As a much-watched Apple self-driving car program, the Titan project seems to have made a breakthrough. 65438+February 10, there are media reports about Apple Apple? Car has established a factory, production plan, preliminary technology and specifications in the United States, and started to cooperate and negotiate with the upstream and downstream of the global automotive electronics supply chain. After a long evaluation. It is estimated that Apple will be in 2024-2025. The car will appear. At the same time, this news is exposed that Apple is cooperating with supply chain partner TSMC for "Apple? Auto-driving car chip.
Just yesterday, it was reported that Apple had handed over the self-driving car department to John Giannandria, senior director of artificial intelligence.
In fact, Apple's "Titan" self-driving car plan has long been known to the outside world. As the last legacy that Jobs left to Apple, the outside world has been paying attention to the progress of the plan.
Apple's giant
"We have a platform for designing cars, and we will make cars in the near future." After the success of the iPhone, Apple founder Steve Jobs promised: "Cars have batteries, computers, engines and mechanical structures, and there are these things on the iPhone. They even have engines. "
However, before the arrival of Titan, Jobs died suddenly on 201+654381October 5.
However, The Times reported that Jobs left a product roadmap for Apple in the next four years. It is said that we are familiar with Apple now? Both Watch and Airpods are on this "heritage list". According to the time calculation, most of the products on the list may have come out, and the "Titan" project has become the last legacy left by Jobs to the world.
In fact, the "Titan" plan has not been implemented today. Apple started the plan as early as 20 14. Also in 20 14, Apple released its first product after entering the automobile industry-Carplay.
In 20 16, the "Titan" plan was frustrated by technology research and development and leadership management, and Apple began to change the original vehicle development plan to autonomous driving research and development.
2065438+In June 2007, Tim Cook, CEO of Apple, admitted the existence of Titan's self-driving car program for the first time in an interview with Bloomberg. However, Cook emphasized at the time: "Autopilot is the mother of all artificial intelligence projects and the core technology we think is very important." Since then, Titan plans to show people autonomous driving projects more often.
But at the same time, Apple doesn't seem to have given up the development of the whole vehicle. Relevant documents show that since 20 17, Apple has applied for nearly 100 related patents, some of which are obviously beyond the scope of autonomous driving. For example, automatically configure the definable internal environment, sports seat system, turn the windshield of the car into an AR-HUD screen or even a drowning escape system.
Therefore, it is widely believed that Apple has never given up the development of vehicle projects. Katie, senior analyst at Morgan Stanley? Huberty pointed out in the report that Titan is by no means an advanced version of Carplay. Only in this way can Apple achieve more flexible control in hardware and software and provide more services to users.
Jobs's "Closed Loop"
"People who really take software seriously should make their own hardware." In 2007, at the launch of the first iPhone, Jobs quoted Allen, a pioneer in computer graphics interface. Kay's classic thesis.
It is also under this methodology that Jobs created legendary products for the world from generation to generation.
1984, Apple introduced the first generation Macintosh, which was accompanied by Jobs' first extensive application of graphical user interface to personal computers. Its convenient operability has attracted countless imitators, among which Bill Gates' Windows operating system is the most well-known one.
1996, after Jobs returned to Apple, he put forward the concept of "digital hub". It is also under this concept that iPod, iPhone and iPad came out one after another. And the reason why they are regarded as epoch-making hardware products is inseparable from iTunes? Stores and apps? Store and other supporting software support.
Especially the App? With the appearance of stores, the iPhone opened the door to the era of smart phones in one fell swoop, and Nokia was swept into the pile of historical papers without doing anything wrong.
It can be seen that whether it is the Macintosh computer in the PC era or the iPod, iPhone and iPad in the digital hub era, Apple in the Steve Jobs era has been committed to creating an ecological closed loop that combines soft and hard. And this has become a magic weapon for Apple to stand out and gain a foothold.
Nowadays, the electrification and intelligence of the automobile industry are unstoppable. As a leader, Tesla's market value has exceeded 600 billion US dollars, which is higher than the sum of Toyota+Volkswagen+Daimler+BMW. Tesla's "moat" is very similar to Apple's, that is, software and hardware are developed simultaneously. Whether it is a whole vehicle, an in-vehicle system or autonomous driving, Musk is going hand in hand and building his own closed-loop travel.
Some analysts believe that in the field of travel, it may not be long before Apple and Tesla's Mars hit the earth, because TF Securities analyst Guo Ming also predicted this year that Apple will launch a car in 2023-2025, which will bring another potential star-rated product to Apple, and this car is the biggest and boldest project so far. Guo Ming has always been regarded as the "Oracle of Apple" by the outside world, and he accurately predicted the layout and even the release time of Apple products. As the last legacy of Jobs, whether Titan can let Apple compete with Tesla can only be tested by history.
This article comes from car home, the author of the car manufacturer, and does not represent car home's position.