Elon Musk, in an interview over at Handelsblatt:
Apple just hired some of Tesla’s most important engineers. Do you have to worry about a new competitor?
Important engineers? They have hired people we’ve fired. We always jokingly call Apple the “Tesla Graveyard.” If you don’t make it at Tesla, you go work at Apple. I’m not kidding.
Do you take Apple’s ambitions seriously?
Did you ever take a look at the Apple Watch? (laughs) No, seriously: It’s good that Apple is moving and investing in this direction. But cars are very complex compared to phones or smartwatches. You can’t just go to a supplier like Foxconn and say: Build me a car. But for Apple, the car is the next logical thing to finally offer a significant innovation. A new pencil or a bigger iPad alone were not relevant enough.
He’s not wrong. Should be interesting: Tesla and Apple are companies with some of the most…. Enthusiastic fans, and I’m sure there’s quite some overlap.
The interview seems to be paywalled. Anyone know if it’s possible to get it somewhere? I’m a cheap ass student who would really like to read it.
Its mirrored on reddit:
https://www.reddit.com/r/teslamotors/comments/3o2936/all_charged_up_…
Thanks a bunch.
Apple has the liquid capital to start making cars. It’s not like Apple is the kind of company to just start researching things as they’ve announced it. They probably have a team of engineers that know cars very well. Also, they have the capital to start poaching current Tesla engineers, fight whatever NDA and non-compete disputes in court, and keep the good people anyway. Musk is a smart man, but Apple is a monster to compete with.
Apple have the capital to start building supertankers or supersonic aircraft or nuclear reactors, but I don’t see why they should involve themselves in those industries, so why cars?
There are two reasons cars are important to them. Number one is that electric self driving cars are the future, or at least the future a lot of people are chasing right now and Apple wants in. Number two is that when self driving cars take over they will become an extension of the home and Apple is trying to dominate that as well.
…an extension of the home…
That means “more entertainment screens”.
One day a generation will come that will start noticing the world around them again.
I don’t believe either of those are reasons Apple wants into the electric car game. Self-driving cars are a cool idea but they’re also niche. I don’t know anyone who actually wants one, even when all the kinks have been worked out. Generally speaking, people like to drive and they’re not willing to give up the freedom & control it gives so a computer can do it for them. Instead, I think it has more to do with alternative energy, which is where the future really is. The car is a means by which to introduce new types of energy sources. It’s practically a requirement for any new energy source to really take off because of the volume of cars in use every day. IMO, an electric car is a way for Apple to get into the energy game, not the car game. And if they do become a player in energy, it will make up for what they’re sure to lose in cars.
Also, I don’t believe cars are or will become an extension of home any more than planes are today, with all of their touch-screen entertainment offering movies, tv shows, games, shopping, usb charging ports, and even internet access right from the headrest in front of you. Do I consider that an extended living room? Hell no. If you take all that and stick it in a car, it still doesn’t change my mind.
Edited 2015-10-10 00:22 UTC
Self-driving cars are a cool idea but they’re also niche. I don’t know anyone who actually wants one, even when all the kinks have been worked out. Generally speaking, people like to drive and they’re not willing to give up the freedom & control it gives so a computer can do it for them.
You’re not looking it from the right angle (nor talking to the right people, I believe).
There already is an important market that’s only going to grow bigger, that of the elderly. I’m talking about those people who can still function independently at home (and don’t want to move away from it) but are not able to drive anymore (problem of eyesight, reflex, ability to quickly change point of focus…) In many cases, that effectively means they become isolated, kind of prisoners of their own home.
There are also people who don’t especially care about driving. The freedom that a car brings is that of being able to freely go around without having to rely on public transport and all that it entails.
I’d be perfectly happy to have a car where I just input my destination and have it take me there while I do whatever else that’s so much more interesting than driving (read, watch the scenery or even sleep). I have no fetish about driving my car (although I still would want the ability to take the wheel, so as to not be at the mercy of whatever problem may creep up from the auto-pilot). I suspect I’m far from being a special case.
