5 Ways How Apple Changed Its Plan To Reinvent The Car

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1. In 2014, Apple inc. set off on an ambitious project named Project Titan with the aim to make a splash in the auto industry which has been estimated to be worth $6.7 trillion by 2030. Apple went on an aggressive hiring spree to design an Apple-made vehicle by the 2020s with the hopes to disrupt cars the same way the iPhone did to cell phones in 2007. YBut, by 2015 end, the project was going through a leadership crisis over the direction the project should head. Steve Zadesky who was heading the project left it in 2016 and the reins went to Dan Riccio. Dan was responsible for engineering the annual refreshes of the iPhone, iPad and Macs, and along with Bob Mansfield, who was roped in to be the project head announced a strategy shift from building an outright Tesla competitor to focusing on building an underlying self-driving platform.

2. The plan was build the ultimate mobile device- an electronic car that identified the driver through his fingerprints and navigate him autonomously with just a press of a button. But Apple had to struggle with complex supply chains where investors prefer high volume productions, as compared to Apple's early prototypes.

3. Over the years, a lot of engineers Apple hired for project Titan started leaving the company, choosing to quit over doubts of job security. Software engineers working on the car operating platform as well as hardware engineers who were working on the car chassis, undercarriages, suspensions,etc. left the project. The ones who remained started working on making the autonomous vision come true by designing programs, vision sensors and simulators to test the platform in the real world.

4. Apple has given Project Titan a deadline for late next year to prove that the autonomous car project is feasible for the company. Focusing only on mobile gadgets and software updates will not bring success in the auto industry. Apple needs to build something specifically for cars- something that allows cars to become autonomous. But considering the current state of autonomous driving, Apple building an autonomous car would compromise on quality that would have hurt the perception of its other products. Hence, the plan was pivoted from building a car to supplying the autonomous platform.

5. Tim Cook told in 2015 that the auto industry is at an inflection point for a massive change. And while Apple had to forego its dreams of building the car that would usher in the inflection point, traditional carmakers have started to hire and acquire resources to spruce up their software capabilities, in order to keep technology companies from controlling the software component of the new cars. Faced with such rivalry, Apple has played it smart by pivoting to building the platform which the Cupertino based company can sell to any carmaker to turn their cars into self-driving vehicles.

(Source: Bloomberg)