There was a moment when it seemed like an Apple Car made sense. Ten years ago, when the Apple Watch wasn’t anything more than a rumor (and I still worked at a magazine), it seemed like the entire automotive industry was on the edge of an enormous change, and the traditional players just weren’t ready.
In 2014, Tesla was sort of the only one out there trying to bring that future into existence, and back then, Tesla only really sold one consumer car—the expensive Model S. If the future of cars was that they were going to be computers on wheels, wasn’t there a chance to catch the auto-industry giants sleeping and elbow them out of their own industry?
That’s not how it worked for a multitude of reasons. But as Apple begins the process of tearing down all the pieces of its fruitless quest to build its own vehicle, it’s worth remembering that at one point, it almost made sense.
In defense of the gamble
It’s 2014, and you’re Apple. You’ve got all the free cash and ambition in the world, and you know that as the iPhone matures, it’ll cease to be a major generator of the growth that Wall Street demands. (To be clear, there was a lot of growth still to come for the iPhone: Apple wouldn’t even introduce the first “big” iPhone, the iPhone 6 Plus, until the fall.) You’ve got the Apple Watch on the horizon, and a grand plan to dramatically boost Services revenue, but you know that investors want growth to be infinite and eternal.
You’ve got the Innovator’s Dilemma buzzing in your mind, as well as Steve Jobs’s maxim that it’s always best if you’re your own replacement. You and your fellow tech giants have enormous amounts of money and a commitment to not become so complacent that some new tech company comes along and turns you into a historical footnote.
So what do you do? You place your bets. You put money down in the hope that you will stave off irrelevance and maybe even discover the Next Big Thing. In 2014, it wasn’t unreasonable to believe that in 2030, most new cars would be computers on wheels, using new electric technologies that were foreign to the big automakers. What was more likely, that Ford and GM would learn the vital synthesis of hardware and software, or that Apple could turn the talents of its hardware design team to an auto chassis?
(Just an aside: Could Apple have just… bought Tesla? Or Rivian? Or Lucid? Perhaps the timing never quite worked, but it also feels like there’s some strong “not invented here” syndrome at play here. Apple didn’t want to buy the revolutionary electric car and popularize it; it wanted to invent it.)
The dangerous distraction
Apple may have had a decent reason to make a speculative dive into the car business, but it seems like the effort lacked leadership and direction. If someone with authority had put a stake in the ground and said the company should ship its own Tesla-style car by, say, 2019, that might have been something. Given the eccentricity and distraction of Tesla’s leadership, Apple might have ended up even beating Tesla at its own game in a few years.
But it sure seems, based on various reports over the years, like Apple’s strategy kept swerving into other lanes. Any observer of Tesla has noticed that Elon Musk has spent the last decade hyping the just-around-the-corner promise of true self-driving cars. Alphabet and other companies have invested in the dream, too, and as an outside observer, it sure seems like what we’ve learned is that the technology just isn’t there yet—and might never be. Human streets are messy.
But as much as a hype man for self-driving as Musk has been, and as questionable as his taste in hardware driving interfaces has been, Tesla has continually designed its cars with, you know… steering wheels. What if we just can’t crack the entirely autonomous vehicle? Steering wheels. They’re a great fallback.
The moment that I realized Apple’s car effort was completely off track was when Bloomberg’s Mark Gurman reported that Apple’s car design did not hedge: “Apple’s ideal car would have no steering wheel and pedals, and its interior would be designed around hands-off driving,” Gurman reported.
Was Apple convinced that it could beat everyone to the self-driving holy grail? Had it decided that if it couldn’t build a roving autonomous salon on wheels, it didn’t want to make anything at all? Was the project hijacked by a bunch of idealistic designers fed by unearned confidence that Apple could achieve anything it set its technological mind to?
I don’t know. Though it’s suspicious that Gurman’s report happened a while after there was an exodus of talent from the project in early 2021. They saw the writing on the wall.
It took two more years for the sword to fall on the project. If reports are to be believed, the team was issued an ultimatum to come up with a product to ship in the next few years. My guess is that they came up with that product and realized it would be a more expensive Lucid Air. That might have been great in 2017 or even 2019, but at this point, not only are there numerous companies trying to use the Tesla playbook, but most of the major automakers have awakened from their slumber. A $100,000 Apple sedan in 2018 might be the start of something big. The same car in 2028 is a footnote. The opportunity to change the world has passed.
Mistakes were made
It seems like Project Titan lacked a leader with a clear vision (or at least lacked a leader with the ability to implement their vision), and then someone steered the entire project off course while chasing an unattainable dream. (Apple would’ve been better off shipping that Tesla-like sedan in 2018 and then iterating for a decade.)
But was Project Titan’s whole existence a mistake? Not so fast.
If you’re an incumbent like Apple, your biggest threat is your own complacency. Apple should constantly be trying to identify areas of interest where it could make a difference in the world with an investment of the company’s enormous resources.
Take visionOS. The Vision Pro is an interesting experiment that might have some fascinating applications today and in the next few years. But where it makes the most sense, and where it justifies Apple’s massive investment, is as a long-term play designed to stave off any possibility of some other company cracking a future wearable item that makes the iPhone obsolete.
The iPhone is half of Apple’s business. Apple should be spending money and time trying to envision its replacement—and ensuring that Apple is the company that’ll popularize that product.
I like Apple taking bets like Project Titan. Of course, there was an opportunity cost to it. If Apple wasn’t dallying with computer vision models, perhaps it would have invested in large language models. Probably not, but there’s no way to know. The longer the project continued, though, the more opportunities were missed. And it does feel like the project went on too long.
At least there’s a silver lining. You never know what will be salvaged from the wreckage of Apple’s car project. I would imagine that quite a bit of what was learned in Project Titan will benefit future Apple products. Of course, it’s unlikely that any of that will justify the enormous cost of the project—but that’s not the point.
Apple made a bet. Maybe the odds were bad. The bet was probably too large. And Apple threw some good money after bad in the hopes of chasing a jackpot. You win some, you lose some.
When it comes to planning the future, the only thing worse than making some bad bets is making no bets at all.
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