Neil Hughes
Rumors of a new vehicle-related project underway at Apple continue to surface, with yet another report claiming on Friday that the company has been on a hiring spree for its secret new initiative.
Update: Mercedes R&D head Johann Jungwirth did leave the carmaker for Apple late last year, according to his LinkedIn profile. Jungwirth list himself as the director of Mac systems engineering, where he is "focusing on building great Mac products."
The "top-secret research lab" was put together in 2014, according to unnamed sources who spoke with the Financial Times. Its recent creation suggests that whatever Apple is working on would not hit the market for many years, if ever at all.
Whether it's a mythical "iCar" or something else entirely, Apple is clearly looking into a new market space, if a string of recent reports are any indication. While Apple's intentions are unclear, the company is known to have heavily recruited Tesla engineers, offering $250,000 bonuses and significant salary bumps, though, relatively few have made the move.
Friday's report claims that Apple chief designer Jonathan Ive has held regular meetings with automotive executives in recent months in attempts to hire them. Among those Apple spoke with was a head of research and development at Mercedes-Benz.
The nature of Apple's recruitment has convinced some observers that the company could be working on something well beyond CarPlay or vehicle integration, going as far as to build its own full-fledged vehicles.
The reports come after Apple was revealed to be behind a fleet of mysterious camera-equipped vans that have popped up around the Bay Area in recent weeks. The vans sport more than a dozen cameras and what appear to be LiDAR modules for high-resolution mapping strapped to an x-shaped carriage on their roof.
While the vehicles spurred hope of self-driving cars, it's more likely that Apple is using them to bolster its Maps service, much like Google's own Street View. As such, it's likely that any top-secret automotive project underway at Apple is not related to the vans that have been spotted.
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Very interesting indeed... [quote]Apple is recruiting experts in automotive technology and vehicle design to work at a new top-secret research lab, said several people familiar with the company, pointing to ambitions that go beyond the dashboard. Dozens of Apple employees, led by experienced managers from its iPhone unit, are researching automotive products at a confidential Silicon Valley location outside the company’s Cupertino campus, the people said. Sir Jonathan Ive’s team of Apple designers has held regular meetings with automotive executives and engineers in recent months, in some cases trying to hire them. Recent recruits to Apple’s team include the head of Mercedes-Benz’s Silicon Valley R&D unit.[/quote] [quote]The lab may be developing an advanced software platform for carmakers to run in their vehicles that builds on its CarPlay infotainment system. But people familiar with the company said the background of the people Apple is hiring — including automotive designers and vehicle dynamics engineers — and the seniority of the executives involved suggest a car could be in the works. “Three months ago I would have said it was CarPlay,” said one person who has worked closely with Apple for many years, referring to Apple’s infotainment system. “Today I think it’s a car.”[/quote]
I don't think Apple wants to get into cars. The profit margin is low and you need a network of dealers to provide service. I don't see Apple wanting to get into that mess.
But going up against QNX and offering a complete vehicle system for multimedia and navigation (that also properly interfaces with EXISTING vehicle systems and networks) is something I could see them doing. Automotive manufacturers have crappy infotainment systems with utterly horrible controls/UI. They could provide both primary systems used in a vehicle - infotainment and instrument cluster/dashboard.
Automotive manufacturers have crappy infotainment systems with utterly horrible controls/UI.
You got that right! Sloppy, buggy, slow, haphazard, steep learning curve, inconsistent, expensive GPS map updates... Those are just a few of the words I can think of to describe these systems no matter who manufactured them. A couple of years ago I was at a car show looking at all the touch screens and instruments clusters in the latest Cadillacs with the CUE system. One system in a CTS kept freezing and they'd have to disconnect then reconnect the battery to get it working again. The way the frames were dropped due to slow processors and buggy software when the clusters booted or changed screens was horribly tacky for any vehicle at any price - particularly for GM's flagship models.
They could provide both primary systems used in a vehicle - infotainment and instrument cluster/dashboard.
Doubt it. Now days the manufacturers design the onboard computer system to integrate the whole car. For example my auto has probably hundreds of sensors, many of which display information on the screen or heads up display and some control features do highly specialized tasks. There is no way Apple could build a universal electronics package that would meet the needs of auto manufacturers.
I think that CarPlay, iCar, and the Camera-laden minivans are three different projects at Apple.