Edited 2015-10-10 03:47 UTC
I’m looking at it from an Average Joe angle and I actually talked about the subject of self-driving cars with a lot of people. While you may be perfectly fine letting a car do your driving for you, the very easy majority of people I’ve discussed it with feel differently about it. I don’t believe you’re a special case or alone in your view, but I absolutely believe your in a minor opinion at this time.
I’m not naive to the elderly or disabled (to some extent) viewpoint either as I family members who are in both categories. One of them has stopped driving because she no longer feels safe behind the wheel. Additionally, although shes in good health for her age, her reaction time has slowed way down. It was very hard for her to give up that independence. At the end of the day, it was the right decision for her own safety and the safety of others. The other family member still drives but probably not for much longer as she’s starting having issues with vision and decreased mobility (she’s already been given “disabled” status by the state). I fully understand the points you’ve raised because I’m one of the ones who helps them.
While the idea of a self-driving care taking elderly, disabled, and handicap people around may look good on paper, one thing you may not have considered is how many of those people would be able to be ok on their own even if the driving was no longer an issue. Would they be able to take control of the car and react in an emergency? Wouldn’t you trust an elderly person who no longer drives taking control of a vehicle? I sure wouldn’t. In addition, a self-driving car can’t help them walk or get in/out of a wheelchair. It can’t help them communicate with other people. It can’t manage an event such as a fall or other emergency. Driving a car is only a single line item in the list of problems elderly/disabled/handicap people have, and for many of them solving the driving problem isn’t going to be enough.
Self-driving cars, if/when they become a reality in our daily lives, will indeed help the people you’ve mentioned. But, it will be in limited capacity. As far as the Average Joe is concerned, I believe the exact same will be true. Yes there will be people who would rather take a nap, of check Facebook, watch the scenery go by, or whatever else. But I haven’t seen any indicators those people represent more than a niche. Autonomous vehicles are nothing new and we’re nowhere near in the ballpark of them being common place on the highway.
Wow. That is such a limited view. With Self-driving cars you can do so much. Make taxis so cheap you don’t need your own car anymore(so you need less parking spots). Move transport to the night. Ignore stoplights and let the traffic flow through each other. Decrease car crashes immensely. Increase road capacity and traffic flow. Increase fuel efficiency.
I would view Self-driving cars as the future evolution of auto belts and airbags.
The subject was autonomous cars for elderly/disabled people, and for personal use. We weren’t talking about all the ways autonomous cars could benefit society. How exactly is staying on topic having limited view again?
Maybe minority now but that will change extremely quickly. Young people already care much less about cars than the generation before. Many in big cities don’t even bother getting their drivers license. This generation will adopt the self driving car (or more likely, use Uber with self driving cars).
Also the first self driving cars may have manual overrides, in which case everyone will want one to reclaim the lost time of a commute.
As someone who had 2 kids graduate high school fairly recently I’m calling complete BS. Young people absolutely car about driving and the freedom it provides and of the ones I know who haven’t gotten their license (yet), it’s because they can’t afford the privilege themselves or weren’t allowed to. I’ve heard a whole lot of them say they can’t wait to get a car, and not a single one say they can’t wait for self-driving cars or using Uber. You’re welcome to your opinion though. When/if at some point in the future autonomous cars are common-place, it would be interesting to readdress the subject and see who was more on the money so-to-speak.
Niche? When they take over, I want personal vehicles to be banned. Human drivers are stupid, and the main cause of traffic congestion. The reason why people don’t want them is that they want to keep being stupid. What you call freedom and control is, in reality, stupidity and pig-headedness.
The main cause of traffic congestion is overpopulation and outdated road design. I do share part of your disgust towards stupid drivers (or stupid people rather). There isn’t a single day that goes by where I don’t see some dipshit holding up traffic because they’re too busy looking at their cellphone than to pay attention to the traffic infront & around them. The most common offender is by far 30-40 year old women. Banning personal vehicles, which has no chance of happening in our lifetime, won’t cure stupid.
