That's because 10 billion dollars is a shit ton of money and that's why this is a huge fuckup.
I knew it was a bad call from day one. Therefore it's amazing so many supposedly smart people took this long to figure it out.
Surface level......
A large company just undetiid a fruitless 10 billion dollar project.
The issue is this shows poor manegemt. What kind of other dumb projects are they doing.
Your assumption that $10 billion dollars lead to in innovation worth even a fraction of the cost is completely unfounded.
This is just apple pandering. Yes, some good may have come out of the ten billion, but that is like saying a broken clock is right twice a day.
Apple should be embarrassed and hopefully they learn from this.
Judging by your reaction and the reaction of others, it is doubtful they will.
Look, I get that big numbers are scary to you but that $10 billion was spent over 10 years. A billion a year is a rounding error for Apple. They spent essentially nothing and to think they didn’t learn anything is just sheer stupidity.
Oh, I bet they learned something useful. Even a broken clock is right twice a day. Did they learn anything worth close to even a billion dollars. I highly highly doubt it.
A billion dollars is still a billion dollars. You have no scope of that. That means you have over 1000 employees annually working project. Over 1,000 people failing year after year. It took then over 1,000 people and 10 years to realize how out of their depth they were.
It wouldn't matter if they were worth 100x their current worth. That's irrelevant to my point.
You still don't get it. Neither did Apple. They should hire you
Another way to think about it: they spent 10 billion to arrive at a decision that prevented Apple from losing 200 billion if they actually brought the car to market.
Is the amount they can afford to spend kind of irrelevant? Clearly Apple has enough money and engineering capability (or hiring capability) to make a car. It’s more telling that they realized the product is never going to generate the ROÍ they expect so they cut it.
I understand your point that it’s a drop in their bucket. But that’s the type of financial discipline that makes them Apple.
If you think this was wasted money, I guarantee you that they developed tons of very valuable patents in the process that will make them money from other car makers for decades to come.
Not only that, you can see the upcoming CarPlay updates are absolutely the UI they wanted to use in the Apple car.
Not to mention, Apple has abandoned the project for now as they likely see the forecast for profit of it was likely awful
Maybe the technology is not their ready right now to achieve what Apple wanted to achieve. There are a lot of past apple products that never were successful because the technology at the time didn’t allow the vision of Apple’s design. But those products lead to future products that made Apple product leaders. I am pretty sure in my life time you will see some great out of this 10 years project.
That's a lot of money with no value attached to it. Maybe internal value but not external for customers. And for shareholders that's a lot of capital with practically zero return to shareholder value as well.
They made $100 billion in net income in 2023. $10bn over 10 years is a drop in the bucket. At that point, it’s practically rounding error. At this point, it’s a sunk cost and they realize no value will come from it even if they sink billions more.
Edit: 2023, not 2013
I was anticipating this comment because it highlights another issue. $1B a year to work on an EV project is not enough to be serious. Even if it's 1% of their annual net income, bringing an EV to market is expensive. Apple would have needed to spend at least $10B for the first couple of years to attempt to bring the project to market. So, IMO it wasn't serious about it. And if it wasn't serious about it then why waste the time on it? I get it's their money who cares, but $1B/year is a lot of capital that could be spent towards shoring up other initiatives or bringing another product altogether to market. It's my perspective. I don't work at Apple. There is more I am not seeing. Maybe Apple considered a buyout of a smaller automaker (not Tesla) but the terms didn't look good. Who knows.
They did not need to spend $10B, they just had no idea what the hell they were doing and had no clear direction. Seems like they changed the concept every few years. Even Faraday Future only spent $3.7B to bring a car to market. And that includes setting up a manufacturing plant and everything. Apple hasn’t even shown a functional prototype let alone a production vehicle. It seems like they just had the wrong people in charge. Making a car is a lot harder than making an Apple Watch.
I agree with you. They had the wrong people leading the project. Which should raise issues for shareholders about leadership. The narrative of 1% of net income per year feels like a distraction.
It’s called research and development. It’s common for companies to spend millions or billions of dollars on products that never get released. Usually it’s in the budget to have riskier projects that could fall through. It’s worth the money and risk because they still get a ton of patents and make breakthroughs that could be used in other products.
It’s not like they’re just going to throw all that autonomous EV R&D in the trash, they’re going to use that research for other products. I’m sure it’s already been applied to some of their current products on the market.
>It’s not like they’re just going to throw all that autonomous EV R&D in the trash, they’re going to use that research for other products. I’m sure it’s already been applied to some of their current products on the market.
That’s right, the iPhone 17 will come with wheels.
Reddit is so full of overconfident people waiting to get a good one liner zinger in.
You do know that the iPhone wasn’t just the result of one successful r&d project right?
