The Apple Car will happen, but not so quickly

The bitten apple will have its own electric and autonomous car, but not as quickly as hypothesized in last week's rumor: the Apple Car will not arrive on the market before the three-year period 2025-2027. The debut could be postponed until 2028 if conditions do not prove ideal for launch. The timing hypothesis was formulated by one who knows the Cupertino business very well, analyst Ming-Chi Kuo.

Ming-Chi Kuo on Apple Car: not before 2025

A delay compared to the schedule mentioned at first would be due to several factors: first of all the desire to meet very high requirements in terms of quality, then some trends triggered in the field of autonomous and electrically powered vehicles , perhaps also with regard to batteries and the evolution of technologies that regulate their operation.

One of the most difficult challenges that Apple could face in this area is linked to the gap to be bridged vis-à-vis some competitors (Tesla and Waymo above all) as regards the solutions i of artificial intelligence to entrust the management of the cars. In short, Tim Cook's group may have to deal with big fish already strong of an important competitive advantage, a bit like what happened for example in the smart speaker market.

The demand for HomePod and HomePod mini is fell short of expectations and development of new models was temporarily suspended. Competition in electric and autonomous car territory is fiercer than in smart speaker space, so we believe it's dangerous to jump to the conclusion that Apple will automatically succeed.

The software component will be as important if not more important than the hardware.

If Apple wants to be successful in the future, the key factor is AI and Big Data, not hardware. One of the biggest concerns about when the Apple Car launches is that by then brands that already offer self-driving cars will have amassed at least five years of data working on AI and deep learning. How can Apple, coming later, fill this gap?

A possible answer is the one that leads to partnerships with third parties, for the instruction phase of the algorithms as well as for the actual production of the cars.

In any case, the route is marked. It is still too early to say for sure whether or not we will see the Apple Car or in what form. No doubt the business model of the bitten apple has been changing and diversifying over the last few years and will continue to do so, focusing more and more on services in order to compensate for a physiological decline in sales of devices such as iPhones. Only time will tell whether the four wheels will also be part of the Cupertino vision: the works carried out so far on the CarPlay platform seem to point in this direction.

Source: MacRumors