TheaterFire

How Apple Sank About $1 Billion a Year Into a Car It Never Built

Posted by ah___ha@reddit | cars | View on Reddit | 161 comments

This is an interesting and detailed biography of the failed project.

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161 Comments

Key-Conversation7632@reddit

Tax write off ?
View on Reddit #21759692

kinda_guilty@reddit

You don't understand taxes, do you?
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narwhal_breeder@reddit

Thats not how taxes work lol
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nonstopnewcomer@reddit

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aCP27_vquxQ
View on Reddit #21763902

Guilty-Departure-843@reddit

This is the real answer
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Shmokesshweed@reddit

Is it a failure if you spend like 10% of your yearly profits from airpods alone to learn that it's a bad industry to enter?
View on Reddit #21756554

JangoDarkSaber@reddit

Is it a failure? Yes. Is it one that Apple can easily afford to eat? Also yes.
View on Reddit #21757954

llamacohort@reddit

It’s impossible to say it’s a failure without knowing how many things they learned that can be incorporated into other products or licensed out. It’s not like making a car is the only way to make money in the auto industry.
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Pitiful-Mobile-3144@reddit

The new version of CarPlay is a good example of. It looks like the new versions will control the entirety of the car’s controls, from the speedometer to the climate controls
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SimpleWorld6611@reddit

It controls the speedometer?
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blergmonkeys@reddit

And no manufacturer is integrating it. It was announced, what, 3 years ago? Still almost no uptake and I have yet to see any brand introduce plans for mass adoption.
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Pitiful-Mobile-3144@reddit

I think Porsche said they would be the first? With a model coming out this year? Maybe the electric Cayman/Boxster
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TheLewJD@reddit

Wait theres a EV cayman/boxster coming?
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pinkswellwwterbottle@reddit

The caterham EV is also coming. Lotus type 135. Lots of options if you are looking for an electric sports car in a few years
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5ittingduck@reddit

Yep, hanging out for it :) https://www.carmagazine.co.uk/spy-shots/porsche/electric-boxster-and-cayman-sports-car/
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Reaps21@reddit

I think Mercedes EVs will have it too although I can't remember where I read that. It would be a great addition IMO, their new infotainment is lead and bounds what it was last Gen but still not great/ugly. When I had my 2019 cayman the infotainment looked like it came out of a car from 2010 (although I did unlock android auto which was sweet)
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-QuestionMark-@reddit

Porsche. Polestar, Ferrari. (Mostly high end brands). Ford is on board also.
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dagmx@reddit

Announced June 2022 but they said the first cars would be coming with support at the end of 2023, which it did technically on schedule with Aston Martin and Porsche
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reno911bacon@reddit

They are, it’s called Google Automotive.
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MechaDragon002@reddit

I do love the Android Auto in my 2020 Civic Si. Its fantastic. I thought a lot of the tech was just extra crap I didn't need. But Android Auto/,Car Play is one of the best things to ever happen to modern cars, second only to engine advancements. When I learned this thing could do 0-60 in 6 seconds and top out at 140 MPH while still averaging 40 MPG highway thanks to the super efficient 1.5L Turbo+VTEC Inline-4, combined with how incredible, convenient, and useful Android Auto is - I had to have it.
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Good-Raspberry8436@reddit

Electric mirrors, AC and android auto would be all I wanted from modern niceties in car honestly, everything else is take it or leave it but that is a requirement. > When I learned this thing could do 0-60 in 6 seconds and top out at 140 MPH while still averaging 40 MPG highway thanks to the super efficient 1.5L Turbo+VTEC Inline-4, combined with how incredible, convenient, and useful Android Auto is - I had to have it. Ok Honda marketing guy lmao
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MechaDragon002@reddit

Actually I more of a VW guy but the price was right on this. Ive owned like 5 or 6 GTIs, love the hell out of them, but this 2020 Si I picked up in 2021 with just 9,000 miles for $18,000. It had been in an accident but not salvage title, I still have the manufacturer warranty. All it got was a new hood and new front bumper and thats it - people didn't want it because the CarFax isn't clean. But being a car guy I could see the value clear as day when other examples were going for $22,000-$23,000. Only thing thats gone out was an AC Compressor and Honda did a recall on those, they are all bad. First generation of R-1234-YF refrigerant system. But ya the car is awesome, not as utilitarian as a GTI, not as good of an all-purpose car but damn, its good at what it does. Ride is harsh though, thats my only complaint. 2-Door Coupe in "Rallye Red" - its a beautiful machine.
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Good-Raspberry8436@reddit