Going form laptops to phones isn't a huge leap. Phones to cars is a huge leap. They had no business being in the space unless they purchased a car company.
This was ego plain and simple. We are apple, EVs are hot, we can do anything. Huge fuck up. This idea me we should have been green lit.
It’s really not though. They had the money to explore an idea and did it. The idea that a company should just stay in their lane would lead to stagnation of technology. Sometimes a fresh perspective is needed.
Also, when company kills a product all that money is not wasted, they have the option to sell the technology they developed/research, it’s likely going to less that the 10Bn. Just seeing that 10Bn might not move the needle much at apple, they might just hold on to it.
We don’t know what value they extracted from research or potential patents. The gorilla glass on the original iPhones was from a technology developed by Corning in the 60’s which never found it’s way into any major products until 2007.
CarPlay (originally called iOS in the Car) was announced in 2013. It builds upon the "iPod Out" feature released in 2011. The "Apple car" project didn't even start until 2014.
Why are you so mad about this?
You don't get, nobody is denying CarPlay branched out the iPod. But as CarPlay evolved from just a media center for iTunes songs to a good infotainment to a full-fledged system that takes over *every* screen of the car and even lets you check tire pressure and engine temperature it's clear the Car project had a deep influence.
If Apple decides that this is a program that can't be profitable, even if they drop it now, it's a way to bring more losses to Apple later, after the program is released, so that their statements won't look good.
…meanwhile they did not work on Siri when AI was just developing years ago. I love Apple but what a lack of focus! Building a car (a technology that has nothing to do with what they do) in lieu of relegating AI, which is completely related to what they do and one of the pillars of future technology. Unbelievable.
You pay them for products and services, it was your money, now it is theirs. They can start and cancel any project they wish. People just want to bitch about anything.
That's not how shareholding works. Maybe I only have a few shares, but if I had a few million, would your answer change? A shareholder has a right to be concerned directly proportionate to the percent of stock they own.
I’m not talking about shareholding, you can complain all you want they don’t owe you shit. You mean nothing to them unless you have millions of shares, then and only then does your voice matter. Corporations don’t give a fuck about you, just like the government.
Classic case of digging in to their own supply- and believing the can still innovate.
Apple should know that their success is based on their platforms— not their hardware. The iTunes, App Store, Apple TV— this is the money. Other people do the work. Apple just takes a cut. Brilliant business model.
Remember when 3D Touch turned out to be a useless feature and a waste of R&D on iPhone but then they ported it to the Mac and now Macbooks have the best trackpads in the entire market?
To be honest I find that somehow surprising. They spend $10 billion and ten years on it, they have basically infinite cash and some of the best people of the industry + decades of experience in software (and hardware). They even developed their own silicon and still weren't able to pull that off?
Meanwhile Sony, Xiaomi and Huawei just do it.
I really would like to know what caused the cancellation.
Maybe they thought it’s not worth entering the automotive industry after seeing how quickly competitors are catching up to Tesla in EV’s. Might be strategic rather than about their ability to do it.
That’s 0.3% of their current market cap, and less than 10% of their annual free cash flow.
These people don't get percentages and market caps or cash flows. Just one BIG NUMBER 10 BILLION
Hah, true. Apple spending ten billion is like an average person spending $1,000.
Yep and you dont see 8 articles a day about someone spending a thousand bucks
More like $500 or even less
Less even, the average person makes more than 10k a year
I mean it’s still significant if you consider how much they spent with producing anything
That's because 10 billion dollars is a shit ton of money and that's why this is a huge fuckup. I knew it was a bad call from day one. Therefore it's amazing so many supposedly smart people took this long to figure it out.
What a surface level take. That $10 billion very likely taught them a ton and it’s near certain new technologies came out of it.
Surface level...... A large company just undetiid a fruitless 10 billion dollar project. The issue is this shows poor manegemt. What kind of other dumb projects are they doing. Your assumption that $10 billion dollars lead to in innovation worth even a fraction of the cost is completely unfounded. This is just apple pandering. Yes, some good may have come out of the ten billion, but that is like saying a broken clock is right twice a day. Apple should be embarrassed and hopefully they learn from this. Judging by your reaction and the reaction of others, it is doubtful they will.
Look, I get that big numbers are scary to you but that $10 billion was spent over 10 years. A billion a year is a rounding error for Apple. They spent essentially nothing and to think they didn’t learn anything is just sheer stupidity.
