Apple’s car plans appear to have hit yet another snag. Tonight the NYTimes is reporting that Apple is again rebooting the now infamous car project.
2016 has been an abysmal year for Apple’s car project if you believe the various reports from top news agencies. A timeline of Apple Car developments this year:
Steve Zadesky who originally headed the Apple Car project left 8 months ago.
The WSJ reported 2 months ago that Bob Mansfield the legendary Apple hardware boss who built the iPhone and led Apple’s ultra-successful hardware manufacturing business up until a few years ago would be taking over the project.
Then last month, Bloomberg reported that Mansfield had hired Dan Dodge from his CEO role at QNX and shifted its priorities away from building a car to building an autonomous driving system. It also mentioned the program getting a reboot.
Of note, the automobile disruption coming from electrification, autonomous driving and sharing has captured the imagination of Silicon Valley making it incredibly hard to keep good employees and management.
Today’s NYTimes report borrows heavily from the previous information but does go into more detail of the retrenchment and does include the nugget that Apple is actually at the point where it is driving autonomous vehicles on what sounds like a closed track.
At this point, it would seem like Apple may want to either bring a car team in from another manufacturer or buy a whole company – if only to solidify the management structure and integrity of the team.
While a Tesla buyout has been thrown around in the media and CEO Elon Musk did have meetings with Apple’s M&A head, there are a lot of other startups in the Valley and elsewhere that can be had for much less money.
2020 isn’t that far off.
