Apple no longer building an electric car.

[kurtlikevonnegut]

Maybe wishful thinking since I'm happily in the Apple Hater camp, but I think Fisker and Lucid make more sense for Apple if they want to acquire a car company. Fisker especially makes sense with their outsourced manufacturing that already mirrors what Apple does and allegedly terrible in car technology.

Fisker gives them a nearly clean slate to design the UX while not having to deal with manufacturing. Apple allows Fisker to keep designing cars without having to actually worry about running a successful business.

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[emoore]

Highly doubt Apple buys Rivian or any other car company.

 

[UnsungZero_OldTimeAdMan]

let's wait and see. I might be correct

No. Apple wants/wanted driverless car. Not just any car. This is beyond far fetched.

 

[oskeei]

More wishful thinking than any smart data driven conclusion, but I bragged to my wife Apple was going to buy Rivian last summer and to make a point I did this.

 

[rlawsoncrew]

Curious for Apple to leave something they've invested billions of dollars into. I wonder if an aquisition (Lucid or Rivian) is something they're looking into

GM is the most likely suitor.

 

[UnsungZero_OldTimeAdMan]

More gasoline on this speculative dumpster fire...

https://insideevs.com/news/595148/toyota-benchmarks-rivian-r1t-electric-pickup/

 

[BigSkies]

I’ve been reflecting on this the last few days.

I think Apple, Amazon, etc are past the point in their growth cycle where they’d be interested in an EV maker. They’re at the stage where they’re fighting hard for every penny of EPS growth, and that’s their primary valuation metric. I imagine executive bonuses are tied to that number as well.

An add-on with multi-billion losses pushes the EPS number materially in the wrong direction.

 

[Cypress]

I believe this is the issue: What worked for Apple—outsourcing manufacturing—doesn't work well for automobiles. Unlike Tesla, which Rivian is now attempting to emulate, Tesla has full control over hardware, software, the supply chain, and manufacturing... it's a lot. There's a video by Jim Farley discussing the challenges OEMs faced due to outsourcing everything to the lowest bidder, resulting in a thousand different components each running their own software—software they didn't own or control, leading to components that couldn't communicate with each other.

It's fascinating that a company like Apple could spend so many years and so much money only to decide "...oh, never mind" in the end. This underscores the difficulty of building a completely new car from scratch. However, Apple's efforts have forever changed the car industry through the development of CarPlay.

Elon Musk's recent announcement about the new Roadster (0-60 < 1 second?) will be fascinating to watch. I believe we are only seeing the beginning of the innovation Tesla will ultimately deliver. How will traditional OEMs respond as Tesla continues to significantly reduce production costs? Adding a plant full of robots could create an unbeatable gap between the cost to produce a finished vehicle and the raw materials... not to mention AI and fully autonomous driving. I expect other car companies will eventually have to look at licensing autonomous driving software from Tesla, as they are now doing to access the Tesla charging network—though that is a topic for another discussion.

I've thought for a while that it would be interesting if Apple acquired Rivian. However, I'm not so sure now. Large acquisitions are not Apple's style. If they did, and fully supported RJ and his vision while augmenting their software efforts, it might work. Unfortunately, I don't expect we will ever know.

Maybe if Rivian has a tough time raising cash, Apple will buy them.

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