I kid, I own 8th gen Civic Type R and like it a lot > Ride is harsh though, thats my only complaint. Oh it could be far worse. Clarkson was 100% correct in his review, the first thing I'm changing once I finish house renovation is getting new coilovers...
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MechaDragon002@reddit

Oh ya I know ur just messin around, and ya I can't blame you for grabbin a new set of shocks. I kinda wonder how the aftermarket works now with things like this because you know, these newer Civics have Sport Mode which in my car at least stiffens the suspension a bit. I imagine it does the same thing in the Type-R, I would be very surprised if it didn't. So then are aftermarket options electronic and controllable? If so I imagine they are incredibly expensive.
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Good-Raspberry8436@reddit

> I imagine it does the same thing in the Type-R, I would be very surprised if it didn't. 9th gen is first one that got that option. > So then are aftermarket options electronic and controllable? If so I imagine they are incredibly expensive. I'd imagine if you look long enough they are but I'm not really looking into anything switchable, just plainly pair of better ones. They generally have extra valving so high speed compression (i.e bumps) isn't as harsh while still being pretty hard for low speed (leaning) compression. I can open hood and change the settings that once or twice a year when I decide to go on track.
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MechaDragon002@reddit

Ah I see, well I hope they work out well for ya 👍
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Good-Raspberry8436@reddit

Yeah that will take a while, got a house to renovate first before I will have place and cash to do anything to the car
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reno911bacon@reddit

One valuable thing they did learn from all this: other companies that spend that whole time on AI is raining money right now.
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seeasea@reddit

They can buy an AI company if they felt like it
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jwfacts@reddit

Apple has already purchase 32 AI companies from the latest report.
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iamkeerock@reddit

Once the hit that 42 number, they’ll have everything!
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Full_Hearing_5052@reddit

But do they know where their towels are?
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iamkeerock@reddit

Asking the important questions…
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mags87@reddit

We have no clue how much money Apple has spent on AI and $1B/year for a company with their revenue is a drop in the bucket.
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reno911bacon@reddit

We do know Apple didn’t spend that billion on Siri.
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forzagoodofdapeople@reddit

$1B/year for Apple is roughly their coffee budget.
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hoopaholik91@reddit

Well Nvidia is making money off of it. I am wondering if in a couple years we don't hear a ton of, "how X sank about 1 billion a year into AI that never worked out" stories.
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reno911bacon@reddit

That would be Apple sank a billion into AI….but turns out they should just pay NVIDA
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DidItForButter@reddit

Yeah! Companies of that size can only focus on one thing at a time.
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Good-Raspberry8436@reddit

I'm sure that's what the manager that pushed that is saying too lmao. It's a failure, successful companies make plenty of blunders, they are just successful enough to afford it.
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llamacohort@reddit

I feel like you misunderstand research and development. They know that the vast majority of it is not going to land a full new product. Also, for some context of scale, Apple's 2023 research and development budget was $29.9 billion dollars. This was a project that started in 2020 and they spent about $1 billion total. So this is around 1% of apple's research and development budget for 3 years. This type of thing happens tons of times a year without any news about it. It's business as usual.
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Good-Raspberry8436@reddit

I know how R&D works and that it is rolling dice on what will actually bring money. I'm just saying they lost this roll > This type of thing happens tons of times a year without any news about it. It's business as usual. It happens few times in very few companies that are that big. It's still massive amount of money and manpower mostly wasted.
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llamacohort@reddit

>mostly wasted. You see, you don't understand how R&D works. There is a massive amount of things that the R&D contributed to and some of them were successes and some were failures. Apple files over 2,000 patents a year and there is no way that you have done any sort of analysis on what funding supported those and what patents that derived from that funding have made/will make money.
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Good-Raspberry8436@reddit

