Apple Abandons Electric Car Development, Stock Goes Up 0.8%

[Joe Muscara]

I get a chuckle every time I see a headline about this. I mean, it's basically saying, "Rumor has it that rumored product has been killed." IOW, "That thing I said might be happening? It's not happening. I think. If it ever was."

 

My long standing theory has been that the "Apple Car" was really CarPlay in evolution, much of it (or possibly all right now) has already been announced by Apple as "next generation of CarPlay" as seen about halfway down this page. They would need to do a lot of research in order to have such a full integration with the various systems in modern cars. Perhaps that's what a lot of the work that was rumored really was. If it was real, at all.

 

As far as gas vs. electric, etc., I've seen a few articles lately saying that the best current option for many might actually be the plug-in hybrids, which give you about 40 miles on a battery charge. Statistics say that many people only drive that much or less in a day, and if you need to go further, you switch to the ICE. So, you can charge the car up every night and you're covered for most of your around-town driving. Lots of people have "range anxiety" about how far they can go in a fully electric vehicle, but that's because they're stuck in the old paradigm we have of getting several hundred miles without needing more fuel. OTOH, I don't drive much, and I'm excited about the idea of not having to stop at a gas station when I'm low on fuel, adding to the time and effort for that trip. Because I don't drive regularly, it's kind of a big deal to remember that I need gas when I do. But, my car is paid off, in great shape, a lot of fun to drive, and I can't justify replacing it right now. I'm just keeping my eye on things so I'm ready when I need to get something new.

[Stokely]

Electric is very handy if you have a charger at home and a garage/driveway to park it in.  Until my oldest made off with the wife's Tesla (not sure what they worked out, I was just an outside observer) that was how it worked.  We have a charger in the garage and just popped that thing on as needed at night.

My son lives in an apt like so many others and no way to charge at home, but he just stops by a public charger from time to time.   That would be a real hassle for people with less free time on their hands.  Gas stations are no big deal because they are quick.

I drive so little other than gig weekends like this past one where I drove a total of four hours (this is more than a usual two/three week period) that it just makes sense to keep my paid-off car.   At this rate it'll dry rot to pieces before the mileage gets high to the point where the problems start pouring in.   One thing I can't stand is when cars get so old that every trip feels like a potential trip to the mechanic....but that can take a decade or more even when I was driving more.  Granted, I've stayed away from American cars   (I keed, sorta, they seem to have gotten a lot better over the years)

My wish list car right now is a Kia Carnival hybrid or electric if they came out with one.  Obviously I'm far more about functionality than form or cool factor!  I love minivans for super easy gear toting, and it looks pretty great (for a minivan).    What would happen though is that the wife would start loading it up with her property management stuff (our garage is full of things like extra appliances etc) and my easy gear toting would involve unloading all that crap every time

[Anderton]

3 hours ago, Joe Muscara said:

I've seen a few articles lately saying that the best current option for many might actually be the plug-in hybrids

 

It's a great idea, but from what I've read, the reliability isn't as good as either electric or ICE because there's more that can go wrong.

[Anderton]

5 hours ago, Thethirdapple said:

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

 

As I said in the first post..."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?"

 

I do believe CarPlay is in 80% of new cars.

[Stokely]

3 hours ago, Anderton said:

 

It's a great idea, but from what I've read, the reliability isn't as good as either electric or ICE because there's more that can go wrong.

Philosophically, I dislike the idea of having two complex systems and that is the reason.

That said--if they work well and don't have issues--and unfortunately with most models we don't have years to look at--then that's what matters.

[jazzpiano88]

11 hours ago, analogika said:

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.

 

You left out the following.  "For political and economic reasons, the technology has never been developed at commercial scale. Today, there’s an increased urgency to address climate change by decarbonizing out energy grids, and nuclear power has become part of the clean energy zeitgeist. As a result, nuclear fast reactors are once again getting a serious look."

 

Here in the US most of the renewable is heavily subsidized by the government, so the economics are confusing to the lay public.   They use that trick to make it seem like it's free.    Kinda like the "free health care"  in some places that nobody pays for. 

 

I'm in favor of trying to find solutions to bring down the costs and improve safety of nuclear which is orders of magnitude more efficient and is mostly an engineering problem. 

[Anderton]

2 hours ago, jazzpiano88 said:

I'm in favor of trying to find solutions to bring down the costs and improve safety of nuclear

 

Well, I read the entire article, and the sense I get is whether the technology will be refined depends primarily on whether fossil fuels will continue to be more economical. Also, it seems the costs aren't solely in the process itself, but in creating an infrastructure that can recycle the uranium. It can't just be shipped to Russian or France, that infrastructure would need to exist here.

