> Always thought of this as a fascinating race to watch. What will happen first: (1) Tesla figuring out how to really build & manufacture cars or (2) the legacy automotive companies really figuring out build & deploy software?
Yes! And (3) is potentially: A company who's even better at building and deploying software and hardware enters the market.
The Chevy Spark EV was supposedly nearly as cheap after rebates, I think. But I believe it was discontinued, and I assume that means it probably was being produced at a loss, so it doesn't really count.
I believe that is before subsidies and including VAT, so it will be more like € 11 000 after subsidies. The point still stands: there are many other manufacturers with long experience in making cheap cars.
I see a lot of speculation that apple will produce a car.
But apple at the moment just designs hardware, doesn't really make it (as in they don't have their own factories), so presumably they would either need to build factory for their cars or hire some other factory(or factories) to build cars for them ?
As far as I understand most cars sold in USA are build in USA (I am not sure if that's only because of shipping costs or if there are any import taxes or something).
Even if most parts were from China finally assembly would probably have to be done in USA, and factory quite big and expensive, and have lots of trained people (to have apple standards).
Given that its apple that we are talking about car would almost certainly be an instant hit, so they would need to produce a lot of them, which again means big factory with lots of people.
How likely is it that everybody missed such factory ? Especially with press so obsessed with apple. Even if some other company like Toyota were building it for them, they would likely need a lot more additional capacity than they have now ?
And we have seen with Tesla, that scaling out is really the big problem here.
I genuinely interested how likely is it that apple cars will be on streets anytime soon.
There was speculation that they were partnering with Kia/Hyundai to do the manufacturing. This was big news a week ago, but Kia/Hyundai have backpedaled since.
Yes! And (3) is potentially: A company who's even better at building and deploying software and hardware enters the market.