> You see, you don't understand how R&D works. You don't. It's mostly wasted because you never know what will be useful and what not. It still *needs* to be wasted to roll the dice and hit something useful but it is not turned into something useful nonetheless. > Apple files over 2,000 patents a year and there is no way that you have done any sort of analysis on what funding supported those and what patents that derived from that funding have made/will make money. ..but you did ? What I say is common knowledge about science, most scientists won't have tiny percent of science that's actually applied, some bigger percentage of what turned out to be stepping stone to something, and most of it it has no practical use... yet. We still do it because *you never know what will be useful*, but that doesn't change the fact that most of it is still money spent on nothing useful. Might be useful in 10 years, sure, but might be not. Also apple file patents on literally everything, including "a method to round corners" so number of patents says nothing about usefulness. But you would know that if you knew anything about it.
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llamacohort@reddit

>It still *needs* to be wasted to roll the dice and hit something useful You seem to be getting closer. My point is that Apple found probably around 7,000 things that were useful that they secured a patent for. Some of those are surely coming from the vehicle project. >..but you did ? My position from the beginning was that it's impossible to know without a thorough analysis on their proprietary information and anyone claiming to know is talking out of their ass.
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Good-Raspberry8436@reddit

> You seem to be getting closer. My point is that Apple found probably around 7,000 things that were useful that they secured a patent for. I doubt you can find out 1% of them being useful. You're talking out of your ass.
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an_actual_lawyer@reddit

Good point. The patent portfolio from the effort could eventually pay for itself many times over.
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SimpleWorld6611@reddit

They can only afford to take a financial hit like this because there are so many idiots who are willing to pay $1000 or more for something that costs less that $100 to make. They would never see that kind of margin on a vehicle, even if it could drive itself. And the potential liability could shut the company down - nobody ever died from a broken cell phone.
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AdulfHetlar@reddit

It's only a failure if you fail to learn anything from it.
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rubbarz@reddit

I'm sure they also discovered A LOT about car and phone relationship. I wouldnt be surprised if Apple Car Play gets massive updates I'm the near future.
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foolproofphilosophy@reddit

I know that looking at market cap isn’t the best metric but $10B is only 0.5% of $2T and it’s been spent over the course of 10 years. (I know that their MC is higher than that now, my comment is about providing perspective)
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henchman171@reddit

Do t they have 1 trillion in cash or something?
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pmmemilftiddiez@reddit

Nah
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gumol@reddit

it's a failure, but failing isn't a bad thing if you can afford it.
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Good-Raspberry8436@reddit

Isn't ruining. Is still massive waste of resources that could be used to make more money.
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mandelbratwurst@reddit

A common axiom in product design is “fail often to succeed faster” so you learn. Businesses test markets all the time, its one of the first steps to expansion.
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reno911bacon@reddit

Failure of time lots that you can’t get back is a failure.
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gumol@reddit

Which isn't a bad thing for a company like Apple. Some projects will fail. If all projects are succeeding, it means you're not pushing the envelope enough.
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100catactivs@reddit

Never failing would just mean they weren’t taking any risks, which is the biggest failure of all.
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hhs2112@reddit

Yes, because they could have come to that conclusion after a 10 min meeting...
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TampaRaptors@reddit

Damn that’s genius. I think you missed your true calling as an executive at one of the world’s most valuable companies.
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hhs2112@reddit

I see you didn't... 🤷
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KyleKun@reddit

They probably developed a whole shit load of other technologies for the car they eventually wanted to make before deciding it was too much effort. Considering how much Apple make on headphones alone, any technology developed during this time period is probably capable of bringing in many many billions. Also even if they don’t come out the other end with a viable product, any product ideas or technologies they might have thought of and gotten the patent on would easily be worth the paltry amount it cost to develop the project when Tesla or Samsung or someone comes over to licence access to it.
View on Reddit #21761891

Drzhivago138@reddit

GM spent $7 billion in the '80s on the GM10 project (W-body).
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beholdthemoldman@reddit

honestly if they pursued it more it couldve been nice, sl1 supposed to be pretty good, reliable. i see an inordinate amount of them running around compared to other GM cars of that era
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Curly4Jefferson@reddit

I recently read a MT article about the beginning of Saturn and it's just so classically GM. Fall behind competition, spend years (and probably hundreds or thousands of hours of unpaid time working after hours in secret) internally fighting to get funding to develop technology and build infrastructure to catch up, finally get it approved and online, someone new comes in and axes it. 
View on Reddit #21857283

