William Gallagher
Loop Ventures analyst Gene Munster says Apple has to make a big move after cancelling the Apple Car, and that buying Rivian would be the answer.
Following the apparent cancellation of its Apple Car project, Munster has told CNBC that he was surprised by the move. "Because Apple is working on something doesn't mean it will see the light of day," he said, but argued that Apple will now need something big to replace it, if the company is to continue to grow.
"Apple's a tech company, and tech companies by definition need to grow," he said, "and that's the $400 billion question that they have."
"That's their revenue this year, and to grow a top line, they haven't grown their top line for the last six quarters," he continued. "And to grow the business, you gotta get into some big markets."
"Vision Pro has some potential, but that was kind of the shiny opportunity related to the car," said Munster. "[If Apple made a car then] if they get 10% of the automotive market, that would grow their top line by 60%."
Asked by CNBC host Brian Sullivan whether Apple might instead buy an existing EV manufacturer, Munster said that buying Rivian is "doable."
"And I think it does line up, Apple could do this, and I think that that would get them into that bigger market," he said. "I'm disappointed that this turn in events, and so I don't want to be predicting that they're going to ultimately do something like this."
"But I do think Apple needs to break into some new market," he continued, "they need to do something big, and potentially Rivian would be just the answer to that."
Separately, an Apple executive who reportedly helped start the Apple Car project, DJ Novotney, moved to Rivian in January 2024.
Regarding the growth potential of Apple, Gene Munster and his Loop Ventures firm has repeatedly predicted that it will shortly hit a $3 trillion market capitalization — in 2019, 2020, and 2021. Munster also predicted Apple Vision Pro, then believed to be called Apple Glasses, would launch in 2021.
In this CNBC interview, Munster also commented that he was "famously wrong for predicting Apple Television that got killed in 2017."
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Christine McKee
Marko Zivkovic
Wesley Hilliard
Malcolm Owen
27 Comments
I think Fisker makes more sense as a candidate for Apple. And might be cheaper as well. Apple hardly ever buys fully matured companies. Fisker has a lot to win by it as their software is still weak (missing CarPlay for example ;-)
So called analysts thinking that Apple was building or should build a car is the dumbest thing ever! Totally outside their core competence, truly massive complexity and what is Apple going to bring the table that Tesla or others is not already, answer: nothing but a guaranteed expensive, unaffordable and unnecessary product. What they undoubtedly have been working on is some kind of CarOS and related technologies such as the next gen CarPlay. Munster is completely clueless.
One other note is that Apple getting into cars never made sense other than the CarPlay angle. Good businesses do not diversify into products that are outside of their primary focus. Apple makes phones, computers and related accessories. They also do streaming of music/videos/podcasts and create content. Manufacturing cars is does not even remotely fit into their business model.