Apple Car - finally more than a rumor

Omniscient
Thu, 04 Feb 2021 20:13:40 +0000
Miscellaneous and Personal Stuff I Must Share

After a couple years of rumors and smoke, we finally have some fire.

Apple rumored to invest $3.6B in Kia to produce 100,000 ‘Apple Cars’ per year | AppleInsider

Apple has laid down a big chunk of change to get Hyundai-Kia to help them produce an Apple Car. Very little info on the what and when of the products, but we do have a where. Supposedly it would be produced in the US state of Georgia at the Kia plant there, which is a good thing I suppose.

Memelords have made jokes that the car will cost $1M and require the purchase of wheels, seats and a proprietary charging cord separately from a local Apple Store. Also that it will be unserviceable except at Apple branded lifestyle stores. Feel free to make your jokes, but let’s keep the fanboyism and associated fanboy bashing to a minimum here.

I’m curious if Apple plans to make this a Tesla competitor i.e. a high-end, sports car brand targeting the well heeled. Or if they are looking to make something more like a commodity product like the electric Toyota Camry/Honda Civic. Certainly they’d love the car to be almost as ubiquitous as the phones are.

I also wonder if they are going to jump straight to a driverless car concept, skipping the drivers entirely. Tesla has long dreamt of a world in which there’s a fleet of auto-piloted Teslas roaming the streets putting Uber out of business and pocketing those juicy ride fares without sharing them with pesky drivers. Maybe that’s where Apple starts instead of releasing a new fashion statement for everyone’s driveway.

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