Double_Cleff@reddit

The S series is the only cars Saturn made themselves. Everything else was a rebadge or captive import. The S series was 2300 pounds with an aluminum engine and plastic body.
View on Reddit #21771686

beholdthemoldman@reddit

very cool
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that_motorcycle_guy@reddit

Ahem, Saturn GM is not good with money.
View on Reddit #21759476

p90rushb@reddit

Well you have to understand that Saturn is a different kind of car company. That's what the commercial told me.
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BrandonNeider@reddit

All the major OEM's spend ridiclous sums of money on projects that lead no where. That's the purpose of engineering, inventing, designing. I bet there are projects that by their percentage of what actually got done compared to what was spent that would out ratio this multiple times from designing HVAC systems or a drive-train that just didn't pan out.
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pinkswellwwterbottle@reddit

Apple is the posterchild for this. They have so many employees but so few products. But it is clearly working as almost every product they release is seamless integrated
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dingjima@reddit

We got through about 3-4 nearly full fledged designs on Grand Wagoneer before settling on what we did. One of them was a bigger Grand Cherokee that looked like the Rivian R1S. Rip
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UniqueThanks@reddit

And they decided on the current design? Jesus lol
View on Reddit #21796925

dingjima@reddit

Yeah... when they shared it in the all hands I wasn't the only one who groaned lol
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probsdriving@reddit

Has Ralph lost his touch? I recently had a Grand Wagoneer rental and it's just such an ungainy looking vehicle.
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ChiggaOG@reddit

Can go no where, but sometimes they get stuff that can be patented.
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forzagoodofdapeople@reddit

See: the transistor.
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BrandonNeider@reddit

Correct and you’d be a fool to believe out of all this development Apple didn’t have “forks” or material that they can use in other fields.
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reno911bacon@reddit

Apple spent a ton of money into an industry that’s on the opposite end of their profit margin. Why would anyone do that? Why would a doctor who spent his life getting to be a doctor then spends 10yrs of time and money to learn how to become a janitor at minimum wage? Makes no sense.
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WorldlyOriginal@reddit

Before Apple ballooned into the company it is today, people were saying the same thing about hardware. “Profit margins are in software, you’ll never get rich making hardware” Hindsight is 20/20
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brotie@reddit

This is literally why R&D credits exist as a concept
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vexx786@reddit

Exactly. It's not a failure, it's a learning experience.
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TrisolaranSophon@reddit

I suspect this was much less an EV project than an **A**V project. Hence being able to shift the team to Generative AI. Apple discovered what many others have, autonomous driving is really really hard.
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andrewia@reddit

The teams were 50/50 between software and hardware.  The person I know was laid off from the hardware part of it.  The specs were pretty typical of a $100k+ car, and it was far from release.
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Tutorbin76@reddit

Exactly this. They pulled a Musk and went in on the flawed assumption that FSD was possible.
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reno911bacon@reddit

Tesla has made every other company stupid. Just blindly following Tesla and dumping money and time into a fire pit.
View on Reddit #21763284

GriddyGang@reddit

Hard to replicate Tesla success/blueprint
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OldSchoolSpyMain@reddit

The blueprint is easy. Just tell people what they want to hear, even if you have to lie...a lot. Here, let me show you. - Find out what the public wants. - Say you will deliver it. - Tell your engineers to make it. - Don't deliver it. - Tell the public that you will still deliver it...just in a few more months. - Repeat until the public figures out that you are lying. Why were they so successful at it? Because no one knew enough about it to call them on their bullshit, so it was the perfect storm of "it's what I want!" and "idunno. seems legit!" that got people to believe it.
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Tutorbin76@reddit

Hmm, when you put it like that... Could this have been a sneaky move by Musk to publicly hype FSD as the Next Big Thing^(TM), thus fooling competitors into burning billions of R&D funds in a null void, all while he gets to pull further ahead with proper EV development?
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hi_im_bored13@reddit

Less fooling competitors more inflating the stock price and getting tesla more funding
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-QuestionMark-@reddit

Level 5 is impossible. But Level 4 is at least feasible. It's a tough nut to crack, but someday, someone will crack it. When they do... wow things will change fast.
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savageotter@reddit

This along with Cruise shutting down should be the final proof to everyone that Full self driving is not happening for a while. at least not futuristic way everyone lusts after.
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reno911bacon@reddit

It was dumb from the start
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savageotter@reddit

