Apple Abandons Electric Car Development, Stock Goes Up 0.8%

[Anderton]

Yes, it's official. 

 

But...really, how much was Apple invested in coming out with an electric car? As we all know, Apple is a notoriously secretive company where leakers are constantly trying to pierce its corporate veil for tidbits about what's next. This all started 10 years ago when Apple started recruiting people from car companies. It applied for a permit for self-driving car tests in California, and some Apple cars were reportedly seen driving around the SF Bay Area.

 

If nothing else, it might have helped them achieve their dominance with CarPlay. And who knows what kind of technology ended up in the Vision Pro?

 

Anyway, it's an interesting end of (what-might-have-been) an era. Frankly, they made the right move. I think cars strayed too far from what Apple does best. Apparently the stock market agreed, as soon as the announcement was made, the stock went up 0.8%.

 

[KuruPrionz]

We need more kinds of cars like we need a hole in the head. And, if a driverless car is involved in an accident, who is to blame?

[harmonizer]

Shut up and take my money.

[Anderton]

Jimmy Kimmel says Apple dropped it because they couldn't figure out how to make you buy a new one each year 🤣

[David Emm]

Everything surrounding lithium is nasty. The mining of it is messy and a replacement battery can cost more than the original car price. Repair shops for them command top dollar, because it all but takes a specialized clean room to manage. You can't just roll them into a local garage. Also, where do they get the juice for those charging stations? Why, at least partially from petroleum-fueled power stations. Some may be nuclear or solar/wind based, but that's not likely to cover the majority of the load. It defeats part of the purpose. 

 

We need something with better energy density that's more sensibly repairable and which doesn't randomly catch fire like a sumbitch. Firefighters hate those Tesla calls, because they have no ready way of extinguishing the mess. They mostly just guard the perimeter until it sputters out. The technology is still too much in its beta phase, IMO.      

[Anderton]

5 minutes ago, David Emm said:

We need something with better energy density that's more sensibly repairable and which doesn't randomly catch fire like a sumbitch. Firefighters hate those Tesla calls, because they have no ready way of extinguishing the mess. They mostly just guard the perimeter until it sputters out. The technology is still too much in its beta phase, IMO.      

 

All true. The way I see electric vehicles is as a crossfade. There are promising battery and storage technologies being developed that aren't lithium dependent, and are expected to be highly recyclable. We're talking 5 or 10 years out before they hit the "rich people can afford them and will help amortize the R&D" stage. But, the incentive to keep improving battery technology is immense. Petroleum-based economies are problematic too, so there's also an incentive to rein that in as well.

 

I do think little changes add up. Seeing people throw out cardboard is ridiculous. It's not hard to recycle, and like aluminum, most of it can be recycled with an extremely high degree of efficiency. I put less than half the mileage on my car in a year than the average American. It's not a holier-than-thou thing, it's just that there are benefits to walking places instead of driving, and it's more efficient (and leaves me more time to do other things) if I batch up errands and do one drive a week instead of lots of little trips. There are many things people can do, but some some reason, they don't do them.

 

(FWIW, I wrote an Open Channel column for Mixonline about how our little industry is part of the problem, too.)

[Sundown]

It’s the wrong business model for a company like Apple. It’s extremely capital and resource-intensive, it’s low margin, it’s slow and expensive to scale, it’s logistically challenging, and there are countless legal/regulatory hurdles to manage. There’s a a reason there have been so few new entrants into the market, and the few that try don’t often survive for long.

 

Apple has a lot of cash and tremendous borrowing power (and an obvious software advantage), but I don’t see them investing in factories and thousands of skilled people to earn less than 10% margin (and 10% is the best you can hope for).

 

Todd

[Stokely]

Agree that we don't need Apple involved with cars.  Especially if they build them like they build their computers, nobody can update or fix anything  

As far as electric cars in general, perfect is the enemy of the good.  Hard to see how anything is worse than gas and oil.  If electric cars ARE worse when it comes to pollution/climate change or whatever, then the data can show that and I'd recant my statement.

I had one guy tell me recently "the grid can't handle it!"  Gee, ok, how about we work on the grid then?  The excuses seem never-ending.   I really don't get the cult of oil...do people *really* like that nasty stuff everywhere (putting aside climate issues!)  The extreme fan(atics) being the "rolling coal" morons who like to show the world how they are puffing black smoke to own the libs, or something.   

