Apple’s Car is dead. Long live the ‘Apple Car 2.0′ | by Ralph Panhuyzen | The Startup | Mar, 2024

VISION, the final frontier, “to boldly go where no one has gone before”. Since Apple failed miserably in bringing its own car, a more visionary global brand should develop an Apple Car, an EV/AV that’s new in the sense that other cars will look and feel outdated. Call it the ‘appliance approach’ to automobility that literally goes against making cars bigger, inefficient, complicated, unsafe, a burden to society and the environment. A slice of Science Faction — Here’s how.

Why am I putting it like this? Well, rumors about an Apple car have never been about yet another electric car. From the beginning, there has always been this aura and anticipation that a car by Apple will be something special, something different. Like the iPhone was back in 2007. After all, that was by no means “just another cell phone”. From its inception, this car project called Titan was troubled by different views of what it should be.

Steve Zadesky, who initially led the project, wanted to build an electric car that competed with Tesla. Jony Ive, chief design officer, wished to pursue a self-driving car. Apple, which had a multi-billion dollar war chest as a result of its enormous iPhone sales success, started to spend lavishly on hiring and poaching away hundreds of people experienced in machine learning and other disciplines crucial to putting together a self-driving car. This has grinded to a halt. Below: car is to become a household’s biggest appliance.

Enough already with the endless retrospectives of Apple’s Titan project which are all over the internet. Let’s focus on what an Apple Car should have been, could have been… and still can, with developers who have a far better feel for ‘the Bigger Picture’. To put it in another perspective: how long do you think will it take Artificial Intelligence to figure out ‘affordable electrification + traffic + road safety + automated driving’ — issues the auto industry hasn’t yet solved — and that it’s best to REthink, REdesign the car?

The tragedy is that Apple could have introduced both: a distinctive-looking ‘designer vehicle’ as well as a transportation device that’s capable of a level of automated driving that carmakers, TNCs (robo-taxi providers) as well as regulators could have worked with. Even better, an Apple Car could have been based on Steve Jobs’ maybe most important motto: that “design is not just what it looks like, it’s how it works”. Since Tim Cook’s Apple has failed to grasp and extrapolate Jobs’ essence of product design, other companies ought to feel challenged to bring a Next-Gen EV/AV, which isn’t a car in the traditional sense, in other words the Apple Car that Cupertino was not able to produce. No greater success than where the reputable got lost trying.

Apple ignored Steve Jobs’ maybe most significant motto: that “design is not just what it looks like, it’s how it works”. Apple engineers should have taken philosophy classes.

Apple has been struggling for years to come up with its own car because of an apparent lack of viable ideas. I call that a clear case of QED. Since Apple’s shortsighted IP policies regarding ideas from outside brought to its attention, prevents it from exploring alternative ways, another OEM should step up to the plate and bring an automotive equivalent of the iPhone — versatile, lean, cool and connected. An EV/AV that will free its user instead of having him/her boxed in and immobilized because of its sheer size.

What if such an EV/AV could be some clever-working DEVICE instead of the monstrosities we see today on the road that got us all stuck in traffic? This angle of thought must have crossed Apple people’s mind too; in 2016 they contemplated buying Lit Motors that’s working on a sleek, self-balancing, two-seater cabin-scooter. Below: size matters in Personal Communication.

Rethink – Reinvent – Reformat

Some things in life need a rethink, a reinvent to meet new demands, utilize new technology, enable new possibilities. Looking back, would any OEM pass up on the chance to bring the first smartphone (defined as featuring a full screen, multi-purpose internet interface, touchpad-operated)? Well, all telecom providers have. So did other companies. Did you know that Apple was new to the telecom industry? Before its iPhone introduction in 2007, Apple used a Motorola phone to have its iTunes music program installed.

iPhone made Apple the world’s richest company. Cell phone companies like Nokia and Blackberry were obliterated. Now there’s a remarkable similarity between bridging distances on-line and in-person, between bandwidth/wifi and infrastructure, between connectivity and mobility, between providers and carmakers / TNC’s. Below: size matters in Personal Mobility.

How philosophy cuts through the engineering BS

Ockham’s Razor is often seen as a version of the KISS rule (Keep It Simple Stupid). It’s a problem-solving, philosophical principle that recommends searching for the explanation that’s constructed with the least amount of elements or assumptions. Suppose something has multiple explanations, then the one that requires the fewest assumptions is usually correct. In other words, the more “what if we do this” you add, the more unlikely a solution becomes. Bottom line: we need to dive deep before putting stuff on top that only complicates matters. Recognize the decade-long wishful engineering that’s going on in the land of automated drive development?

It does not happen by itself though. It takes focus and determination to go against the already billion-dollar funded flow, to strip down to the core what’s puzzling us, so that the truth reveals itself. Einstein said something similar. If readers here are interested in the many technologies, acronyms, expectations and semantics around self-driving, then I can recommend to visit the Tesla forum, where thousands of comments have been posted regarding Tesla’s auto-pilot program and autonomous vehicles in general.

The obvious in the car market

Situation in the world’s by far largest consumer market: the beloved car is to become a household’s largest kWh consuming ‘appliance’. However, EV sales are stagnating — overall, consumers are disappointed because of the high cost price and the inconveniences such as lack of charging availability and the limited range. EV subsidies (tax credits) are being criticized, even canceled sometimes. In the U.S. most Republicans (with Trump leading the pack) have turned against fiscally favoring electric cars.

