Shifts team to generative AI.
If your car development team can be transferred to AI developement you weren’t building much of a car.
Not sure if 100% a joke or just partly but Volkswagen was probably providing the mechanical engineers who were retrofitting Lexus vehicles of the project as they had for the already-deployed driverless vans. See NYT & MacReports
This is referring to the team working on the self driving functionality.
Still, self driving and generative AI are very different. Just because they fall into the same big “AI” bucket doesn’t mean it’s the same.
The skills are similar enough to be transferable
We’ll see
One question for you smarty pants: is their car real, or artificial?
Well, at this point it is theoretical.
Except news always was that Apple was pushing pretty hard into self-driving vehicles, which would use much the same AI learning systems as you need for generative AI.
Ehh, that’s a bit of a stretch. They’re very different technologies with only limited overlap.
Once upon a time, stoves had a dial you set, and it was basically a resistor and some wires. Today, a stove has a computer built in it that operates the entire thing.
While the computer in a modern oven is simple - it is an illustration that more, and more of what we have is computerized. When you add in reinforcement learning algorithms to adjust factors like say, If the fridge is aware of what time you generally open the fridge it can opt to kick on the heat pump a little before that to bring the temperature down and avoid running while it is open. This could save pennies of electricity in a year. But more importantly - could lead to less duty cycles on the condesor that could cause a fridge to say instead of lasting 10 years, last 12 years.
If you are starting a car company today, what you have to be thinking about is a reality where we move to “Humans don’t drive, the cars drive you” - I mean even a manual control situation could have the AI actually being a watcher in effect we “Let” people drive, but if the AI detects an unobserved obstacle etc it immediately takes over and adjusts. Well: You need to build that - and that, is AI.
If a company isn’t thinking about AI, and makes anything but basic appliances - they are likely on a limited time window because at some point Autonomous cars WILL be good enough, and the safety consideration will make both people, and governments, along with insurance companies to eliminate human driven vehicles.
Apple isn’t looking next year, or a year after. They are looking 5 to 10 years out and they don’t see a path where they can effectively compete in the car industry and make the profits they are after. However, if they can solve the AI driving problem - they don’t NEED to make a car, they can sell the brains and system that drives the car.
Maybe they relized rhat they cannot trademark the itire and remotely lock it, and sell it for 20 times the price of a regular tire.
Did they even contribute any meaningful technology discoveries or anything in the field?
Well, they do what every company wants, charge way more for their hardware, and still getting away with their bad practices.
This is good news for everyone else
I really feel for the engineers and devs who don’t get to see their project released into the world. Especially after so much effort.
I guess we will never see an electric car with the charging port on the bottom
I know this is a joke about the stupid Apple mouse, but a car with a bottom (and normal) charging port would be pretty cool. Imagine just pulling into your garage and a giant MagSafe charger snaps to the bottom of your car. (Yes, I know this is unreasonable with current technology due to poor energy efficiency)
After all the layoffs in the tech sector, it’s doubtful it were even the original engineers working on the project.
I think all those dongles hanging off the car would have been a problem anyway
We put the charging port underneath the car!
Lightning (in the US; USB-C in the EU)
Apple was hoping to white label a Chinese ev and slap an iPad in it but the trade war is too hot now for them to deliver.
Aww and I was looking forward to a chipped windscreen requiring the replacement of the entire cabin, unless the car had ever been in the rain, in which case fuck you buy a new one.
That’s a Rivian.
Thank fucking god. Imagine the kind of monetization that would exist inside an Apple car. You think subscription seatwarmers are bad, and they are, but I can guarantee Apple had much worse in mind, and that most companies would simply follow suit.
They would come up with a charging port that only existed in the parking lot of Apple stores
Also it would on the bottom of the car
Just flip it over to charge of course
Genuinely, this is the best news I’ve heard in a while for the reasons you listed. Apple is already fucking up the phone industry with anti-consumer policies that become industry trends. I shudder to imagine how deeply and irrepairably they would have fucked up the car market for consumers.
deleted by creator
That does seem more like their kind of style
TBF This is how luxury car manufacturers sell their options. Always have been.
Space Karen sells his false self-driving option for €7500 as a software option.
Yes, but historically the purchase of an option included the physical installation of that option and its associated hardware. Not just turning on parts of the car that are already in it, after you bought it.
To be clear, I don’t think anyone is arguing that options should not cost money. We’re arguing against A) recurring subscriptions, and B) paying more money to activate features already built into the car you already bought.
Exactly. At a certain point luxury features stopped becoming standard and that’s associated with them being cheaper to install in every car but them deciding to sell it anyway
“Base model is this, but if you want seat heaters that’s another
$8,000$10,000, if you want lane assist, that’s another$5,000$25,000 and requires a 512GB storage bump for $2,000”Ftfy to more realistic numbers
Up to a certain point only. In most places you cannot hope to be able to sell a car that has not a minimum set of features mandated by the law.
And Apple cannot hope to compel states to change the rules just because so they can sell their car.
Maybe the i-bike is more appleish? Imagine this, it’s a bike like other bikes, but you only need to pedal with one leg, and if you turn the pedal, the whole bike turns. Tilt it back to stop. Sure, you may look fucking stupid running around with only one pedal while your other leg does nothing at all. That’s it. Oh, and it’s white and smooth in gorme plastic-like design. You can charge your bike but you must remove the seat and turn it upside down using our special turning device since it’s 700lbs.
Also you can only use it on roads built by Apple!
It’s a special magnetic stripe road that illuminates the Logo properly…can you use it on regular asphalt? Nope! Why? Oh apple has looked into it and it is very challenging but they will work with authorities to see if it can be accomplished.
DAE I’m too poor to afford Apple products?
Swing and a miss
Designed by Apple in Cupertino, made in China
Hey! It has a breathalyzer integrated into the…what, why do you need a butt breathalyzer? Oh…
That’s disappointing. I hate apple, but I’d love to see more competition in the EV market
More? 22 brands released EVs last year alone. There are a LOT of options out there, with more to come. Apple would have been like, the 4,000th entrant in this market.
But their Cars would Cost ten Times as much and still there would be someone cultists defending the price
lol
TFA: decade-long
Spell-check: decade-long
OP: decadelong
Stop trying to make ‘fetch’ happen, Felicia.
Maybe delong is a unit. So one decadelong = 10 delongs
I didn’t realize Star Wars had an opinion on proper writing style.
What
Thank glob, the only apple mobile i want to see is lowly worm’s
lmaoooo, I’ve been saying for years there’s no way in heaven or hell apple is making a car, and now look what happens
I have to say that I’m still not convinced they were. It’s just so far from their core business I don’t see how it ever could have been real
They approached several car makers at one point, but were rejected when the car makers heard their terms
This is layoffs.
Did you read the article? Says they’re going to work on AI
Five people out of hundreds will yes.
This is layoffs.