Tesla owners are still buying the "By end of year" from musk
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t-poke@reddit

I'm not. I don't have FSD, and I don't want FSD until I can take a nap in my backseat while my car drives me around. If a car is ever capable of that, great. I'm not holding my breath.
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reno911bacon@reddit

It’s called a taxi.
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End_of_Life_Space@reddit

bullshit, last time I took a nap in a taxi I woke up to the driver pulling my pubes out one at a time. Mofo got 5 out before I woke up
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reno911bacon@reddit

Don’t tell me he did that for free! People have to pay for that service.
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BurgerBurnerCooker@reddit

The latest stat Tesla revealed is that about 19% owners opted for FSD, so no, most people bought Tesla because they make good EVs at good prices. Also though FSD is still BS but as a LV2.5(ish) autonomous driving suite, FSD is still among the top candidates in the industry just not really worth $100-200/mo.
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savageotter@reddit

19% is a huge conversion.
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BurgerBurnerCooker@reddit

19% is good business but it's also safe to say that overwhelming majority of Tesla owners are not buying into FSD or whatever Musk is claiming.
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Sensitive_ManChild@reddit

money laundering. That amount of money should have developed a car, built a car, and built enough models they could sell them at a loss and still not lose as much as they did
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DiCePWNeD@reddit

checks out
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punksnotdeadtupacis@reddit

People talk about this like it’s $1bil LOST. Most of that money invested will have still been in tech relevant to other Apple applications. It’s not lost.
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cream-of-cow@reddit

It gave people jobs, that’s not money lost. I hope they get absorbed elsewhere.
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reno911bacon@reddit

Just like metaverse gave people jobs.
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probsdriving@reddit

Meta stock is up like 200% YTD and the Quest 3 absolutely rocks.
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devilishpie@reddit

Definitely not. Of the money they spent, most of it will more then likely never be used in Apple products. Engineering a car isn't anything like what Apple sells. It's an entirely new industry for them.
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mags87@reddit

You also have no clue what their research went into. It could have 100% been in the software to operate the car or in the battery. Apple also has a lot of knowledge in augmented reality with cameras and sensors, which has a lot of crossover with self driving tech and other safety features on vehicles now.
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devilishpie@reddit

>You also have no clue what their research went into Speak for yourself. The leaks have largely suggested Apple was working primarily on designing a car that would meet level 5 autonomous driving. Level 5 just means there's zero driver impute. That's not something that translates well into a phone or laptop or headset etc. >which has a lot of crossover with self driving tech and other safety features on vehicles now It does not.
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mags87@reddit

Cars rely on cameras and lidar for sensors, and then its software that interprets what it “sees” to then make decisions on accelerating/braking/turning. Which is basically augmented reality. They have been using their phones for this for years, and easy example of this is Face ID. Now with the Vision Pro out I don’t see how you can’t make the connection.
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Macodocious@reddit

Wasn't the leaks showing that Apple was using LiDAR for their level 5 autonomous driving? Doesn't the new Apple Vision Pro uses LiDAR? Also doesn't some iPhones and iPad have a LiDAR scanner that people can use?
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one_of_the_many_bots@reddit

You are correct. And if I recall correctly the same article also mentioned that the chip in the vision pro that is used to combine all the sensor data also comes from the car project.
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one_of_the_many_bots@reddit

> most of it will more then likely never be used in Apple products Can't find where I read this but some engineers have stated that quite a bit of the tech in the vision pro was also being used for the car project, such as the specific chip to handle multiple camera feeds for the purpose of tracking
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King_ofthePotatoes@reddit

I guarantee you a lot of that money went to developing car play and other features like crash detection. It’s already in Apple’s products and they will 100% sell/license what they can to other companies.
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devilishpie@reddit

How can you guarantee that? Carplay and crash detection (something that has existed in cars for over a decade already) would more then likely not make up anywhere close to a significant portion of the billions they invested here. Their car project was really an autonomous vehicle project, something they found isn't achievable in the near future they were planning for. It's not something an OS, phone, laptop and peripherals maker can just vaguely repurpose.
View on Reddit #21761885

JustThall@reddit

Apple pushed CarPlay all the way to dashboard screens already. With spatial computing probably will get into car AR as well. Apple is also $10B of R&D deep into car OEM painpoints - Vision Pro for car design industry, manufacturing
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dirty_cuban@reddit