ICE cars went through massive changes through the decades and electric cars won't be any different; but if people hadn't started using cars to begin with and waited for the "better" cars, the changes never would have happened IMO.

I'm doing my part by not driving much    Working from home is the "dogs bollocks"--as an American I may not be licensed for that term but I did use quotes so it's ok.

Big problem right now is that Detroit keeps coming out with fricking luxury EVs and then wondering why sales are down.  Gee, maybe because a ton of people don't want to spend $70+ on a vehicle.  I could afford that but I'm not going to spend that much, my ego is fine and doesn't need an extension.

[Anderton]

4 hours ago, Stokely said:

If electric cars ARE worse when it comes to pollution/climate change or whatever, then the data can show that and I'd recant my statement.

 

Everything that I've read basically says EVs aren't as wonderful as the boosters want you to believe, but over the life of the car, they are better for the environment overall. 

 

4 hours ago, Stokely said:

Big problem right now is that Detroit keeps coming out with fricking luxury EVs and then wondering why sales are down.

 

No kidding. I'm actually the ideal use case for having an electric car. I mostly drive in what would be a car's range, and my wife has an ICE if we needed to go on a long trip. But all I want is something cheap, cheerful, and reliable. Until then, my 2000 VW thinks it's a Porsche, refuses to die, \gets 44 MPG, and was paid off two decades ago. So no company is giving me an incentive to switch.

[KuruPrionz]

4 hours ago, Stokely said:

Big problem right now is that Detroit keeps coming out with fricking luxury EVs and then wondering why sales are down.  Gee, maybe because a ton of people don't want to spend $70+ on a vehicle.  I could afford that but I'm not going to spend that much, my ego is fine and doesn't need an extension.

The vehicle I drive now (2001 Ford Explorer) and the one before it (1988 Oldsmobile Cutlass Royale) were both given to me. I'm in for registration, insurance and gas. Both vehicles are butt ugly to a mud fence but they were/are both solid vehicles that serve the purpose - getting from point A to point B. Obviously I'm not picky. 

[David Emm]

I had a butt ugly Dodge Dart station wagon for a while, back when I was a butt ugly bionic hippie. Heater (no A/C), AM radio, standard shift and basically a tractor motor as its heart. You could see a lot of the ground under it, because it was the opposite of tricked-out. I all but put butter in the crankcase in a couple of pinches and drove it through deep water a few times, but it soldiered on, regardless. I also kept it decorated in Early White Trash inside, so I was free of worry about anyone stealing it. Cars crammed with high-tech features have commensurate costly problem cycles. The Beluga excelled at its one real purpose: hauling me to & fro. I'd love to have it back again!

 

Craig is right about this being a crossfade. When I let my sci-fi gland wander, its not hard to envision a take-off point where solar panels hit a meaningful peak efficiency and a form of battery based on something utterly mundane & plentiful gives them the right place to funnel the juice. I may not live to see it, but I was a lousy candidate for a rocket pack anyway.  

[jazzpiano88]

7 hours ago, Anderton said:

Until then, my 2000 VW thinks it's a Porsche, refuses to die, \gets 44 MPG, and was paid off two decades ago. So no company is giving me an incentive to switch

 

My vehicle's gas mileage increased 40% when I moved out of CA and had its computer died, replacing it with a generic aftermarket chip.

 

I think VW completely scammed the USA on their MPG and emissions.  I think their former CEO may still be in Russia after the US wanted him killed in response. . 

[Anderton]

12 minutes ago, jazzpiano88 said:

My vehicle's gas mileage increased 40% when I moved out of CA and had its computer died, replacing it with a generic aftermarket chip.

 

When I lived in CA, the state required emission controls that killed my mileage. What bugged me was the law wasn't that you had to meet certain pollution specs (I kept my car tuned within a gnat's eyelash, but you had to have a certain emissions control device. I begged my mechanic to take off the device. He did, which was against the law, but I believe ended up producing less pollution.

 

14 minutes ago, jazzpiano88 said:

I think VW completely scammed the USA on their MPG and emissions.  I think their former CEO may still be in Russia after the US wanted him killed in response. .

