Reliable Apple analyst and crystal ball holder, Ming-Chi Kuo, has released a research note detailing the iPhone maker’s autonomous vehicle plans.
According to the note obtained by MacRumors, Kuo says any car coming from Apple won’t launch until 2025-27 “at the earliest”, as part of a revised timeline. He also said it would not be surprising for an Apple car to debut in 2028 or later:
We predicted in a previous report that Apple will launch Apple Car in 2023–2025 […] However, our latest survey indicates that the current development schedule of Apple Car is not clear, and if development starts this year and everything goes well, it will be launched in 2025–2027 at the earliest. Due to changes in the EV/self-driving market and Apple’s high-quality standards, we would not be surprised if Apple Car’s launch schedule is postponed to 2028 or later.
The analyst said the market is too bullish about the launch schedule of an Apple car, telling investors to avoid buying stocks of related suppliers.
Kuo further adds, “If Apple Car wants to succeed in the future, the key success factor is big data/AI, not hardware. One of our biggest concerns about Apple Car is that when Apple Car is launched, the current self-driving car brands will have accumulated at least five years of big data and be conducive to deep learning/AI. How does Apple, a latecomer, overcome this lagging gap?”.
Elon Musk recently revealed he wanted to meet with Tim Cook about acquiring Tesla, during the dark days of Model 3 production, but the Apple CEO refused to meet. A recent report from Reuters claimed Apple’s car plans could emerge in 2024 or 2025; Musk called the report ‘strange, if true’.
It’s unclear how Apple will be able to catch up to or surpass electric vehicle leader, Tesla. Apple can’t even get Siri right and is only just now improving Apple Maps to compete with Google Maps.
