I'm convinced that Tim Cook's biggest mistake was not creating an EV. Just look at how Chinese manufacturers like Xiaomi and BYD have moved into the EV space and have created amazing experiences for their customers. CarPlay paired with American cars is simply few generations behind from what the Chinese companies have done. Yet Apple was early enough and had an EV team but Cook killed it. Even if the 1st gen was crap and didn't live up to the Apple's standards, they should have kept iterating. Now they have nothing new and are just iterating current product lines. Which is fine but it doesn't create new growth. You need new markets to do that.
Automaking is a capital intensive, operationally complex, and fiercely competitive (read: low profit) industry. Apple's gross margin is nearly 3x higher than Tesla's, and Tesla will face increased margin pressure as more of the industry electrifies. Even if Apple were to match Porsche as the leader in volume+profit luxury automotive, it wouldn't be nearly as lucrative as their current businesses. There are other areas in which Apple could expand to more profitably leverage its core competencies.
Aside from all the difficulties that come with self driving, I suspect Apple cancelled its car effort because they couldn't figure out how differentiate its offering at a price low enough to drive volume and a cost low enough to drive comparable profit to its other businesses.
I'm glad they decided against it.
Apple's overall market strategy is "premium product, premium price". If you look to the 7x price ratio between AVP and Meta Quest 3 as your guide, they'd make a supercar that would cost something like USD 175k.
Sure, an Apple Car would likely have a lot of interesting and unusual but well understood design points, both positive (like liquid crystal electric tinting windows) and negative (imagine something as weird as charging a car like an Apple Magic Mouse), but hardly anyone would be able to afford them unless they were working in Big Tech.
Cook's mistake is that they didn't make an Apple Internet, a version of the Internet that exists entirely within the walls of Apple's walled garden. Think of the 30% tax that could be collected from online shopping!
I think Tim Cook has bad product and design taste [1], and see no reason to think that there are enough good design people at Apple to make a good car. I think they likely got stuck looking at making a car version of the gold Apple Watch Edition [2] and rightly shut the project down.
[1] https://daringfireball.net/thetalkshow/2025/07/31/ep-428
[2] https://www.theverge.com/2023/10/2/23900158/apple-watch-edit...
What sort of backward company allows their CEO to have any design input? Gross.
There was this guy named Jobs…
Wasn't it a self-driving car project first and foremost not just an EV? It was the self-driving part that was not working.
An Apple ev would have cost 100k, and the 50kwh battery upgrade would have cost 20k extra.
I would have loved to see an Apple iCar, just to see the soulless, sterile and inoffensive result, and the resulting magical marketing circus. Do you take it to an Apple Store to refill the windshield wiper fluid? Does it use another bullshit proprietary charging port, and will it refuse to charge if I'm not using the supplied Apple cable? Is the bonnet glued shut? Do I need to hold the keyfob just so to unlock the doors? Does the car brick itself if you install 3rd party tyres? Does the horn require an in-app purchase? So many questions.
When you turn the car on the radio blasts a U2 track. This feature cannot be disabled.