 

Yup. I didn't take VW's word on my mileage, I checked the mileage since the last time I filled up, and divided it by the gallons I put in.

[Jeff Leites]

I've been a proponent of hydrogen fuel cars since I first heard of them being developed in the 70s.  From what I can see their biggest problem is the massive amount of space needed for their onboard fuel tanks.

[analogika]

On 3/1/2024 at 4:49 AM, David Emm said:

Everything surrounding lithium is nasty. The mining of it is messy and a replacement battery can cost more than the original car price. Repair shops for them command top dollar, because it all but takes a specialized clean room to manage. You can't just roll them into a local garage. Also, where do they get the juice for those charging stations? Why, at least partially from petroleum-fueled power stations. Some may be nuclear or solar/wind based, but that's not likely to cover the majority of the load. It defeats part of the purpose. 

 

There's some fact-checking issues in what you write: Petroleum plays almost no role whatsoever in the production of electricity in the United States: https://www.eia.gov/energyexplained/electricity/electricity-in-the-us.php
Globally, it's about 3% — and falling: 

https://ourworldindata.org/electricity-mix

(Nuclear is dropping sharply, as well, because it's just ridiculously expensive compared to renewables.)

 

The other point here is that this isn't static. Renewable energy production is growing at a tremendous pace, globally, and prices have come down enough almost everywhere to make everything else almost stupidly expensive by comparison. (If nuclear is cheaper, that's only because the local government is subsidising the hell out of it.) Whatever energy mix is powering EVs today is only going to become MORE environmentally friendly in six months, let alone six years. 

 

Additionally, all of the environmental aspects of lithium need to be put into perspective next to petroleum-based mobility. 

 

The vast majority of lithium is conventionally mined, and it is much less "messy" than oil —  compare: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Environmental_issues_in_the_Niger_Delta

 

And that lithium is mined once for a ten-to-fifteen-year run, after which the battery is recycled or repurposed into energy storage for another decade. Petrol just keeps requiring fracking, piping, refining, shipping. 

 

Speaking of which: It's generally ignored that the production and distribution of petrol and diesel requires massive amounts of energy itself. It's difficult to come by hard data here, since it includes things like cross-continent pipelines etc., but it seems realistic that just the energy required to get the gasoline for a given driving distance out of the ground and into the tank is equivalent to about half the energy required by an EV for that distance. Again, hard data is difficult here, since at least some of the energy during required during refining is produced by burning off extraneous gas and oil derivatives — which in turn comes with its own environmental issues, of course. 
 

I agree that the cost of battery replacement is a show-stopper, and IMHO, battery development is moving so rapidly that we'll see a bunch of major news in the next few years, as the industry standardises on sodium batteries (they're already in the market). Also, charging coverage isn't nearly where I'd want it to feel comfortable, yet. 

 

But even given the price, the flux and rapid movement in technology, and the various aspects that aren't ironed out yet, and given the fact that mobility will be moving away from lithium batteries, EVs are ridiculously more effective TODAY than fossil-based mobility. 

 

All that said: my next vehicle is due this summer and will be a (used) fossil engine, but I'm not under any illusion that anybody will want to buy it off me in six years' time. 

[analogika]

On 3/3/2024 at 2:15 AM, Jeff Leites said:

I've been a proponent of hydrogen fuel cars since I first heard of them being developed in the 70s.  From what I can see their biggest problem is the massive amount of space needed for their onboard fuel tanks.

 

The real issues are threefold:

One is that hydrogen is an incredibly inefficient energy storage medium. Using energy to produce and store hydrogen, and then burning that (with most of its energy going into heat) is horrifically more "expensive" than just storing that energy in a battery and applying that directly to a motor. 

The other is that something like 95% of all hydrogen is produced from fossil fuels. The only alternative, hydrolysis, can be technically environmentally friendly if powered by renewables, but it will take many decades to get there in quantity, because electrolysis takes so much energy to produce. Meanwhile, renewables will power more and more easily-electrified segments of society, rather than being used for production of a super inefficient intermediary energy medium like hydrogen. 

