon Hai Precision Industry officially launched the pure electric vehicle brand Foxtron and brought 3 new cars.

In addition to car manufacturing, Foxconn is also actively trying to provide OEM services for automobile companies. In January of the same year, Foxconn and Geely signed a strategic cooperation agreement to establish a joint venture to provide OEM production and customized consulting services to global automobile and travel companies. In February, Foxconn announced that it had signed a memorandum of cooperation with Fisker, a new American battery-powered car company, to manufacture Fisker-branded electric vehicles.