The average person does not understand how R&D works. Development is not a straight line, it's three steps forward two steps back.
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Shanguerrilla@reddit

I hope they DO make something revolutionary when they decide to enter the market. I'm not even a big Apple guy, I just like to watch disruption and innovation run through industries.
View on Reddit #21795909

Skinnieguy@reddit

Ppl don’t realize Apple profits last year was 97 billion. Even it was all wasted, it’s slightly 1%.
View on Reddit #21762329

EMCoupling@reddit

For reference, the GDP of Guatemala in 2023 as estimated by the IMF was 102.765 billion. That means Apple **profits** (not revenue) in a year are approximately equal to the economic output of an entire medium-sized South American country. 1 billion ain't shit to these guys and if you're trying to clown Apple for this, it is indeed YOU that is the clown.
View on Reddit #21777491

randomcanyon@reddit

I would bet that money led to a bunch of patents and research that will be used, sold or leased in the future.
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1214161820@reddit

This is a trillion dollar company. For someone this large a few billion dollars spent on research into a possible new business idea is like you buying a new flavour of ice-cream just to see if you like it.
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RolexCleanedWRodalon@reddit

Total stock valuation does not at all mean actual money in a company. Only about 1/10th of that is in actual cash money that you can spend without selling off shares. Or about 260 billion dollars.
View on Reddit #21802470

BipedalWurm@reddit

2.6 trillion
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Tento66@reddit

If they DID like the flavor they'll be able to buy rivian or lucid here soon enough, at bargain prices too.
View on Reddit #21766254

rg25@reddit

Meanwhile, Rivian is building cars and losing $6 billion a year.
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UniqueThanks@reddit

I think Apple is sitting on nearly 70 billion dollars of free cash on hand. This is just a drop in the bucket for a large company
View on Reddit #21797018

Jesus_H-Christ@reddit

It's folly to imagine all of the investment has yielded nothing. Sure there's no car, but they did all the R&D work *before* things got really expensive investing in plants and production machinery and tooling and training and federalization testing etc. Instead, they have a ton of patented IP they can license, insight into how to make carplay better, probably the beginnings of or a well developed version of a whole car back end , API and UI they can sell to automakers.
View on Reddit #21787937

Mellemmial@reddit

It probably gave them a tax advantage to show a loss for R&D.
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Energy4Days@reddit

Fun fact: It actually benefits them come tax time. This counts as an operating expense 
View on Reddit #21779349

zoned_off@reddit

Fascinating how many times they tried to forge a partnership. Really highlight how difficulty automative manufacturing must be.
View on Reddit #21758046

LakersRebuild@reddit

Probably has something to do with them needing it to hit the Apple standard. And not beta version of final product like most other EV companies are doing. Realizing it’s not possible to engineer and build and release a “perfected” product like their other devices may be what sank it.
View on Reddit #21778129

hsammy2004@reddit

Tax write off
View on Reddit #21775273

nicotamendi@reddit

People aren’t realizing the patents from this car project made its way into other products For example the AR patents and technology that were supposed to be integrated in the windshield of the Apple car is now used in the Vision Pro headset. Not to mention the AI progress from the FSD team
View on Reddit #21764069

t-poke@reddit

And if the EV project resulted in improvements to battery technology, they’re going to patent the shit out of it and bring that to their other devices.
View on Reddit #21771487

MechaDragon002@reddit

Ya I always wondered what happened to that project. What was the plan? How was their car even going to be special or different?
View on Reddit #21771051

You_Harvest_Wind@reddit

The pharma industry says, hold my beer.... Only a very few drugs that show any promise of actually treating an ailment actually make it through trials all the way to market. And the industry spends TONS of money along the way to figure out if it the candidate works or is safe before making the call to proceed or drop the program.
View on Reddit #21770290

myopic1@reddit

The failure would have been to continuing to invest in a bad idea. They spent $10b, which is chump change to the, probably learned a lot, and will move on.
View on Reddit #21770057

owlex89@reddit

Any car since the 90’s had a billion dollars in development poured into it. Hell in recent years most companies spend tens of billions of dollars on R&D. Some on EV and some on existing models
View on Reddit #21768436