I disagree. I often have moments on the road where the traffic goes from 120KM/H to 0KM/H for a few minutes. And then it starts up again to 120KM/U. I think that is because there is too much stupid on the road per square meter. There are also electronic speed signs that are ignored. If people would listen to those boards you could keep a speed of 50KM/U for a few minutes so traffic would keep flowing instead of coming to a halt.
Driver stupidity doesn’t help but we already know that overpopulation and outdated road design is the main cause because traffic congestion is something that has been studied and modeled in computers. When roads are designed it’s with a certain vehicle and weight capacity in mind. Here in the US you find many roadways that are 50+ years old that have had little to no modernization done. What did the population and number of drivers on the roads look like 50 years ago compared to today? When I’m stuck on the freeway during rush hour, 10 times out of 10 it’s because there are far more cars on it than it was designed to accommodate. Driver douchery adds to the problem but it’s not the primary cause.
Outdated road design won’t be fixed. Traffic evolves as roads are designed, and will always outgrow the infrastructure. No, doing away with egotistical drivers who think they know best and want to get first is what’s needed. Replace them with networked and cooperating AIs. It won’t cure stupid, it will only make it less relevant.
The problem is drivers. Traffic flows are virtually identical to the flow of gas molecules. You can get a quick smooth traffic flow by maintaining the correct speed and separation. The problem is that humans behave like hares not tortoises. Rather than maintain a steady average speed we tend to drive too fast then brake suddenly. This results in turbulent flow and stop-start conditions. Autonomous vehicles can almost entirely eliminate this problem.
That’s correct but that type of driver behavior is a symptom of the roadway being over capacity. I wasn’t kidding when I said traffic congestion is a well-studied problem. People keep wanting to blame stupid drivers but that’s only one piece of a much larger picture, and it’s not the root cause of the congestion problems we see today. You don’t have to take my word for it, look it up yourself like I have.
I drive 120 kilometres to work everyday and would pay a hefty sum for a self-driving car. And most of the people I know would too. It’s one thing to go driving just for fun and totally different to do it everyday. During the winter it’s pitch black in the morning and in the afternoon. Throw in the occasional snow storm and the fact that all the roads are covered in ice and snow for several months and the occasional moose jumping in front of you I’d say driving is anything but fun. Half the time it’s trying to stay awake and the other half trying not to get killed by the weather, wild animals or crazy drivers. There is no public transportation available whatsoever so you have to drive whether you like it or not.
In the meantime you can just move closer to work, or work closer to home.
Really?
Try telling that to an ordinary worker in Tokyo, London or Sydney.
For a start, very few of those workers are 120Km aware from their place of work even if they do work in Tokyo, London, or Sydney. Second of all, those cities have comprehensive public transport systems that the majority of people use. Third, businesses really do need to get over their pathological desire to concentrate all of their employees in one place. Particularly IT companies who should damn well know better. We’ve built and maintain one of the worlds greatest communication & collaboration mediums and then we say it’s not good enough for us to use? What a load of rubbish.
A crappy house in the outer suburbs of Sydney will cost you around $1 million. If you want to live somewhere reasonably affordable you are looking at 3-4 hour daily commute.
I would love to but the property prices are so high that it’s impossible to get a big enough loan on middle income. The prices go down the farther you go from cities but there are no jobs there.
Electric cars are not the future, it is 1800’s technology that was brought back because of fear mongering in the west and by lying about their real environmental impact.
Internal Combustion engines pollute the atmosphere.
End of. No question. If they didn’t then why can people kill themselves by breating in exhaust fumes.
Electric cars can run with zero pollution if their electricity is generated by things like Solar, Hydro, Wind or other means.
Technologies such as Hydrogen fuel cells might solve the problem as all that comes out of the tailpipe is water but this tech introduces problems of their own.
However this is not the time nor the place to debate this sort of thing.
If they didn’t then why can people kill themselves by heating up lithium batteries?