Oh, I bet they learned something useful. Even a broken clock is right twice a day. Did they learn anything worth close to even a billion dollars. I highly highly doubt it. A billion dollars is still a billion dollars. You have no scope of that. That means you have over 1000 employees annually working project. Over 1,000 people failing year after year. It took then over 1,000 people and 10 years to realize how out of their depth they were. It wouldn't matter if they were worth 100x their current worth. That's irrelevant to my point. You still don't get it. Neither did Apple. They should hire you
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Whoosh
Another way to think about it: they spent 10 billion to arrive at a decision that prevented Apple from losing 200 billion if they actually brought the car to market.
Is the amount they can afford to spend kind of irrelevant? Clearly Apple has enough money and engineering capability (or hiring capability) to make a car. It’s more telling that they realized the product is never going to generate the ROÍ they expect so they cut it. I understand your point that it’s a drop in their bucket. But that’s the type of financial discipline that makes them Apple.
10% is a lot
It wasn't spent all at once. It probably never topped more than 1% per year.
That's still a bad decision investment. Shareholders would have preferred a 10B shares buyback
Just so; it didn’t crash their stock price.
If you think this was wasted money, I guarantee you that they developed tons of very valuable patents in the process that will make them money from other car makers for decades to come.
Not only that, you can see the upcoming CarPlay updates are absolutely the UI they wanted to use in the Apple car. Not to mention, Apple has abandoned the project for now as they likely see the forecast for profit of it was likely awful
Maybe the technology is not their ready right now to achieve what Apple wanted to achieve. There are a lot of past apple products that never were successful because the technology at the time didn’t allow the vision of Apple’s design. But those products lead to future products that made Apple product leaders. I am pretty sure in my life time you will see some great out of this 10 years project.
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Its harder to get certified to drive the Weinermobile than it is to get certified to pilot a spacecraft. We are simply unworthy 😔
Chump change for a multi trillion dollar company
Sunk cost fallacy. This is a good thing.
That's a lot of money with no value attached to it. Maybe internal value but not external for customers. And for shareholders that's a lot of capital with practically zero return to shareholder value as well.
They made $100 billion in net income in 2023. $10bn over 10 years is a drop in the bucket. At that point, it’s practically rounding error. At this point, it’s a sunk cost and they realize no value will come from it even if they sink billions more. Edit: 2023, not 2013
I was anticipating this comment because it highlights another issue. $1B a year to work on an EV project is not enough to be serious. Even if it's 1% of their annual net income, bringing an EV to market is expensive. Apple would have needed to spend at least $10B for the first couple of years to attempt to bring the project to market. So, IMO it wasn't serious about it. And if it wasn't serious about it then why waste the time on it? I get it's their money who cares, but $1B/year is a lot of capital that could be spent towards shoring up other initiatives or bringing another product altogether to market. It's my perspective. I don't work at Apple. There is more I am not seeing. Maybe Apple considered a buyout of a smaller automaker (not Tesla) but the terms didn't look good. Who knows.
They did not need to spend $10B, they just had no idea what the hell they were doing and had no clear direction. Seems like they changed the concept every few years. Even Faraday Future only spent $3.7B to bring a car to market. And that includes setting up a manufacturing plant and everything. Apple hasn’t even shown a functional prototype let alone a production vehicle. It seems like they just had the wrong people in charge. Making a car is a lot harder than making an Apple Watch.
I agree with you. They had the wrong people leading the project. Which should raise issues for shareholders about leadership. The narrative of 1% of net income per year feels like a distraction.
Posts above are saying $10B is nothing to Apple, although true, but to spend that amount of money and to having nothing to show for is disappointing.
It’s called research and development. It’s common for companies to spend millions or billions of dollars on products that never get released. Usually it’s in the budget to have riskier projects that could fall through. It’s worth the money and risk because they still get a ton of patents and make breakthroughs that could be used in other products. It’s not like they’re just going to throw all that autonomous EV R&D in the trash, they’re going to use that research for other products. I’m sure it’s already been applied to some of their current products on the market.
>It’s not like they’re just going to throw all that autonomous EV R&D in the trash, they’re going to use that research for other products. I’m sure it’s already been applied to some of their current products on the market. That’s right, the iPhone 17 will come with wheels.
Reddit is so full of overconfident people waiting to get a good one liner zinger in. You do know that the iPhone wasn’t just the result of one successful r&d project right?
Going form laptops to phones isn't a huge leap. Phones to cars is a huge leap. They had no business being in the space unless they purchased a car company. This was ego plain and simple. We are apple, EVs are hot, we can do anything. Huge fuck up. This idea me we should have been green lit.
It’s really not though. They had the money to explore an idea and did it. The idea that a company should just stay in their lane would lead to stagnation of technology. Sometimes a fresh perspective is needed. Also, when company kills a product all that money is not wasted, they have the option to sell the technology they developed/research, it’s likely going to less that the 10Bn. Just seeing that 10Bn might not move the needle much at apple, they might just hold on to it.