 

If I had a ton of money and was asked to be an investor in this technology, my first question would be "how is the waste transported?" If the answer was trains, I'd run in the other direction due to liability issues. Given that there were over 700 train derailments in the US last year, one good explosion of radioactive material would be a lot worse than spilling30,000 gallons of hydrochloric acid or whatever.

 

This isn't to say I'd reject the technology out of hand. It just seems that at best, it's quite a ways off before it can be brought to scale from a commercial standpoint, even if the political climate was favorable to it. It wouldn't surprise me if investors think instinctively that it's old technology, and are concerned that by the time they get it together, it will have been eclipsed by something better.

 

But hey, what do I know? I didn't buy Apple stock when it was $35 a share.

[Joe Muscara]

8 hours ago, Anderton said:

 

It's a great idea, but from what I've read, the reliability isn't as good as either electric or ICE because there's more that can go wrong.

I did leave out of my previous post that I've wondered about the ICE side as far as it not being used very much. When you leave a conventional ICE car to sit for long periods, all sorts of things can decay. If you never get around to using gasoline and it's sitting in the tank, the lighter hydrocarbons tend to evaporate leaving you with gunk that clogs up fuel systems. It's definitely something to consider, though the concept as a bridge to going all battery has its merits.

[nursers]

12 hours ago, Joe Muscara said:

 

As far as gas vs. electric, etc., I've seen a few articles lately saying that the best current option for many might actually be the plug-in hybrids, which give you about 40 miles on a battery charge. Statistics say that many people only drive that much or less in a day, and if you need to go further, you switch to the ICE. So, you can charge the car up every night and you're covered for most of your around-town driving. Lots of people have "range anxiety" about how far they can go in a fully electric vehicle, but that's because they're stuck in the old paradigm we have of getting several hundred miles without needing more fuel. OTOH, I don't drive much, and I'm excited about the idea of not having to stop at a gas station when I'm low on fuel, adding to the time and effort for that trip. Because I don't drive regularly, it's kind of a big deal to remember that I need gas when I do. But, my car is paid off, in great shape, a lot of fun to drive, and I can't justify replacing it right now. I'm just keeping my eye on things so I'm ready when I need to get something new.

 

This - I'm taking delivery of a new vehicle in April that is plug-in hybrid. 8-hour charge overnight off a normal power socket, 70km EV range then ICE beyond that. I'll be lucky to use petrol more than 5 or 6 times year  

[Joe Muscara]

1 hour ago, Anderton said:

I didn't buy Apple stock when it was $35 a share.

I bought shares at $32 (1998), $14.75 (2001), $14.95 (2003), and $109 (2016). I'm not allowed to say how many of each nor how many I currently have, but damn, I wish I had bought more! I just purchased most of these as a token of support, not really an investment. I've done that a number of times with a few companies that I believed in. Most of the time I ended up with nothing or close to it (including Steinway), but this one time I got very lucky.  

[analogika]

13 hours ago, jazzpiano88 said:

 

You left out the following.  "For political and economic reasons, the technology has never been developed at commercial scale. Today, there’s an increased urgency to address climate change by decarbonizing out energy grids, and nuclear power has become part of the clean energy zeitgeist. As a result, nuclear fast reactors are once again getting a serious look."

 

Here in the US most of the renewable is heavily subsidized by the government, so the economics are confusing to the lay public.   They use that trick to make it seem like it's free.    Kinda like the "free health care"  in some places that nobody pays for. 

 

I'm in favor of trying to find solutions to bring down the costs and improve safety of nuclear which is orders of magnitude more efficient and is mostly an engineering problem. 

 

The costs for nuclear power haven't dropped, and they aren't dropping. Nuclear power is horrendously expensive, and the costs for solar and wind have been dropping precipitously for decades, with none of the long-term liabilities. 

 

Nuclear may have had a future thirty years ago, when we could have pushed for effective re-use of nuclear waste (which doesn't solve the problem; it merely reduces its magnitude) and developed the appropriate reactor technology — economic viability be damned…! But the political will to push that through wasn't there, because it was obviously economically absurd and wasn't deemed necessary in the abundance of alternatives. 

And it may again have a viability in the future, when cheap, environmentally friendly nuclear power plants may eventually have been developed, passed certification, and been built to economically and environmentally valid standard — if ever.