As long as oil is in ready supply and continues being the cash cow that it is, it’s not going to be the time or place for serious alternate energy talks. Even if it means killing half the planet. Profit trumps everything else and companies rarely do what’s morally right.
Battery production uses rare earth minerals on a huge scale. There are for example huge swaths of land in China where such mining takes place. The land will not be inhabitable again in the short, medium or long term.
I’m pretty sure Tesla engineers are already well payed.
There is a point where enough is just that enough.
After that work environment, work challenges, work ethic and so on are more important.
Just look at this video about incentives:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=u6XAPnuFjJc
Edited 2015-10-09 23:18 UTC
But the point is, making a car is a more complex endeavor than making a phone. The key difference is that when developing phones, you already have the ODM(Original Device Manufacturers) that is doing the hard work for you even help you when some software drivers to help Apple’s software engineers. While cars, you need to manufacture everything else from scratch. Oh, I think Apple can make similar deals with automotive engine manufacturers to help them like from Honda, Izuzu, Toyota, VW perhaps? I don’t think so. Those car manufacturers will offer the same self-driving cars in the future.
He sounds a bit angry and rightly so. I remember he used to say some positive things about Apple a few years ago but I always thought they were two completely different mindsets. They were never going to be compatible.
Personally, I like the way Elon Musk thinks. It isn’t all a money-grab with him. He’s fighting major battles on many fronts as he tries to pave an alternative future. He’s doing it through lots of cooperation, partnerships and sharing – not at all Apple’s style. They’ll likely sweep in when all the heavy lifting is done, new paint job on the hard work of others and try to out-muscle everyone else out through the courts.
It’s hard to picture Apple with a huge expensive US based manufacturing plant and most profit margin on cars is far below Apples comfortable 70%.
I will say that it appears Musks feathers are a bit ruffled in these comments though. It matters to me because Apple could very well be a good candidate to also use Teslas supercharging spec but after this I doubt Apple is open to dialog about sharing the spec Tesla created.
I don’t think consumers benefit from having Apple create yet another competing charging spec just because their egos can’t handle working with Tesla to use the same standard.
Teslas spec is far better than the other ones out there both in form factor and throughput. I really with others would adopt it.
Consider this – in US car leasing is not as unusual as it is elsewhere.
Do you remember how those 70% margins are achieved? Most people don’t even know the real price of their device.
At least, Elon Musk takes a serious look at Asian e-car manufacturers than Apple’s e-car vision.
As a automotive technician (mechanic) and a long time computer enthusiast and hacker I do agree a little with Elon on this one, cars are much more complex piece of machinery that have to be taken more seriously than a phone/tablet or desktop computer. The electronics onboard not only have to be near glitch free, when they do glitch out they have to be Error checking and have to error on the side of safety (not talking about the entertainment systems in cars… that’s ALL PEOPLE CARE ABOUT!!!! I mean EBCM/SIRS/ECM/TCM) Cars are much more reliable now and maintenance free because of the myriad of electronic modules and diagnostic systems involved, but they still have the rudimentary mechanical safety systems we developed years ago.
Electric cars are only going to enhance the reliability and reduce maintenance even further, but there is a lot at stake when a company branches out and develops something that people are literally relying on to keep them safe and alive in certain conditions.
So even though Apple can hire engineers and afford to pay any price to develop a product, it doesn’t mean that it will sell or not have it’s problems. It may take many years to come to market, when a car company rolls out a new chassis or a redesign product it usually has been in testing for 6-7 years before it came to market. The auto industry is changing at a break neck speed because of the C.A.F.E. system, and electric cars/hybrids are going to be a lot more popular but it takes years to bring something to market and it takes years to build a reputation.
You won’t find any modern car anywhere near as reliable or durable as a 60-70s Mercedes or Volvo. They would easily run for over a million km without major repairs.
Edited 2015-10-10 07:57 UTC
That is because back then things were oversized. Our knowledge about materials are way better know and as so things are calculated to endure the expected life span the product should bear.
