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Apple Cancels Work on Electric Car, Ending Decadelong Effort
(www.bloomberg.com)
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this post was submitted on 27 Feb 2024
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Instead of trying to make a full electric car, I'm surprised Apple and Google aren't focusing on making a smart AI "head unit" that's compatible with third party car manufacturers. The head unit would control all aspects of the car through the CAN bus and also take camera/sensor inputs from the exterior of the vehicle, and be responsible for things like self-driving, lane assist and all those difficult AI-based features.
This way the car manufacturers could focus on what they do best (building safe reliable hardware) and outsource all the hard AI software problems to tech companies who specialise in this area.
I'll pass on having evil corps like Google put AI in my car.
Comma.ai is open source and does exactly what you are describing as that "head unit", not too mention is widely compatible with many car manufacturers.
Couldn't agree more, but I'm just highlighting it seems like a much more profitable and attainable commercial goal for them in the short term than trying to enter the vehicle manufacturing space as a competitor. The fact there's an awesome open source project tackling this idea already (thanks for the link - I didn't know this existed!) says it's viable.
They've already dipped their toes in with Car Play/Android Auto and have the relationships with third party vehicle manufacturers, so this seems like a logical next step. Perhaps that's what they're actually doing by shifting their car team to AI.
This is pretty much the goal of CarPlay
That’s b2b business which apple and google don’t do. Or aren’t good at, at the very least.
I can see the sharks on Shark Tank telling them - “license it!”
Its sounding more and more like companies are giving up on full self driving. There's been a lot of money poured in without FSD materializing. Maybe just another lane autopilot wasn't game changing enough for apple to justify staying in the game.
Honestly, people getting out of that game now are the smart ones. Our roads just aren't set up to be able to handle FSD. It's a money pit and a lot of companies are falling for the sunk cost fallacy.