Currently, there are actual research projects whose results are, if ever, several decades off, and a bunch of "tiny reactor" companies promising near-term solutions, but whose tech docs are excruciatingly vague and obviously aimed solely at scammi… er, raising investor money for completely unrealistic goals. 

 

If we were to implement tech that converts existing nuclear waste, it would take many decades to come to fruition, while we have actual market alternatives available today that are far cheaper, unsubsidised, than currrent nuclear reactors if those weren't subsidised to hell and back.
(If you think they aren't subsidised, start with liability insurance for a single accident — no nuclear power plant is insured, because no insurance company will touch it. So it's the governments holding the risk and ending up paying, should anything happen. Then, move on to the cost of securely storing and protecting hazardous waste for about ten thousand years. I love that the World Nuclear Association lobby group has a dedicated section discussing the "myth" that we don't have a permanent solution for disposal, which basically just says "Finland and Sweden are pretty far along in the search for a solution". 😂 I'm sure that in America, it's the power companies footing the bill for all of that, right? It certainly isn't anywhere else in the world.) 

 

For the next three or four decades, nuclear isn't solving anything. Maybe after that, if we can make it affordable and clean. 

And if we can move away from uranium — which will run out, eventually, as well. 

[analogika]

13 hours ago, jazzpiano88 said:

I'm in favor of trying to find solutions to bring down the costs and improve safety of nuclear which is orders of magnitude more efficient and is mostly an engineering problem. 

 

I'm gently amused by this, btw. 

 

Of course — who wouldn't be in favour of this!

I'm just not sure declaring something the entire world has invested 80 years of research into as "mostly an engineering problem" entirely addresses the scope of what you're suggesting. 

[Thethirdapple]

18 hours ago, Anderton said:

I do believe CarPlay is in 80% of new cars.

literally just walked by the kids play room and they are watching this episode…

 

PEACE

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[jazzpiano88]

😀

[Stokely]

Yeah, as a complete layman who only peeks in on the tech from time to time, my impression is that it's really hard for techs to compete with the continuously-dropping costs of wind and solar.  The problem of course being off hours, so we need storage to keep improving.  

 

 

[Anderton]

I'm always surprised there isn't more emphasis on conservation. There are so many "always-on" devices these days. I honestly don't mind waiting a few seconds for something to get up to speed, compared to the energy spent on keeping an appliance in an "always on" condition.

 

I've been to a lot of European countries where automatic light switches are a thing. If someone leaves a room, the lights turn off. I assume the circuitry required to turn the lights on and off depending on whether people are present draws some current, but not as much as leaving lights on when not needed. And, if people just set their thermostats a little higher in the summer and lower in the winter, cumulatively it would make a difference.

[Stokely]

Most definitely.  People (Americans at least) don't like to be told what to do I guess!   Don't tread on me!  And there's a LOT of "perfect is the enemy of the good" rationalization.   We can't fix it 100% so why bother, etc.   Al Gore flew in a jet so his entire inconvenient truth is bogus.  Lots of excuses to change nothing.

I have my own internal family battle over water bottles.  My wife and (one) kid use the recyclable water bottles when it would be almost as easy to use the washable water bottles we own with the good water we have delivered (Orlando tap water is awful).  From my perspective, take the extra 1 minute before you head out to fill the non-disposable bottle, easy peasy.   I'm sure I have my own ways to be wasteful though.  Keeping transformers plugged in, keeping gear on constantly etc.   Working from home not only helps with gas usage but helps with my sanity (and gives me back an hour a day) so that's a big win!

If everyone conserved--in whatever way--just 1% overall, it would be a massive thing.  

Edit:  my neighbor could be a great example of conservation if he somehow managed to stop using his @$#! blower a half hour in his driveway every....single...day.  Can't have those leaves you know.  (Working from home and trying to have a window open for fresh air does have it's petty annoyances.)

[analogika]

I visited a friend's place in the States many years ago, and was a little aghast that the first thing they did when they came home was to switch on the lights and the TV in every room. 

Like, what? You have three (CRT) TVs, and you need them running in the kitchen, the living room, and the bedroom? 

 

I realised that part of it is that electricity has always been dirt-cheap in the US, so wasting it isn't so much a "fuck you and your concern for my children's future" the way coal-rolling is, as a "who cares?" kind of thing, but man, that was weird. 

[AnotherScott]

On 3/1/2024 at 10:06 AM, Stokely said:

I had one guy tell me recently "the grid can't handle it!"  Gee, ok, how about we work on the grid then? .

 

The grid issue is a thing...  

 

https://archive.ph/Bt5fg

 

On 3/8/2024 at 9:01 AM, 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. 