ALOIsFasterThanYou@reddit

So now we know there was real substance to the rumors of Apple taking over McLaren a few years ago. I really wonder how that would have worked out: What would a Jony Ive-styled supercar look like? Would Apple have kept McLaren in F1? If so, what sort of tech transfer could've taken place between Apple and the F1 team?
View on Reddit #21767551

WingerRules@reddit

They could have entered the video game console market with that kind of cash, a market that puts Sony and Nintendo on the market. They even make their own chips.
View on Reddit #21767465

Ravenstoother@reddit

I wonder how they will recoup that giant f—up. Probably charge more for future VR glasses and IPhones. It’s great to be a private corp and get to charge your customers whatever you like. I like Apple products, but some of their corp business decisions are BS.
View on Reddit #21767209

Forest_Green_4691@reddit

Nope. Will Apple expense it as a loss? Yep. Is Apple using the learnings in its Applecar play? Yep. In no way is this a net negative. The R&D gained will reap benefits.
View on Reddit #21767139

junklizard3@reddit

I’m sure they gained some good R&D from it at least.
View on Reddit #21766601

D2D_2@reddit

Chump change. They’ll revive it once it’s a profitable endeavor again.
View on Reddit #21765081

RequirementLeading12@reddit

Why does this topic bring out so many Apple shills. "Spending billions on a product that never made it to the market isn't a failure because they have a lot of money'!" Apple has a legit cult, these guys are loony 😂
View on Reddit #21764762

Apical-Meristem@reddit

It’s a lot of money for sure, but they made the smart decision. How many billions did GM sink into autonomous driving and Ultium and their valuation is like maybe 5% of Apple. Neither company “wasted” the money, they are simply navigating a rapidly changing world.
View on Reddit #21764251

Professional-Bad-619@reddit

Throwing good money after bad until they saw the forest for the trees.
View on Reddit #21764140

RBeck@reddit

They would probably lose more than that to inflation if it just sat as cash.
View on Reddit #21763468

NopeNotEvenOnce@reddit

For a company valued at 3 trillion, that amount was far worth the opportunity risk. I'm sure they also made R&D gains in a few places too.
View on Reddit #21760571

Tonyn15665@reddit

Apple didnt fail to build an electric car, it fails to build an full autopilot car. They probably realized the tech is too immature, regardless of what Elon claimed. They can easily acquire an existing electric car company and get back on track once the tech gets there.
View on Reddit #21759679

lowstrife@reddit

>Level 5 autonomy, driving entirely on its own using a revolutionary onboard computer, a new operating system and cloud software developed in-house. There would be no steering wheel and no pedals, just a video-game-style controller or iPhone app for driving at low speed as a backup. Wait, this wasn't even a real car. They spent 10 billion on the "jetson future" concept with no controls that everyone has been making for the last 20 years?
View on Reddit #21758352

lee1026@reddit

The money went into trying to make FSD work. And then a bunch of designers had some fun with interior design for a car that doesn't have a steering wheel.
View on Reddit #21759669

Beautiful_Elk9897@reddit

Acting as if R&D isn't part of the industry and the reason apple is so successful. Sure you can decide not to spend that money and just copy what everyone else is doing but then you aren't leading an industry with innovations. Apple has always done that. Enter a market (be it phones, laptops, tablets, headphones) and spend ridiculous ressources in making it one of the more innovative and best products in that genre. You win some, you loose some. And I bet they can take a lot of what they learned to improve their other products, such as carplay in general, their battery tech or they even might come back to the car in 10 years. Who knows.
View on Reddit #21758846

Wood_Peddler@reddit

So thaaaaats why I'm paying a grand for my wife's phone and my daughters ipad...
View on Reddit #21758314

GTOdriver04@reddit

A billion into a project like this isn’t a whole lot. It’s been noted that companies will spend several on a new model from start-finish. And these are from companies that are already building cars.
View on Reddit #21758185

Traditional-Oven4092@reddit

Chump change, I’m sure they got valuable data from it that they can use elsewhere.
View on Reddit #21756821

WCWRingMatSound@reddit

I have to imagine CarPlay 2.0, Digital Keys, and the crash detection tech all came from the car project
View on Reddit #21756876

RiftHunter4@reddit

There's not many ways for tech companies to lose with EV's. If they succeed, they create a new car brand based on their ecosystem of products. If it fails, they still have a lot of tech for using their products with cars. It's a win-win.
View on Reddit #21757943