'Apple Car' will disrupt auto industry, says Morgan Stanley

Investment bank Morgan Stanley has advised clients it expects the forthcoming "Apple Car" to be the "ultimate EV bear case," and affect stocks in rival automotive companies.

Following its prediction that Apple will be a "game changer" in augmented reality, Morgan Stanley researchers see the same happening with the "Apple Car," but at a slower pace. According to two separate investor notes seen by AppleInsider, Morgan Stanley describes Apple as the "ultimate EV bear case," derailing other popular car stocks.

Backing up the recent claim by Bloomberg that Apple will launch a fully autonomous vehicle in 2025, Morgan Stanley's analyst sees few initial sales that year, before growing considerably.

Describing the whole market, not just Apple, Jonas said that he expects"L5," or fully-autonomous vehicles, to take some years to become major sellers.

"We expect... vehicle penetration to ramp very slowly due to a host of technological and moral/legal/regulatory considerations," he said. "By FY25 we forecast L5 fully autonomous vehicle sales to be roughly 100k units with the vast majority being outside of the US."

"By 2030, we forecast L5 sales to surpass 1.8mm units (2% penetration of sales), 0.4% of the global car park and 0.5% of global miles traveled," continued the analyst. "By 2040 we forecast L5 penetration to reach 7.6% of global miles traveled. By 2050 we forecast L5 to approach 47% of miles traveled."

Morgan Stanley also believes that it's unlikely an "Apple Car" will be one that is bought by individuals. Instead, it will be shared in some way.

"We believe a car without steering wheel or pedals must be a 'shared service' and not an 'owned car,'" Jonas said. "To be clear, we do not believe consumers will own title to a fully autonomous car... but will engage in the service as a subscription or transport utility."

Again referring to the entire market instead of solely Apple, Morgan Stanley predicts that global miles travelled in electric vehicles "to grow to 15 trillion miles by 2030 (vs. 12tn today)." The investment back then estimates "20 trillion miles by 2040 and 29tn by 2050."

Morgan Stanley estimates that together, car drivers and passengers "spend more than 600 billion hours in cars every year."

"What's the value of a human hour of time traveling in an Apple car?" asks Jonas. "We don't know. But 600bn hours times anything is a very large number."

Separately, Morgan Stanley's Jonas and Katy Huberty have previously predicted that Apple will have a hand in every detail of the "Apple Car," rather than outsourcing.

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26 Comments

JWSC 1203 comments · 7 Years

About 3 years ago

Aah. The return of an old friend. The “Fugly Car.”

I believe their take on a car without a steering wheel is on target.

john-useless 73 comments · 4 Years

OMG, AppleInsider, will you please stop using that Motor Trend image whenever Apple's rumored car comes up? That awful rendering looks like the answer to "What would a Saturn electric vehicle have looked like in 1998?" That's a question nobody would ever have wanted answered, and it burns my eyes (even as a former Saturn owner) every time I see it. Apple would never have released such a breathtakingly ugly vehicle, not even in 1998.

I know you need art for these stories and that there are no spy shots of an actual Apple vehicle available yet. Instead, please have your graphic designer come up with additional futuristic cars in silhouette with a glowing Apple logo on the grill. That will do nicely, thank you!

darkvader 1146 comments · 15 Years

They're nuts.

Sure, a few people are going to be fine not owning a car. Most of those people already don't own a car today. Uber is a thing, taxis are a thing, buses are a thing, you can have somebody else drive you around if you want. And yes, autonomous taxis will be a thing.

But Americans at least are NOT going to give up on the concept of personal car ownership. If you own the car, it's there when you need it, you have the freedom to make last minute plan changes. And (this is really important) you can leave your stuff in it. You don't have to worry about whether you left something in the taxi. If you're going somewhere that you need more stuff than you want to carry into where you're going, you can leave the rest in the car and get it later if you need it.

The concept that Americans are going to give up owning cars is as crazy as the concept that most Americans would give up on owning homes.

avon b7 8010 comments · 20 Years

There won't be any disruption. At least from one brand. The entire self driving industry is moving to exactly the same goals so any disruption will be from self driving cars as an industry segment. The question is who will be first out of the gate and how well the cars function. The remaining players will get there at some point and self driving vehicles (of any type) will find their niche and grow.

darkvader said:

They're nuts.

Sure, a few people are going to be fine not owning a car. Most of those people already don't own a car today. Uber is a thing, taxis are a thing, buses are a thing, you can have somebody else drive you around if you want. And yes, autonomous taxis will be a thing.

But Americans at least are NOT going to give up on the concept of personal car ownership. If you own the car, it's there when you need it, you have the freedom to make last minute plan changes. And (this is really important) you can leave your stuff in it. You don't have to worry about whether you left something in the taxi. If you're going somewhere that you need more stuff than you want to carry into where you're going, you can leave the rest in the car and get it later if you need it.

The concept that Americans are going to give up owning cars is as crazy as the concept that most Americans would give up on owning homes.

Well, I agree with them that a vehicle without a steering wheel would likely be a shared service. But it’s not clear that Apple will release a car without one, even if it is FSD capable.