 

Safer over time has some notable steps in the wrong direction...

 

 

 

[Stokely]

The grid is a problem.   Especially when "we" allow massive bitcoin mining sites that chew up massive amounts of power to engage in their large-scale Ponzi schemes.

Let's get fixing it.  It's not like it hasn't been a problem even before clean tech, depending on the state and how much they want to invest in it.  Utilities want to make their stacks too.

Continuing to embrace fossil fuels for whatever reason or excuse is not the answer, unless the question is "how can we make climate change worse?"   

Amazing that something like renewable energy vs fossil fuel could turn into a holy war, but we are a bunch of tribal poo-flinging apes that could probably manage to go to war over the color of the sky.   

[Philbo King]

Just imagine how much the stock price would surge if they quit making computers...  🤣😅

[Anderton]

On 3/18/2024 at 11:51 AM, Stokely said:

but we are a bunch of tribal poo-flinging apes that could probably manage to go to war over the color of the sky.   

 

Ever notice that when a fan's sports team wins, he says "we won." But when the team doesn't win, it's "they lost." It's the personal association with tribalism that causes the problem, where investing into the tribe's beliefs defines one's personality. So, to disagree with the tribe involves having to admit you're wrong, and people are by and large not willing to do that. That's why people double down on believing something the tribe says you should believe, even though it's been proven to be wrong. [Spoiler alert: The earth isn't flat.]

[ProfD]

On 3/25/2024 at 1:58 AM, Anderton said:

[Spoiler alert: The earth isn't flat.]

Just the other day, I heard a guy on TV say, "anybody who believes the Earth is flat is just stupid".  His Louisianian accent made it even more hilarious.🤣😎

[David Emm]

With my luck, my Apple car would auto-install an OS update while I was going through a 4-way at rush hour and the brakes would stop working. 

[Anderton]

On 4/5/2024 at 2:24 PM, ProfD said:

Just the other day, I heard a guy on TV say, "anybody who believes the Earth is flat is just stupid".  His Louisianian accent made it even more hilarious.🤣😎

 

I realize you will find this hard to believe, but there's some conspiracy people posting videos who say you should look directly at the eclipse, no problem, the whole thing about it damaging your eyes is BS and just a way to get you to buy those eclipse glasses. And what's more, the eclipse proves that the earth is flat. (huh?)

 

To be fair, though,this does lend credence to the conspiracy theory that chemtrails have covered us with Stupidity Dust. 

[ProfD]

31 minutes ago, Anderton said:

 

I realize you will find this hard to believe, but there's some conspiracy people posting videos who say you should look directly at the eclipse...

 

To be fair, though,this does lend credence to the conspiracy theory that chemtrails have covered us with Stupidity Dust. 

Nope. Having spent over a half-century on the planet, while I may not believe in Santa Claus and sky fairies, I'm not surprised by the abundance of stupidity sprinkled on humans.🤣😎

[jazzpiano88]

I take looking at the Sun just as seriously as walking while drinking before bed and eating before going into the pool .    If looking at the Sun made you blind, every person on Earth would be sightless.   Before you reply, don't deny you've ever looked at the Sun for less than a second.

[jazzpiano88]

Apple employees working on their Car now getting laid off:

 

https://www.sfgate.com/tech/article/apple-job-cuts-silicon-valley-19387473.php

[Anderton]

3 hours ago, jazzpiano88 said:

If looking at the Sun made you blind, every person on Earth would be sightless.   Before you reply, don't deny you've ever looked at the Sun for less than a second.

 

It's unavoidable looking in the direction of the sun from time to time, but the eclipse lasts over an hour. If you're going to stare at the sun for 10 or 15 minutes, it's probably not a good idea. That's what "sun gazer" people advocate. The problem is if there's a situation where the sun focuses through the lens to the retina. That depends on the angle of your eye to the sun and also the intensity on any given day - humidity, pollution, closeness to the horizon, smoke, etc. For example the potential for eye damage is much less at sunset and sunrise. 

 

It's very much like audio. You can listen at levels that won't damage your hearing permanently if the exposure is under a certain amount of time. But if it's over a certain amount of time, the cilia in your ears become damaged and don't recover.

[jazzpiano88]

That was kind of my point, it’s ok to do something unhealthy once in a while.  I’d never heard of these star gazers.  The media puts the fear of god into everyone with no perspective of reality.  I never went swimming in the local pool after eating growing up for fear of drowning due to cramps.    Did you know that sitting too close to the TV ruins your eyesight?