You can build things that can last 82 years (the median lifespan of an owner) but it will be bulkier and guzzler and there is some economical sense on building cars that are lighter and a lot more economical on gas. And I am not even considering the huge leaps on security and on less dangerous levels of byproduct of combustion emissions.
I never did it but some calculations taking in account the average miles people drive for, say, 5 years, plus initial cost, depreciation over the years and some maintenance may prove it (at least I hope so).
Dr Karl Kruscelnicki an Australian science journalist with degrees in physics, engineering and medicine once commented that you will save more energy if you keep driving your 60s muscle car rather than replacing it with a new small car.
Not new small car, but specifically a Toyota Prius. Because at the time on mass production start, the battery manufacturing was way more resource intensive than anything today.
any emergency braking, traction control, engine management – any and all of the physical driving related control systems are going to be mere “tools” under the control (or even outwith control – much as is for the current human intelligences) of the “navigation/fine-road-placement and collision avoidance AI”.
Whether the drive system is ICE or Hybrid or Plugin electrical only is almost irrelevant to the driving and road safety system(s) being developed.
Have a vehicle that can “half drive itself” but requires a conscious, non-inebriated, licenses pilot/driver in the cockpit/behind the wheel to “copy with emergencies” is a mere staging post of the way to proper autonomous vehicles [where the passenger always/nearly always “gets in the back”, tells the driver AI where to go – and sits back, relaxes, passes out drunk, does some work, watches a movie or whatever else]
That’s the point it needs to get to before it’s properly useful – and can cut down on road accidents, increase net traffic flows, increase national levels (if people work in transit), reduce need for car parking facilities as your car will drive back and pick you up, or as others have commented – long taxi routes will become more affordable – and short taxi journeys will be cost of a bus now (but door to door). maybe
“You can’t just go to a supplier like Foxconn and say: Build me a car.”
I can’t believe that anyone takes this tosser seriously.
The original Tesla Roadster was designed and built by Lotus using a drive system designed by AC Propulsion.
It is standard car industry practice to outsource the design and manufacture of most components and subsystems to specialist manufacturers. Smaller and less experienced companies may have the entire vehicle designed and manufactured under contract by third parties.
The whole idea that Tesla has taken a bet on is the fact that an Electric car is much simpler to design, build and manufacture since much of the complexity is in the drivetrain for a ICE car. An pure Electric drivetrain makes a lot of other things easier. And besides the fact that you correctly bring up (not even the mega-/supercar manufacturers build all their own stuff) suddenly it is practically impossible for Apple to come from nothing and build their own car. When that was exactly what Musk did with Tesla for Christ sake!
And on top of that Apple has the design chops for a car and more money that god to spend on it. Wall Street is whining like a petulent child about Apples cash and basically value it at zero while it’s on the balance sheet. Now they are using that money to do something and get the potential 20%+ growth that Apple apparently needs to have to even be worth anyting at all.
With Apple it’s always “they are doomed if they do but they are also doomed if they don’t”.
It really is fascinating to watch.
The modern ICE and conventional drivetrain is essentially bulletproof (400,000+ km). Problems are nearly always due to cheap electronics and poor software (eg the recent VW diesel scandal). Electric cars simply introduce far more potential points of software/electronics failure.
I doubt that any current Tesla will still be used as a daily driver in 10-20 years time.
The largest private shareholder in both Tesla and Apple is the same hedge fund.
Maybe we have to get used to the idea that our concept of an automobile in the sense we are used to it is already history. Of course it will go on for decades but the fact that we have to deal with oil resources narrowing, climate change and cities dealing with immense traffic problems will kill the idea of automobiles.
There is a global oil glut. The amount of proven oil resources has more than doubled in the past 40 years. In any case petrol and diesel can be readily made from natural gas or coal with sufficient reserves to last for centuries.
A great many people ask why apple would get into cars and not some other industry. Some say it’s about owning another screen but I think that’s somewhat misguided.
We as a society ( at least in the developed world ) are at an inflection point where consumer robotics stops being an industry of toys for the wealthy ( robotic vacuumes and lawn mowers ) and becomes an integral part of our lives.
