The Death of the iCAR

NO LESS THAN $6.7 TRILLION. The car industry will have a revenue potential of $6.7 trillion by 2030.That was the figure that got the honchos at Apple to consider the impossible. An Apple branded self-driving electric car was always going to be a distant dream. To Apple’s credit, it pursued that singular ambition aggressively. In 2014, it launched a project code-named Titan. Massive resources were deployed, engineers from the automotive industry were hired, design resources were diverted from the company’s incredible design team. Two years later that project lies dead at arrival.

- Nikhil Thiyyar

Apple follows Tesla in discovering that the car industry is not ready for disruption. Yet. The biggest intractable challenge that Apple faced was the mastery of supply chains. Over the course of time the executives at Cupertino realised that building a car with not just sensors and software and displays, but bumpers and axles and engines, was perhaps a bridge too far for a company with zero experience in the automotive industry.

Cars are complex products with hundreds of moving parts. Car owners expect them to work reliably over the years, in every terrain and weather condition possible. These challenges are magnified by the massive scale that is required to turn a profit in the automotive industry. Reports state that the Project Titan leaders have until March next year to prove the feasibility of the endeavour. What that means is that the end result of millions of dollars of investment could be nothing at all.