Challenges launching an electric vehicle (EV)

An EV is basically a big home appliance or oversized RC toy car. Remember the Duracell bunny? The less a (toy) car weighs and the lower its drag, the better the range and the less batteries it needs. The smaller the battery: -1- the more affordable the EV –2- the less EV sales depend on subsidies –3- the less rare earth metals need to be mined. There are more benefits.

There are more cars on the road than ever before. Cars have grown bigger, have therefore become less energy- and space-efficient. Road safety went down. Increasingly, the car has turned into its own bottleneck, also when it comes to automation. High time for an ‘appliance-like’ approach: the car as a ‘personal mobility device’, an auto-mobile. Below: click to enlarge.

Challenges launching an autonomous vehicle (AV)

Ask yourself: is vehicle automation meant to make cars as we know them today drive themselves? Because that sure didn’t work out. Still, that is what each car brand was aiming for: automation as the one feature that is to set its cars apart from those by other car brands. It explains the multi-billion dollar investments by them in autonomous car developers, of whom many went out of business or slowed down efforts for lack of tangible results that could convince authorities, regulators and… carmakers.

Below: the robo cabs that TNCs Waymo and Cruise deploy in San Francisco. They are not only needlessly cumbersome, kWh inefficient and costly to exploit per paying passenger, TNCs are unable to intervene when their robo-taxis disrupt traffic and obstruct public transit, emergency response services, or when accidents have taken place. TNCs solve problems by dispatching a human driver to free the AV instead of remotely operating it.

Notice the hardware that’s sticking out of the robo-taxis to enable them to ‘see’ around the corner —mind you, protuberances normally not allowed not to cause more harm to other road users in case of an accident. Do TNCs use the wrong sort of transport modes, needlessly compromising safety, efficiency and economics? They do. Whatever systems are used, it comes down to the car how well they work, right? That’s the thing that will need physical displacement in order to carry people from A to B.

Did you know that the average car trip carries 1.3 person, that more than $100 billion has been spent on driverless cars? Financial experts have warned against the investor fallout from failing to deliver on promises made.

The proprietary is in the car format, not in the still iffy technology

You wonder whether vehicle autonomy development has turned into ‘Ins Blaue Hinein’ engineering, into writing a blank cheque? Yes. So far more than $100 billion has been spent on self-driving, according to MIT and WSJ estimates. Could a more purposefully designed car squeeze more precision — smoothness — safety out of any Autonomous Vehicle technology? Again, yes. Could such a vehicle function as an enabler of any AV tech out there? Yes, and THAT would make it a far more likely ‘proprietary candidate’ than any AV ‘Operating System’ that’s presently being pushed down our throats.

This may interest investors and shareholders, as it boils down to a device or product you can actually sell, instead of hoping that a specific, proprietary AV system will become the DMV/NHTSA/industry standard with which to corner the AV market. Below, almost deceptively simple, a self-driving car projected as an extension of the human head, in the shape of an elongated 360 degree vision motorcycle helmet put on wheels.

Below (click to enlarge): why a semi three-wheeled, triangle platform and pear-like shape forms the best product format to combine lightweighting, structural rigidity, low drag, passenger comfort, Fahrvergnügen / vehicle dynamics, NCAP crash protection and more road safety, plus automated drive (L5 on the freeway, L3-L4 in the city). How fruitful: a PEAR makes for the best ‘APPLE on wheels’. Try another shape or format, try peel away or alter some elements, and the design loses its cohesive strength!

For Whom?

Worldwide car sales annually are around 80 million – a Next-Gen EV/AV can start luring 1 in every 900 prospective car buyers yearly, more than enough for a viable business case. An interesting option is to produce this for OEMs that wish to lower their corporate emissions profile (zero emissions credits used to be Tesla’s main income source) or exploit its ride-hail capabilities. Think of its faster response and transit times.

Not having to deploy robo-taxis more cumbersome than the average ride-hailing trip calls for, lowers operational costs and improves the chances of intermodal use in collaboration with Public Transportation too. Need more space, for instance for more shuttle-like services (incl. carry wheelchairs)? Then deploy a 5–6 seater. Below: why ‘1 in 900’ may well turn out to be ‘1 in 90’. We shouldn’t forget that more than 60 percent of the world population lives in and around cities (urbanites). More than 60 percent of households in the U.S. have two or more cars. Most cars carry one person, so a 3-seater would suffice maybe 95% of the time.

Vortex of the Willing?

Summarizing: the one feature that’s being pursued for its potential benefits — automated drive — is THE most important incentive to make electric cars smaller, safer in traffic, more kWh efficient, therefore more affordable, as well as more environmentally friendly. If a company persists in pursuing a specific automated vehicle OS, think of how it may perform on the basis of using a more suitable ‘template’ or format. The same applies to batteries.

Let the fact that an individual (me) is proposing this very specific blueprint for a Next-Gen EV/AV not withhold kindred spirits from considering to work together on this. Think about it: if Steve Jobs were still alive today and had suggested this, Apple would have been a vortex of willing participants…

Cheers, Ralph Panhuyzen | sevehicle@gmail.com | @NextGenEV