Tesla is a teeny tiny portion of the car industry. If Apple is thinking about incumbents, they are morel likely thinking: BMW, Mercedes, Audi, Lexus, etc. Maybe even Ford, GM, Toyota, Volkswagen, etc.
As those cars become more and more computerized, it's becoming clear: those companies absolutely suck at software and user interfaces. The interior of most cars today is an absolute chaos of buttons, screens, levers, dials, and indicators. It's like a wrap-around version of this:
Apple has something that Tesla does not: gigantic piles of capital. Apple has around $230 billion in cash, which is more than the annual gross revenue of Ford or GM last year. Apple is ready to scale from day 1. Whereas Tesla is following a careful growth strategy, using each model's sales to fund the R&D on the next.
>Apple has something that Tesla does not: gigantic piles of capital. Apple has around $230 billion in cash, which is more than the annual gross revenue of Ford or GM last year. Apple is ready to scale from day 1. Whereas Tesla is following a careful growth strategy, using each model's sales to fund the R&D on the next.
I don't care if you have a trillion dollars, you can only tool up manufacturing capacity so quickly. "Apple is ready to scale from day 1" is laughable. Cars are not iPhones you can outsource to Foxconn for production.
As those cars become more and more computerized, it's becoming clear: those companies absolutely suck at software and user interfaces. The interior of most cars today is an absolute chaos of buttons, screens, levers, dials, and indicators. It's like a wrap-around version of this:
http://www.blogcdn.com/www.engadget.com/media/2007/01/dsc_01...
Apple has something that Tesla does not: gigantic piles of capital. Apple has around $230 billion in cash, which is more than the annual gross revenue of Ford or GM last year. Apple is ready to scale from day 1. Whereas Tesla is following a careful growth strategy, using each model's sales to fund the R&D on the next.