 

Third, "green" hydrogen will be so expensive and available in such limited quantities for many, many years yet, that it is ridiculous to assume that it could be used on frivolous pastimes like mobility, which are so much more easily electrified. A lot of chemical industry cannot be electrified because it absolutely depends upon burning stuff — and that is where all available green hydrogen will go, at least in my lifetime. 

[analogika]

On 3/6/2024 at 12:40 PM, analogika said:

 

The real issues are threefold:

One is that hydrogen is an incredibly inefficient energy storage medium. Using energy to produce and store hydrogen, and then burning that (with most of its energy going into heat) is horrifically more "expensive" than just storing that energy in a battery and applying that directly to a motor. 

 

Just quoting myself to add: 

Even using hydrogen for fuel cells to power electric motors is super inefficient: 

The electric engine has an effectivity of 95% (vs. around 30%-35% for combustion), but just the conversion of H2 into electricity only yields around 55% of the energy. 

So hydrogen-electric mobility has a yield of about 35% of the total energy invested, 

hydrogen-combustion drops to about 15%, while 

battery electrics run at around 75%-80% yield. 

 

(Image cropped, because the other columns concern synthetic diesel and synthetic petrol, which are even more horrendously ineffective, since they capture CO2 and convert that, only to burn it again, releasing 2/3 of the captured energy as heat.)

 

[JohnH]

On 3/1/2024 at 6:52 PM, Anderton said:

 

When I lived in CA, the state required emission controls that killed my mileage. What bugged me was the law wasn't that you had to meet certain pollution specs (I kept my car tuned within a gnat's eyelash, but you had to have a certain emissions control device. I begged my mechanic to take off the device. He did, which was against the law, but I believe ended up producing less pollution.

 

 

Yup. I didn't take VW's word on my mileage, I checked the mileage since the last time I filled up, and divided it by the gallons I put in.

I used to gig in Venice a lot, where the TDI was the car to have. I remembered before the scandal broke, the one time a TDI wagon went through an intersection and I smelled the exhaust. That sure was no clean diesel and after the scandal, I realized why I was smelling more exhaust than I should have. The cars were designed to cheat!

[Anderton]

3 hours ago, analogika said:

Just quoting myself to add: 

 

I really appreciate your contributions to this forum.

[analogika]

1 hour ago, Anderton said:

 

I really appreciate your contributions to this forum.

sorry about the off-topic engagement, though. 

[jazzpiano88]

On 3/6/2024 at 5:06 AM, analogika said:

There's some fact-checking issues in what you write: Petroleum plays almost no role whatsoever in the production of electricity in the United States: https://www.eia.gov/energyexplained/electricity/electricity-in-the-us.php
Globally, it's about 3% — and falling: 

https://ourworldindata.org/electricity-mix

(Nuclear is dropping sharply, as well, because it's just ridiculously expensive compared to renewables.)

 

Here's an interesting take on Nuclear by a guy who wrote about it and studied Chernobyl.    The future is bleak, largely because of irrational thinking that cannot be overcome:

 

 

[Anderton]

58 minutes ago, analogika said:

sorry about the off-topic engagement, though. 

 

SSS considers very little off-topic, aside from hardcore politics and religion. We all have lives that involve more than music. There are some pretty smart people here, so it's good to have a place where they can discuss subjects other than the norm in music-oriented forums.

 

We all drive cars to gigs, so trying to figure out what kind of car would serve our needs best is not all that off-topic!

[analogika]

8 hours ago, jazzpiano88 said:

 

Here's an interesting take on Nuclear by a guy who wrote about it and studied Chernobyl.    The future is bleak, largely because of irrational thinking that cannot be overcome:

 

 

I’m not sure what you’re arguing: in the interview section you link to, Plokhy makes an excellent argument against nuclear energy: that, no matter how “safe” we make reactor technology, there is no accounting for the human element or catastrophic environment: human failure, war, tsunami — there is no safeguard against these things. 
 

That is not “irrational”, and his argument is eminently sound and very clear. 
 

Yes, nuclear energy is “safer” than coal, statistically — but that’s entirely irrelevant. Nuclear power is at this point not competing with coal: it’s competing with other NON-fossil energy sources. It’s already clear that fossil fuels will need to be eliminated going forward (wherever possible), so their death toll will be dropping to zero over time. 
 

