Maybe they are working on a non autonomous car?
The car industry is somewhat similar to the phone industry at the time it was dominated by Nokia and telcos: not evolving, slow to integrate new technologies, terrible legacy UIs ... There is a lot of room for improvement outside of autonomy. I can hear the press mocking the development of a"manual " car like it's the 20th century again, and being ridiculed by Apple commercial success once again, as happened for the iPhone and iPad. Indeed. Autonomous cars are extraordinary difficult to produce but they may be even more difficult to sell while a radically new design of a non autonomous car may still be a great success. Customers are in average much less interested by Autonomous cars than engineers, in my experience.
Ya if I had to guess i'd say that's exactly it. But do we really need an Apple car? What is there really for them to offer in that space? Better UX? Is there enough of a delta there to warrant entering the space?
I grant though that this is a sort of 'unknown unknown'. By definition, the great new things are non-obvious. I may have said the same thing about pre-iphone phones. But I don't really see what they could offer me that would make me want to pay an apple-style premium for a car (other than full autonomy, of course).
> What is there really for them to offer in that space?
Electric cars. Yes, there is Tesla, but not much else. And, as Tesla proved, there is significant demand for an electric car done right (ie, powerful, long range, not expensive). Throw in the brand name and a really nice cockpit design, and you have a hit.