I wish I could make 10 billion dollar screw ups and people would still praise me
I’m sure if you lost 10Bn over 10 years but made 30-100Bn every year and had 166Bn in cash they would praise you.
We don’t know what value they extracted from research or potential patents. The gorilla glass on the original iPhones was from a technology developed by Corning in the 60’s which never found it’s way into any major products until 2007.
I’m sure CarPlay full dashboard presented last year came from this project. Probably much more that will be slowly incorporated in future products
What are you talking about. Where the fuck do you think CarPlay came from.
The iOS team?
CarPlay (originally called iOS in the Car) was announced in 2013. It builds upon the "iPod Out" feature released in 2011. The "Apple car" project didn't even start until 2014. Why are you so mad about this?
The new CarPlay clearly comes from the Apple Car project.
Bingo.
Nope. 🙄 https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/CarPlay#Development
You don't get, nobody is denying CarPlay branched out the iPod. But as CarPlay evolved from just a media center for iTunes songs to a good infotainment to a full-fledged system that takes over *every* screen of the car and even lets you check tire pressure and engine temperature it's clear the Car project had a deep influence.
Maybe clueless Tim Cook should step down? That is a lot of wasted money. They could have bought Rivian for less a few years back!
Hindsight is 2020 as they say.
Have you forgotten about patents?
And how much has Google thrown away?
That’s nothing for Apple, over 10 years and all budgeted for under research and development 🤔
It’s in threads like these where you really get an insight into how clueless so many commenters are.
And the more clueless, the more confident they are
This is nothing for apple. Plus I'm sure they'll get something in return for all the research they've done.
They should just buy rivian, the whole company is selling for that currently
Wow should have spent that on LLMs so Siri isn't dumb as a brick.
Seriously though why is Siri still so bad
That’s a lot of poor kids food/education
TIL 10 billion is a lot of money
If Apple decides that this is a program that can't be profitable, even if they drop it now, it's a way to bring more losses to Apple later, after the program is released, so that their statements won't look good.
…meanwhile they did not work on Siri when AI was just developing years ago. I love Apple but what a lack of focus! Building a car (a technology that has nothing to do with what they do) in lieu of relegating AI, which is completely related to what they do and one of the pillars of future technology. Unbelievable.
So? It’s their money.
No, it's my money. /apple shareholder //not a very large one ///the $10bil doesn't bother me
You pay them for products and services, it was your money, now it is theirs. They can start and cancel any project they wish. People just want to bitch about anything.
That's not how shareholding works. Maybe I only have a few shares, but if I had a few million, would your answer change? A shareholder has a right to be concerned directly proportionate to the percent of stock they own.
I’m not talking about shareholding, you can complain all you want they don’t owe you shit. You mean nothing to them unless you have millions of shares, then and only then does your voice matter. Corporations don’t give a fuck about you, just like the government.
If their stock price doesn’t take a hit after this program cancellation I’d be suspicious.
Classic case of digging in to their own supply- and believing the can still innovate. Apple should know that their success is based on their platforms— not their hardware. The iTunes, App Store, Apple TV— this is the money. Other people do the work. Apple just takes a cut. Brilliant business model.
I call bullshit on this, no way they spent 10b on this
Imagine having $10 billion & not being able to start a car company.
Imagined it. Still sounds hard. Everything is so easy and obvious to Redditors
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That’s not how R&D works. But sure. Believe it or not, sometimes the end product isn’t the biggest gains for R&D.
Remember when 3D Touch turned out to be a useless feature and a waste of R&D on iPhone but then they ported it to the Mac and now Macbooks have the best trackpads in the entire market?
Hydrogen is where the oil industry is turning to next. EV’s won’t be here in ten years.
Someone should mention that to Shell, then. They just cancelled all their hydrogen station network plans.
You should write them a very nice email. That would be good of you.
To be honest I find that somehow surprising. They spend $10 billion and ten years on it, they have basically infinite cash and some of the best people of the industry + decades of experience in software (and hardware). They even developed their own silicon and still weren't able to pull that off? Meanwhile Sony, Xiaomi and Huawei just do it. I really would like to know what caused the cancellation.
Maybe they thought it’s not worth entering the automotive industry after seeing how quickly competitors are catching up to Tesla in EV’s. Might be strategic rather than about their ability to do it.
Just a small expense for Apple :)
And I gave $30 to a homeless guy. Same math
They funneled some of that into the development of their personal jet pack, iFly.
Anyone know why they quit?
And yes we can’t solve hunger or homelessness or clean water….. sigh….
I would love to know how exactly this money was spent.
Every time it’s updated the battery started to lose it charge?
I have spent $25k on the Lava Car project and it is even still in development
Darn, they could have beat Tesla too, but I get it you gotta know when to fold ‘em.