Self driving cars are arguably that inflection point in and of themselves – these will change our world like nothing has before.
To those of us who live in ‘car communities’ this change will be profound : the length of the commute becomes irrelevant because we can work, study or be entertained in the car, we won’t need to schedule our lives around driving children or elderly relatives to events because the car will do it for us and we won’t even have to go to stores as these are modified to accommodate self driving cars ( your own car will pick stuff up rather than you having to do it or ship it ).
If you trust Apple or Google to shuttle you and your family around your going to be that much more likelly to have the phone or computer that fits into the ecosystem, buy music and movies from the same ecosystems, pay for things using that ecosystem and so on.
Couple that with the growth of Google Now like voice interfaces that ‘know you’ and you’ll have even more incentive to buy a car you can just say to ‘take me home’ and it will already know where that is, who it should contact to know your coming and possibly what route you prefer to get there.
That’s why Apple is in this. It’s not about a car, it’s about you being in the Apple ecosystem. It’s about more consumers who want an Apple iPhone, Apple Watch and Apple TV because they will know they can ask Siri on the watch to summon the car, and ask the car to play their favorite tv show, and plot the map of their trip on the phone.
I’m actually more interested in SpaceX than in Tesla. The former promised a competitive low orbit satellite ISP, and that’s going to be really disruptive.
I see how fast he backed those comments up!
Even though he was probably correct making the statement was a miscalculation.
Apple already has a lot of talent anyway. I would argue that they don’t need tesla’s best engineers, they only need their experience.
Apple already has a production car infotainment system in Carplay and they have large AI team working on Siri that is going to be hard for an auto maker to match.
Even Musk said the automobile part was the easy part. The tech/electronics are the harder part and that is what Apple is good at doing.
For the design of the car itself they could mostly just start with copying the Model S and decide what they want to change. I can’t imagine starting anywhere else really.
My grandfather had a self-driving vehicle back in the 1930s. It was called a horse and cart. He would go to the pub and get pissed and the horse would simply take him home when the pub shut.
http://stevecheney.com/on-apples-incredible-platform-advantage/
That was a good read and I agree with it. I mentioned it above but even Musk said the automobile portion of the Model S was easier than the technology in it.
The automobile portion doesn’t change terribly often and now you can buy pretty good performance fairly cheaply. The $75k GT-R spanked 300K+ supercars when it was released.
The Dodge Hellcat is $60k and I have seen data that puts stock the HP at ~750 or so.
The S is also pushing near 700 HP though for more money but the point is power/performance in cars is now “good enough” by a decent margin and making an affordable 200-300 HP car with good performance is now pretty much trivial.
The MUCH harder part and becoming a more important part of what separates cheap from expensive is interior and technology and this is something Apple has an advantage in.
Voice recognition and Siri will be an important part of the UI and Apple has a massive AI effort invested in it that will be recouped across several platforms. That is something that is hard for automotive companies to match without partnering with Android Auto or something.
The next 5 years of the auto industry are going to be interesting for sure.
The entire investment community knows that Tesla has failed miserably in it’s plan to become a major manufacturer. Tesla is almost certain to go broke. Musk is just up to his usual BS self-promotion.
Edited 2015-10-12 09:43 UTC
Tesla doesn’t have to replace GM or Toyota to be successful. Their timelines are optimistic but that is true of lots of things.
Even if the Model 3 is a year late and $5,000 more than they predicted it would still force the hand of the auto industry and competitors to respond with competing products.
Production isn’t ramping as quickly as they said but it is still ramping
The stock has been downgraded to just a 980% increase in 5 years but that’s still a long way away from failing.
I make my living as a professional investor. I’ve literally seen hundreds of hype driven technology companies arrive with a bang and end with a whimper.
Tesla is currently priced on hype. When reality sets in (1-2 years) it will be priced at it’s true value of zero.
Elon Musk and Edward Snowden are the greatest heroes of our time.
Best of luck to both of them in making our world a better place.