The other issue with nuclear power is that it’s EXPENSIVE. A brand new reactor in Finland finally came online last year, after a FOURTEEN-YEAR delay and fourfold increase in cost. 
 

And was within weeks powered down to a fraction of capacity, because it was much too expensive to operate and cannot compete with the price of renewables. 
 

New, smaller reactor designs and technology look promising, but they, too, will need to compete with what is essentially nearly free energy — once they actually become commercially viable and licensing begins, in three or so decades. If ever. 
 

I'm all for research and exploring options, of course. 
 

thanks for that link, btw. Super interesting. 

[jazzpiano88]

To me the irrational part is the fear of radiation.  Like airline disasters, there will always be power plant  disasters due to the human element but you work to eliminate them over time by learning.  Look how many people have died over the years in the aviation industry and we allow it because a system is in place to make it safer over time.    I think it’s irrational to give up on nuclear energy when the benefits are so great. 

[Stokely]

Seeing how short-sighted every human society is (just look at how we are "dealing" with climate change), having something dangerous that we need to somehow keep safe for thousands of years seems...problematic.   Granted there is dangerous waste from other industries, like coal plants etc.

 

Like Sting sang, "deadly for 10,000 years is Carbon-14"  (which ironically I think was about coal  )

I'd be pretty concerned with terrorists moving forward as well, considering how easy and cheap drones are to use.  Not to say a big solar array couldn't be blown up by drones I guess   

I'm all for whatever works.  I just find the petroleum/coal fan(aticism) weird and gross.   It's hard to see how anything is worse than those.    I guess people really don't like change, especially when the "wrong sorts" seem to be pushing for it...

[jazzpiano88]

I don't know why, but I love the smell of gasoline, turpentine, coal.....   One of the funniest scenes ever is in Breaking Bad when Jessie goes nuts dousing Walt's home with gasoline, and the fallout.     Fortunately ethanol is not considered a fossil fuel and isn't on the hit list.

[Anderton]

4 hours ago, jazzpiano88 said:

Look how many people have died over the years in the aviation industry and we allow it because a system is in place to make it safer over time.    I think it’s irrational to give up on nuclear energy when the benefits are so great. 

 

The problem isn't nuclear power, it's the waste that's generated. The US still hasn't figured out where to put the waste that's been generated in this country. 

 

Thin of it this way. If a plane had crashed in Chernobyl, there would have been a loss of life which would have been tragic. But it wouldn't have made Chernobyl uninhabitable for decades to come. 

[jazzpiano88]

1 hour ago, Anderton said:

The problem isn't nuclear power, it's the waste that's generated. The US still hasn't figured out where to put the waste that's been generated in this country. 

 

We have had the technology to do that for a long time. Its just a matter of will.

 

https://www.cnbc.com/2022/06/02/nuclear-waste-us-could-power-the-us-for-100-years.html

[analogika]

On 3/8/2024 at 9:36 PM, jazzpiano88 said:

 

We have had the technology to do that for a long time. Its just a matter of will.

 

https://www.cnbc.com/2022/06/02/nuclear-waste-us-could-power-the-us-for-100-years.html

Second paragraph leading in is kinda the clincher: 

 

"It was proven out by a United States government research lab pilot plant that operated from the 1960s through the 1990s. But it was never economical enough to develop at scale."

 

They spent thirty years working on the tech and failed to find a way to make it commercially viable. 

 

Which circles back to what I wrote above, which is that nuclear power is ridiculously expensive compared to renewables, once all ACTUAL costs have been factored in.

[Thethirdapple]

Not so sure that a "car" was ever the actual intention of the fruit company.

 

Spatial Computing ?!?! That's their verbiage... the new goggles are simply a HUD like a car windshield. Your head is the chassis onto which all the cameras and screens are mounted, calculating your EVERY environment so as to display stuff and "interact" with.

 

When the fruity people "shut down" Quicktime as a programming sandbox, it was obvious that they were bringing the evolved tech in-house. Welcome iOS.

 

Same thing when they started buying up AR firms several years ago, and began the "car" project... And so will go the goggles, not the actual goal, as a "product". Companies have become more savvy at outsourcing their dev cycles to consumers.

 

VRML in '96 was fun.

 

PEACE

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