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Apple Gives Up on Building its Own Car

posted by CoolHand on Tuesday October 18 2016, @05:47PM   
from the can't-make-cars-from-fruit dept.

"exec" writes:

http://jalopnik.com/apple-gives-up-on-building-its-own-car-because-the-enti-1787875242

-- submitted from IRC

1st Gear: The Apple Car Is No More

Building cars is hard. Tesla knows that. Google learned it the hard way too. And the latest tech giant to discover limits to its car-building ambitions is Apple, which according to Bloomberg , has given up on making its own car.

Granted, I've always thought that Apple's ultimate aim was to develop software or technology it could use to partner with existing automakers, rather than its own vehicle, but now that definitely seems to be the case. Now Apple is focused on creating autonomous systems for other companies.

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Original Submission

• little fish in big pond little fish in big pond (Score: 1, Interesting) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday October 18 2016, @09:03PM

  by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday October 18 2016, @09:03PM (#415854)

  One of the telling comments in the press is about auto suppliers. For years Apple has had their way with their suppliers and contract manufacturers, making and breaking companies, dominating cities in China (and etc). My guess is that Apple execs just assumed that they could throw their financial weight around with the automotive supply chain. This is huge and deep--custom runs of special high strength steel (or other metals), custom nuts and bolts, soft parts that are spec'ed with experts providing subjective input (tires, seats...), all the way to dedicated factories for paint and assembly.

  Just because Apple is a huge company wasn't enough to convince savvy auto suppliers to commit to a large tooling investment or technology exclusives--for a small initial order.

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• Re:little fish in big pond (Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday October 19 2016, @10:07AM

  by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday October 19 2016, @10:07AM (#416077)

  Maybe not only that. About a year and a half ago, there was an analysis about the car industry in the Financial Times. The verdict there was that the suppliers [Bosch et al] really were where the profits are, not the car assemblers (VW etc). Maybe the situation is the reverse in the smartphone industry -- the Chinese have a habit of not completely understanding how capitalism works, and competing amongst each other to the death.

  Parent